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whereweather.livejournal.com#24. The Essential Gwendolyn Brooks, Gwendolyn Brooks [obviously!], edited by Elizabeth Alexander
2005, Library of America (American Poets Project)
This book is really intensely interesting. Gwendolyn Brooks was a very important Modernist, and this volume showcases many of her better-known short works, but it also samples from each of her books (which were real poetry books, that is, planned around central conceits and doing a book's work), as well as from her longer narrative works. It covers years and years, from the start of her long career to its end in her old age, and you can watch the changes both in her style and in her interests. (Of the latter, the most obvious is the change that comes when she became interested in applying poetry to the politics of the civil rights movement, and vice versa.)
The editor did a really good job, I think, putting together a small book out of 55 years' work like that. The editor herself, Elizabeth Alexander, is a poet and professor of poetry at Yale. (She is also African American.) I hadn't heard of her before reading this book -- or thought I hadn't -- but then realized, retrospectively, that I actually probably had, because she was selected to write and read the inauguration poem at Obama's inauguration in January.
(Also also, the book has a cover design by Chip Kidd, which is one reason its design is so eye-catching and awesome. ;)
( Some quotations from the Brooks poems in the book... )
[Tags I would add if I could: chicago, color/colorism, harlem, history.]
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