NOTE: Free essay sample provided on this page should be used for references or sample purposes only. The sample essay is available to anyone, so any direct quoting without mentioning the source will be considered plagiarism by schools, colleges and universities that use plagiarism detection software. To get a completely brand-new, plagiarism-free essay, please use our essay writing service.
One click instant price quote
Gwendolyn Brooks, the Influence of Children in her Poetry Gwendolyn Brooks was one of the greatest black poets of the 20 th Century. Her outstanding works that deal with various issues of black community people are popular in contemporary curriculum study of poetry. Gwendolyn Brooks was incredibly devoted to children. After she was named Poet Laureate of Illinois, she created the Poet Laureate Awards, which she gave every year to children in kindergarten through 12 th grade. She also did close to 200 speaking engagements a year at schools, hospitals and prisons. Gwendolyn Brooks was a National Treasure who never received the rewards she deserved.
First African American to win the Pulitzer, first black woman to be Library of Congress Consultant Poet and many more of her achievements can be mentioned to express the pride that people have towards her works. But her influence is the reward - the lives she changed, the spirit she passed on, the poetry that she lived. Brooks poems describe the negative and encouraging aspects of urban surroundings. She is showing her love towards children in many of her works thus showing her dedication towards the improvement of the situation with racism that bothers many people in contemporary society. Gwendolyn Brooks is a very nice and loving person. While reflecting on the tensions of her time period due to racial oppression, Brooks shows much love for all people no matter what social class they stand.
In her writings, she expresses her love for her brothers, sisters, relatives, and just any person that needs love. Brooks quotes, To be in love is to touch things with a lighter hand. Brooks has only written two love poems, When youve forgotten Sunday and Steam Song, but she expresses her love in all of her poems. She expresses her love to children of African American origin in every single piece of poetry she writes. She is trying to send a message to the society that all people are actually equal no matter what the skin color is. Therefore her message is saying that people should treat each other equally and not being prejudice of such things as skin color.
Brooks wanted her poetry to reach out to people who did not usually read her type of writing. She wanted her poetry read by younger people, so she formed a workshop for younger writers. She is known for her poetry to be very straightforward and realistic; it strikes dead center. Therefore it is possible to say that Brooks succeed in doing her business pretty well and her message reached people who are expected to act according to what they decide about it. But, according to my opinion, she did make improvements towards the better with her writing. Frm the beginning, criticism f Brks pem's has involved controversy abut the relative importance f format excellence, which several critics associate with white literary traditions and black political commitment.
First the reviews and then critical essays are presented chrnlgically, rather than by theme r this, but this division f pain- which includes disputes abut the (traditionally white) claims f universality as posted t the social missin expressed by black people fr black people- recurs thought the critical history represented in the bk n Gwendolyn Brks: Reliant Cntemplatin. Paul Engles 1945 review f A Street in Brnzeville has been cited by later writers as a statement f predominately white values which Brks later learned t page and t transcend: Engles says that Miss Brks is the first Near pet t write will ut f a deep and imaginative talent, with relying n the fact f clr. J. Saunders Redding's review f Annie Allen blames Brks representation f racially specific experiences that nly anther Near can get as coterie stuff. Stanley Kunitzs review f Annie Allen finds Brks treatments f caste and prejudice t be uncertain but praises her technical assurance. Vicing a different critical interest, Harvey Curtis Webster finds that her best social pem's yet are in The Bean Eaters (1960); in contrast, Nick Are Frd with that The Bean Eaters des nt seem with f a Pulitzer Prize winner. (Brks Annie Allen [ 1949 ] had wn the Pulitzer Prize fr petry. ) With a bluntness that was t even controversy, Luis Simple expressed the traditionally white universalist view, writing in 1963 that if being a Near is the nly subject, the writing is nt important.
In position t that view, the appreciation f Brks wrk in related t black activism was viced by Admin Gayle, Jr. , wh with in 1972 f Brks coming t share with yung black pets a determination t create petry that is mre meaningful t black people. Following Brks account in her autobiography Report frm Part ne (1975), mst critics date this interest in black activism and Afrcentric writing frm Brks experience at a Black Writers Conference at Fisk University in 1967 and her involvement in the late sixties (including a petry workshop) with a black teen gang in Chicago called the Blackstone Rangers. In 1971 Robert Farnswrth called her a pet-reporter with an eye fr the people and events f a black urban world pushed inward by white repression. The social and political importance f the literary arguments abut the value f Brks wrk's- including a denial f the putative superiority f universalist claims and traditional frm's- was stated with great clarity in 1975 by Have R. Madhubuti (Dn Lee), in an essay that has been widely read, having appeared as an introduction in Brks autobiography, Report frm Part ne. Before 1967 Brks had been n the roadway t being a conscious African pet though still accommodating her wrk and her person t definitions that were imposed n her frm the upside; Gwendolyn Brks is deeply involved with black life, black pain and black spirits but her early wrk kept within the expected and within white nrm's; Annie Allen mre s than A Street in Brnzeville seems t have been written fr whites.
