Brooks Gwendolyn Poet Essay Research Paper Brooks free essay sample

Brooks, Gwendolyn Poet Essay, Research Paper Brooks, Gwendolyn Poet, author. Born June 7, 1917, in Topeka, Kansas. Throughout most of the 20th century, Gwendolyn Brooks was a lyrical chronicler of the black urban experience in America. In 1950, she became the first Afro-american poet to win the Pulitzer Prize. Brooks grew up on the South Side of Chicago, Illinois. She began composing poesy as a immature miss, and by the age of 16 had begun printing her verse forms on a regular basis in The Chicago Defender. She attended the Woodrow Wilson Junior College in Chicago before get marrieding a fellow author, Henry L. Blakely, in 1939. The twosome lived together in Chicago, disassociating in 1969 but reuniting in 1973. They had two kids, Nora Brooks Blakely and Henry Blakely Jr. Brooks earned a good trade of critical attending in 1945 with the publication of her first anthology of poesy, A Street in Bronzeville. ( # 8220 ; Bronzeville # 8221 ; was Brooks # 8217 ; name for the predominately Afro-american South Side of Chicago. We will write a custom essay sample on Brooks Gwendolyn Poet Essay Research Paper Brooks or any similar topic specifically for you Do Not WasteYour Time HIRE WRITER Only 13.90 / page ) Over the following several old ages, Brooks won a grant from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and several families from the Guggenheim Foundation. She published her 2nd volume of poetry, Annie Allen, in 1949. The book, which followed a Bronzeville miss throughout the phases of her life, was written in a loose, experimental signifier that Brooks called the # 8220 ; sonnet-ballad. # 8221 ; Annie Allen won the Pulitzer Prize the undermentioned twelvemonth, catapulting Brooks to a whole new degree of literary and popular acclamation. A novel, Maud Martha ( 1953 ) , was less successful than Brooks # 8217 ; poesy, which continued to run into with critical and popular success throughout the following decennary. A aggregation of kids # 8217 ; s verse forms, entitled Bronzeville Boys and Girls ( 1956 ) , was followed by The Bean Eaters ( 1960 ) , widely considered to incorporate some of her finest poetry, and Selected Poems ( 1963 ) . In the latter half of the sixtiess, Brooks # 8217 ; poesy became mroe extremist and excessively K on a more expressed tone of societal concern, a passage that coincided with the politically charged ambiance of the decennary and the influence of the black power motion among Afro-american authors and minds. Her following volume of poesy, In the Mecca ( 1968 ) , told the black narrative of people populating in the Mecca, a big, fortress-like flat edifice on the South Side that had deteriorated into a slum. The book clearly displayed Brooks’ new political consciousness, including a verse form entitled â€Å"Malcolm X, † after the black hawkish leader who was assassinated in 1965. In the Mecca was nominated for the National Book Award. It was besides the last of Brooks # 8217 ; books published by a mainstream publishing house, Harper A ; Row. Her following book, Riot ( 1969 ) was published by Broadside Press, a little, black-owned company based in Detroit. With a freshly political tone and without a mainstream publishing house, Brooks # 8217 ; later plants frequently received small attending from the critics at major publications. However, she remained a major literary figure throughout the following several decennaries, printing more than a twelve volumes of poesy, including Aloneness ( 1971 ) , To Disembark ( 1981 ) , The Near-Johannesburg Boy, and Other Poems ( 1986 ) , Blacks ( 1987 ) , Winnie ( 1988 ) , and Children Coming Home ( 1991 ) . Brooks besides published many nonfiction rubrics, most notably Report from Part One ( 1972 ) , an gathering of autobiographical Hagiographas, letters, and interviews, and Report from Part Two, published in 1996. In 1968, Brooks succeeded Carl Sandburg as the poet laureate of Illinois. She received a lifetime achievement award from the National Endowment of the Humanistic disciplines in 1989 every bit good as from the National Book Foundation in 1994. Besides in 1994, she was selected by the National Endowment of the Humanities to be its Jefferson Lecturer. She won the National Medal of Arts in 1995 and has received over 50 honorary grades. Brooks died of malignant neoplastic disease on December 3, 2000, at her place in Chicago. She was 83 old ages old.