Gwendolyn Brooks Poems – A Brief History About The Poet
Born in Topeka, Kansas, Brooks shifted to Chicago with her family when she was a little girl. At an early age of thirteen, she penned down a poem named “Eventide”. Then there was no looking back for this little talent to grow and flourish. When she was seventeen, many of her poems were published in the Chicago Defender. She enriched her experience at the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. That proved to be helpful, since she developed her own craft of poetry writing. However, all the time her focus remained on the urban Blacks, that are very much apparent from her first collection, A STREET in Bonzeville.
Gwendolyn Brooks Poems – Brooks’s Style Of Writing
Brooks used various shades in writing like sonnets, free verse and other models were always the part of her poems, and she preferred to use variations in writing. She fetched good applause from the world of critics and many described the Gwendolyn Brooks poems as work of art and poignant. Amongst the many critics, Rolfe Humphries gave good reviews of her work. He declared that the world has a good book and a real poet. Starr Nelson, the Saturday Review of Literature contributor said that she had an amazing balance of her writing that is distinctly maintained in each of her writing.
However, her subsequent works in the later stage were considered tough and possessing compared to her early writings. Critics viewed the Gwendolyn Brooks poems as “more about bitterness”. Mecca is her most controversial work that traces each step of her work. Brooks nurtured a wide interest in the Black literature. The social turbulence and its impact on the Blacks was the main thought that provoked the Gwendolyn Brooks poems.
Her later books reflect influence of political subjects and figures, who had great contributions towards the change of the society. However, her target always remained the same – writing meaningful poems and reaching out to the hearts of the millions of the readers. The Gwendolyn Brooks poems had the outstanding ability of understanding all human beings, irrespective of caste or creed. Her best work is still regarded the two volumes of autobiography, still eulogized by the critics world over.