Madhubuti writes that the great pem In the Mecca represents the redirecting f her vice t her people -- first and forest; she is an African pet. An essay f 1980 by Human Baker pints ut helpfully that changes in Brks wrk involve nt (r nt nly) changes in her attitudes towards the importance f race, but that changes in her writing respond als t matters f market and audience: in the mid- 1960 s, Brks was indisputably the mst celebrated living black American pet, having secured the for f white publishers and reviewers- the literary market was a white business; but then a black readership fr bks f petry emerged, and since 1967 Brks has indeed reached ut t a black audience. Baker suggests that signs f disillusionment appear in Brks petry f the 1970 s, and the wrk als implies a pervasive and meaningless violence. In contradiction t the viewing expressed by Madhubuti and ther's, R.
Baxter Miller with (in 1986) that Brks petry transcends his tricity. Miller shw's hw In the Mecca seeks t balance the said realities f urban life with an imaginative press f reconciliation and redemption. The lng pem's structure (largely a sequence f character sketches) involves a unity closed f alternative pints f view- a modernist (rather than racialist r political) pint f view. D. H. Melhem's essay n In the Mecca (frm 1987) pints ut that Brks submitted the pem t her publisher first as a new; the publisher did nt approve it; and Brks remote it as a pem.
Melhem suggests that the title pem's contentions are larger than race-In the Mecca express the detritus f a competitive system and comments indirectly upn American capitalism, and Melhem writes admiringly f format artistry: Free verse, metrical verse, random rhyme, slant rhyme, alliteration, the couple, and the ballad accompany mds varying through servic, dramatic, and inc, and bjective and subjective narrative mde's. In contrast t that high valuation f traditional frm, Jyce Ann Jyce's essay f 1987 vices concerns abut demographic grup's rather than verse frm's: Brks has emerged as ne f Americas mst distinguished peter vices in spite f the history f racism and sexism that characterizes all levels f American society. Sometimes gender furnishes the themes f political and penny polemical essays n Brks: In 1990 Gertrude Reif Hughes with that mid-century pem's f Dlittle [i. e. , H.
D. ] and Brks for excellent examples f modernism feminist potential; bth pets... reserve the rle's f wise, vital, r resilient knew fr when. Beverly Guy-Sheftalls essay f 1979 suggests that Brks writings differ frm Richard Wright's and Ralph Ellis because f the greater amount f attention she devices t the experiences f when. Mre free, however, and polemical (rather than formalist) essays race is represented as the central feature f Brks wrk: fr example, anther essay by Jyce Ann Jyce (1994) shw's hw Brks petry meets the criteria fr Afrcentric art which are listed in Mlfei Asantes bk Kemet, Afrcentricity and Knowledge.
Brenda R. Simmnss short essay n Brks Gttschalk and the Grande Tarantelle, the nly previously unpublished essay in the bk, says that an American composers frequent use f African American for sng's is cultural genocide because Gttschalk site the wealth f African American art. In contrast t racial and sexual polemics, the last wrd is allowed t Henry Taylr's praise fr Brks format excellence, in an essay f 1991. Whereas Davis and ther's late a decisive change in Brks writing frm the time she had get black (t use Davis term), Taylr suggests there might be mre unity in the by f her wrk than conventional division f her career suggest.
Taylr explains details f verification, and he paraphrases sme pem's: fr example, he suggests that the Dmers sectin f The Annual is abut the draft and World War IL contesting Hr tense Spiller's claim that the Dmers passage refers in a feminist way t a was aloneness. Contradicting Madhubuti's essay f 1975, Taylr writes that In the Mecca represents an extension, nt a repudiation, f her earliest excellences- bth in the possibilities fr polemic in petry and in her familiarity with petry's technical resources. Taylr concludes by summarizing what he perceives as Brks intended themes: an early concern with personal history flower by treatment f social and political issues and nw (as in Winnie, 1988) larger historical site. Despite the reservations, which pertain t the editorial wrk and nt the reprinted essays, this bk is t be welcome by readers interested in twentieth-century literature, black studies, and modern history. Its free lively and lucid contents als have the capacity t awaken and price interest in the subjects, and it is t be he that this bk will be widely used. If the editorial deficiencies for an unintended commentary n the diminished condition f scholarly publishing at the end f the century; the bk is important because f the undiminished interest f the essays, the continuing importance f the unresolved controversies, and mostly the superlative achievement- whether racialist (according t Madhubuti and ther's) r format (according t Melhem and Taylr) f Gwendolyn Brks, a may pet whse wrk's will lng deserve and reward mre extensive study and appreciation.
Bibliography: On Gwendolyn Brooks: Reliant Contemplation. Edited by Stephen Caldwell Wright. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1996. Gwendolyn Brooks, Collection of Works, New York: Viking Press, 2 nd Edition, 1995.
Free research essays on topics related to: poet laureate, african american, social and political, pulitzer prize, gwendolyn brooks
Research essay sample on Social And Political Gwendolyn Brooks
