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description: Gwendolyn Brooks was one of the most accomplished and acclaimed poets of the last century the first black author to win the Pulitzer Prize and the first black woman to serve as poetry consultant to the Library of Congressthe forerunner of the U.S. Poet Laureate. Born in Topeka Kansas she moved with her family to Chicago when she was young and she would capture the explosive energies of the citys mostly black South Sidein her first book of poems A Street in Bronzeville. I wrote about what I saw and heard inthe street she later said. I lived in a small second-floor apartment at the corner and I could look first on one side and then the other. There was my material. From this material Brooks made a forceful and passionate poetry that fused modernist aesthetics with African-American cultural tradition. For poet Elizabeth Alexander it is Brooks formal rangeshe experiments here with sonnets ballads spirituals blues and full and off-rhymesthat is most impressive: she is nothing short of a technical virtuoso. Also available from The Library of America in both print and e-book editions: The Essential Gwendolyn Brooks a career-spanning survey of Brooks's poetry selected and introduced by Elizabeth Alexander.
language: None
title: A Street in Bronzeville
publisher: Harper & Brothers Publishers