Selected Poems is the classic volume by the distinguished and
celebrated poet Gwendolyn Brooks, winner of the 1950 Pulitzer Prize, and
recipient of the National Book Foundation Medal for Distinguished
Contribution to American Letters. This compelling collection showcases
Brooks's technical mastery, her warm humanity, and her compassionate and
illuminating response to a complex world. This edition also includes a
special PS section with insights, interviews, and more--including a
short piece by Nikki Giovanni entitled "Remembering Gwen."
By 1963 the civil rights movement was in full swing across the United
States, and more and more African American writers were increasingly
outspoken in attacking American racism and insisting on full political,
economic, and social equality for all. In that memorable year of the
March on Washington, Harper & Row released Brooks's Selected Poems,
which incorporated poems from her first three collections, as well as a
selection of new poems.
This edition of Selected Poems includes A Street in Bronzeville,
Brooks's first published volume of poetry for which she became
nationally known and which led to successive Guggenheim fellowships;
Annie Allen, published one year before she became the first African
American author to win the Pulitzer Prize in any category; and The Bean
Eaters, her fifth publication which expanded her focus from studies of
the lives of mainly poor urban black Americans to the heroism of early
civil rights workers and events of particular outrage--including the
1955 Emmett Till lynching and the 1957 school desegregation crisis in
Little Rock, Arkansas.
