Gwendolyn Brooks
Gwendolyn Brooks
Gwendolyn Elizabeth Brookswas an American poet and teacher. She was the first African-American woman to win a Pulitzer when she was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1950, for her second collection, Annie Allen...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionPoet
Date of Birth7 June 1917
CityTopeka, KS
CountryUnited States of America
flower special different
We don't ask a flower any special reason for its existence. We just look at it and are able to accept it as being something different from ourselves.
night slappers ready
Even if you are not ready for day it cannot always be night.
leadership desire fit
Do not desire to fit in. Desire to oblige yourselves to lead.
particular
I am interested in telling my particular truth as I have seen it.
wheat aging
As you get older, you find that often the wheat, disentangling itself from the chaff, comes out to meet you.
fighting expression taverns
What I'm fighting for now in my work... for an expression relevant to all manner of blacks, poems I could take into a tavern, into the street, into the halls of a housing project.
moments learning-to-love
She was learning to love moments. To love moments for themselves.
crush clay language
I like the concentration, the crush; I like working with language, as others like working with clay, or notes.
writing people looks
I've always thought of myself as a reporter. When people ask why I don't stop writing, I say, `Look at what's happening in this world. Every day there's something exciting or disturbing to write about.’ With all that's going on, how could I stop?
flower book reading
Books are meat and medicine and flame and flight and flower steel, stitch, cloud and clout, and drumbeats on the air.
courage brave fearful
It is brave to be involved. To be not fearful to be unresolved.
writing challenges goes-on
I felt that I had to write. Even if I had never been published, I knew that I would go on writing, enjoying it and experiencing the challenge.
writing thinking world
When I start writing a poem, I don't think about models or about what anybody else in the world has done.
passion live-in-the-moment littles
Exhaust the little moment / Soon it dies.