Gwendolyn Brooks (1978)

From the Pulitzer Prize-winning Annie Allen to the new Black poetry of To Disembark, Brooks’ works have caught the nuances of the people’s words and their thoughts, the sights and sounds of their streets and homes, the breadth of their intelligence and imagination. Indeed, Brooks was an emphatic “People’s Poet,” asserting that she wrote words to “take into a tavern, into the street, into the halls of a housing project.” And yet, Brooks held up a critical mirror to her time, urging significant social action rather than just being “real cool”… only to potentially “die soon.” Having studied us well, she teaches us to live, and if need be, to have our “blooming in the noise of the whirlwind.”