The Essential Gwendolyn Brooks by Brooks, Gwendolyn -- Read -- Imperial Library of Trantor

Index

Cover American Poets Project Title Page Copyright Author Photograph Contents Introduction from A Street in Bronzeville (1945)

from A Street in Bronzeville

kitchenette building the mother hunchback girl: she thinks of heaven a song in the front yard the ballad of chocolate Mabbie the preacher: ruminates behind the sermon Sadie and Maud when you have forgotten Sunday: the love story of De Witt Williams on his way to Lincoln Cemetery the vacant lot

The Sundays of Satin-Legs Smith Negro Hero Ballad of Pearl May Lee from Gay Chaps at the Bar

gay chaps at the bar still do I keep my look, my identity . . . my dreams, my works, must wait till after hell looking mentors the white troops had their orders but the Negroes looked like men love note / I: surely the progress

from Annie Allen (1949)

Notes from the Childhood and the Girlhood

the birth in a narrow room Maxie Allen the parents: people like our marriage Maxie and Andrew Sunday chicken old relative downtown vaudeville the ballad of late Annie throwing out the flowers "do not be afraid of no" "pygmies are pygmies still, though percht on Alps" my own sweet good

The Anniad

The Anniad Appendix to The Anniad

from The Womanhood

I the children of the poor VI the rites for Cousin Vit VII I love those little booths at Benvenuti's VIII Beverly Hills, Chicago XI "One wants a Teller in a time like this" XV "Men of careful turns, haters of forks in the road"

from The Bean Eaters (1960)

Strong Men, Riding Horses The Bean Eaters We Real Cool Old Mary A Bronzeville Mother Loiters in Mississippi. Meanwhile, a Mississippi Mother Burns Bacon The Last Quatrain of the Ballad of Emmett Till The Chicago Defender Sends a Man to Little Rock The Lovers of the Poor The Crazy Woman A Lovely Love Bronzeville Woman in a Red Hat Bessie of Bronzeville Visits Mary and Norman at a Beach-house in New Buffalo The Ballad of Rudolph Reed The Egg Boiler

from Selected Poems (1963)

A Catch of Shy Fish

from In the Mecca (1968)

from After Mecca

Boy Breaking Glass Medgar Evers Malcolm X Two Dedications

The Chicago Picasso The Wall

The Blackstone Rangers The Sermon on the Warpland The Second Sermon on the Warpland

from Riot (1969)

Riot The Third Sermon on the Warpland

from Family Pictures (1970)

The Life of Lincoln West from Young Heroes II

To Don at Salaam

Paul Robeson

from Beckonings (1975)

The Boy Died in My Alley Steam Song Elegy in a Rainbow

from Primer for Blacks (1980)

Primer for Blacks To Those of My Sisters Who Kept Their Naturals

from The Near-Johannesburg Boy (1986)

The Near-Johannesburg Boy Shorthand Possible Infirm

from Children Coming Home (1991)

The Coora Flower Nineteen Cows in a Slow Line Walking I Am A Black Uncle Seagram Abruptly

from In Montgomery and Other Poems (2003)

An Old Black Woman, Homeless, and Indistinct

Reference Materials

Biographical Note Note on the Texts Notes Index of Titles and First Lines

A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P R S T U V W Y

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