Poetry is a fascinating art because there are so many ways to succeed (and likewise fail). As example, a Gwendolyn Brooks poem succeeds differently from that of a Yeats, Rilke or Crane. She manages to capture the ‘ordinary’ and insert it into a form or rhyme most memorable. She somewhat resembles Hazel Hall in this way. While very different poets in their own right, both Brooks and Hall tackle the average and everyday in such a way that is insightful and memorable. They both contain phrasings that ‘hook’ readers, leaving us longing for more. Kurt Vonnegut, with his spare, poetic writing of Saab dealers and Holiday Inns within Midland, Ohio—the dullest city imaginable—might be the prose equivalent.
I don’t recall the first time I read Gwendolyn Brooks, but I can say that there isn’t an instance when I didn’t know her work. (I believe I read ‘We Real Cool’ for the first time in high school.) The first African-American to win a Pulitzer Prize (back when they meant something and went to writers of quality), she has since cemented herself as an important writer within American Letters. Her verse is clever and musical—wherein her poems possess great synergy. Seemingly plainspoken, yet intricate and intelligent, her verse tugs with her deft pull of words. A master of sonnets and couplets, her rhymes are natural and internal—they move with the reader.
Now, onto the poems.
From A Street in Bronzeville
A song in the front yard
I’ve stayed in the front yard all my life
I want a peek at the back
Where it’s rough and untended and hungry weed grows.
A girl gets sick of a rose.
I want to go in the back yard now
And maybe down the alley
To where the charity children play.
I want a good time today.
They do some wonderful things.
They have some wonderful fun.
My mother sneers, but I say it’s fine
How they don’t have to go in at quarter to nine.
My mother, she tells me that Johnny Mae
Will grow up to be a bad woman.
That George’ll be taken to jail soon or late.
(On account of last winter he sold our back gate).
But I say it’s fine. Honest, I do.
And I’d like to be a bad woman, too,
And wear the brave stockings of night-black lace
And strut down the streets with paint on my face.
I begin this essay with likely my favorite Brooks poem, wherein she expresses the point of view of a young child who is romanticizing the ‘bad kids’ in her neighborhood. We all know them—I had them too, growing up. They are universal and never seem to change. The first four lines are astounding:
I’ve stayed in the front yard all my life
I want a peek at the back
Where it’s rough and untended and hungry weed grows.
A girl gets sick of a rose.
This is a wonderful opening. And note the intricate images and rhyme. The girl wishes to visit the backyard where the weed is ‘hungry’ and seems to grow without permission. The back yard, in fact, exists without expectation or permission. It can simply be. Then, note the playful use of language. The child is innocent and only wishes to experience:
I want to go in the back yard now
And maybe down the alley
To where the charity children play.
I want a good time today.
But then her mother quells those wishes. She reminds her that these kids she longs to play with are ‘bad children’:
My mother, she tells me that Johnny Mae
Will grow up to be a bad woman.
That George’ll be taken to jail soon or late.
(On account of last winter he sold our back gate).
Again, the rhymes are seemingly simple yet clever. Gwendolyn Brooks very well captures the voice of a young child:
But I say it’s fine. Honest, I do.
And I’d like to be a bad woman, too,
And wear the brave stockings of night-black lace
And strut down the streets with paint on my face.
The final couplet is a master and I recall first reading this and finding several ways with which to interpret it. On one hand, this young girl wishes to walk amongst the ‘grown women’ who wear ‘brave’ stockings while ‘painting’ their face with makeup. Brooks’s use of modifiers is most clever. We get the image of a woman walking at night, braving the streets as she fends for herself, or perhaps she might be a prostitute? The child, of course, does not realize this implication, hence heeding her mother’s warning (or does she heed—we don’t come to learn). Given the historical events since this poem’s construction—Civil Rights can be read into the final line—marching for her independence. This poem is a wonderful fantasy as constructed by a young girl with a longing.
