Discover the most enduring works of the legendary poet and first black
author to win a Pulitzer Prize--now in one collectible volume
"If you wanted a poem," wrote Gwendolyn Brooks, "you only had to look
out of a window. There was material always, walking or running, fighting
or screaming or singing." From the life of Chicago's South Side she made
a forceful and passionate poetry that fused Modernist aesthetics with
African-American cultural tradition, a poetry that registered the life
of the streets and the upheavals of the 20th century. Starting with A
Street in Bronzeville (1945), her epoch-making debut volume, The
Essential Gwendolyn Brooks traces the full arc of her career in all its
ambitious scope and unexpected stylistic shifts.
"Her formal range," writes editor Elizabeth Alexander, "is most
impressive, as she experiments with sonnets, ballads, spirituals, blues,
full and off-rhymes. She is nothing short of a technical virtuoso." That
technical virtuosity was matched by a restless curiosity about the life
around her in all its explosive variety. By turns compassionate, angry,
satiric, and psychologically penetrating, Gwendolyn Brooks' poetry
retains its power to move and surprise.
About the American Poets Project
Elegantly designed in compact editions, printed on acid-free paper, and
textually authoritative, the American Poets Project makes available the
full range of the American poetic accomplishment, selected and
introduced by today's most discerning poets and critics.