Now, let’s move onto one of her gifted talents—the sonnet:
Appendix to the Anniad
Leaves from a loose-leaf war diary
the sonnet-ballad
Oh mother, mother, where is happiness?
They took my lover’s tallness off to war.
Left me lamenting. Now I cannot guess
What I can use an empty heart-cup for.
He won’t be coming back here any more.
Someday the war will end, but, oh, I knew
When he went walking grandly out that door
That my sweet love would have to be untrue.
Would have to be untrue. Would have to court
Coquettish death, whose impudent and strange
Possessive arms and beauty (of a sort)
Can make a hard man hesitate—and change.
And he will be the one to stammer, “Yes.”
Oh mother, mother, where is happiness?
This is an excellent sonnet that on the surface is about a young girl whose love interest has gone off to war. The poem reads rather straightforwardly in the opening:
Oh mother, mother, where is happiness?
They took my lover’s tallness off to war.
Left me lamenting. Now I cannot guess
What I can use an empty heart-cup for.
Note her use of word choices—taking her lover’s ‘tallness’ off to war and then redeeming the cliché of ‘empty heart’ with ‘empty heart-cup.’ Then, onto the next stanza:
Someday the war will end, but, oh, I knew
When he went walking grandly out that door
That my sweet love would have to be untrue.
Would have to be untrue. Would have to court
The repetition of ‘would have to be untrue’ naturally creates a craving without having to state it. This sonnet shares a similar quality to that of ‘a song in the front yard,’ in that both poems involve a young speaker who is left longing and referencing her mother albeit differently. In the previous poem, the speaker is challenging her mother’s advice, while within ‘the sonnet-ballad’; the mother’s advice is being sought out, ‘What is happiness?’ Of course, we never know what the mother’s advice entails. Now, onto the next:
Coquettish death, whose impudent and strange
Possessive arms and beauty (of a sort)
Can make a hard man hesitate—and change.
And he will be the one to stammer, “Yes.”
Oh mother, mother, where is happiness?
‘Coquettish death’ is a nice way of saying ‘flirting with death’, as one does when going off to war. The speaker is not so much concerned with her lover’s safety or return as she is her own longing—what remains and what is now missing. She then goes on to Romantically state that this death has a ‘beauty (of a sort)’. Her use of rhyme with both ‘strange’ and ‘change’ flows naturally and the final couplet is concise and clever, as she returns to the initial line that begins the poem: ‘Oh mother, mother, where is happiness?’
It is imperative when constructing poetry (or any writing for that matter) to choose modifiers carefully. Gwendolyn Brooks’s use of the phrase ‘possessive arms’ can be read multiple ways—arms as in literal human arms or arms as in weapons. To ‘possess’ as in Romantic jealousy or to be possessed by one’s duty, or perhaps the army? Then, this chance with death can make a ‘hard man’ hesitate—tenacious, stubborn, emotionally inaccessible? Her word choices are cleverly chosen and reflect intense skill.
“The Bean Eaters” is another excellent example of natural alliteration and assonance. I chose this poem to be one among the four due to her intricate use of language and sound. Once again, the rhymes are natural and leave readers grasping for more at the end of each line:
The Bean Eaters
They eat beans mostly, this old yellow pair.
Dinner is a casual affair.
Plain chipware on a plain and creeping wood,
Tin flatware.
Two who are Mostly Good.
Two who have lived their day,
But keep on putting on their clothes
And putting things away.
And remembering…
Remembering, with twinklings and twinges,
As they lean over the beans in their rented back room that
is full of beads and receipts and dolls and cloths,
tobacco crumbs, vases, and fringes.
I think of this as an old married couple who is likely living in poverty—the fact that they are ‘yellow’ could be referring to their unhealthy skin, but also age (paper yellows with time) and also perhaps a couple living in fear. Her word selection is perfect and leaves the reader with multiple meanings. Then, we are given the intricacies of their mundane lives:
Two who are Mostly Good.
Two who have lived their day,
But keep on putting on their clothes
And putting things away.
So they are not ‘Good’ but ‘Mostly Good.’ (This actually the term I used to describe my late cat Oscar—he wasn’t just good but mostly good. Anyway…just a little nostalgia.) We get the sense that this couple has mechanically moved through life—they’re ‘Mostly Good’, as in, they’ve done nothing extraordinary yet nothing awful, either. Now that they are old, they still go about their day.
Then we are brought into nostalgia with:
And remembering…
Remembering, with twinklings and twinges,
As they lean over the beans in their rented back room that
is full of beads and receipts and dolls and cloths,
tobacco crumbs, vases, and fringes.
We come to learn that they live in a ‘rented back room’—likely in poverty and have not encountered anything extraordinary. At least not in the Romantic sense. Instead, they are surrounded by the trinkets of their past as they devour these beans upon chipware. Tomorrow, they will likely do the same. Once again, just marvel over Gwendolyn Brooks’s use of modifiers and imagine how a similar poem would be written by some MFA hack today. Would there be as much music and cleverness? How refreshing to read the work of a Pulitzer winner that for once doesn’t make my mind feel like flat soda. Now, onto a quatrain:
The Last Quatrain of the Ballad of Emmett Till
after the murder,
after the burial
Emmett’s mother is a pretty-faced thing;
the tint of puffed taffy.
She sits in a red room,
drinking black coffee.
She kisses her killed boy.
And she is sorry.
Chaos in windy grays
through a red prairie.
As stated, the poem begins after the murder and after the burial of 14 year old Emmett Till, who died tragically and brutally at the hands of several Mississippi white men for allegedly whistling at a white woman. Emmett’s mother is ‘pretty-faced’ with ‘the tint of puffed taffy.’ Another example of excellent word choices—we get the image that her face is red and puffed from crying. Following, she sits in a ‘red room,/drinking black coffee.’ Thus far, we picture a mother who has been crying and now she is engaging onward with her life by doing something mundane as ‘drinking black coffee.’
She kisses her killed boy.
And she is sorry.
Chaos in windy grays
through a red prairie.
Gwendolyn Brooks chooses to use the word ‘red’ twice, and the mention of ‘black’ is not to do with race, but the type of coffee she is drinking. The men who murdered Till got off for this grisly crime, which was horrifyingly violent. Brooks summarizes this feeling brilliantly with her final line:
Chaos in windy grays
through a red prairie.
Once again, grays are ‘windy’ and the prairie is ‘red’ and here violence and madness are implied by her deft use of word choices. So, we have a political poem that continues to uphold art and craft via her skill. Quality is not compromised for political intent or emotion.
I recently got into a ridiculous argument with a doofus claiming that there was no such thing as objective excellence. While this conversation was in no way edifying, this person was arguing out of ignorance. Just marveling over several of Brooks’ poems, one can see how important word choice is. That using ‘predicable’ rhymes can work if the poem flows naturally and isn’t forced. That clichés can be redeemed (empty heart-cup), that alliteration and assonance are concrete things that are omnipresent and can’t be denied, and that using politics in art is fine, as long as craft is not compromised. Why is this still an argument? Perhaps because there haven’t been any Pulitzer winners of quality in recent years, and if everything is generic and dull, of course it is going to be interchangeable. But it doesn’t have to be if the writer has some facility with words.
Unfortunately, too many look to the image or an idea of the person rather than the work itself. That Gwendolyn Brooks is the first African American to have won a Pulitzer in literature doesn’t make her work more or less relevant or excellent. While it is great she received such recognition in her lifetime, her verse would still excel if her pages were stuck loosefeafed within some old, locked chest. If you don’t believe it, read through the poems again. Then read again until you understand. Some never do. Words matter. Choose wisely.
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If you enjoyed this piece, check out the automachination YouTube channel and the ArtiFact Podcast. Recent episodes include a dissection of Steven Pinker’s pollyanna philosophy, an in-depth look at Kurt Vonnegut’s ‘Cat’s Cradle’, and a broad discussion of aesthetics between painter Ethan Pinch and writer Alex Sheremet.