Making It New: 1900–1945 495From the Ashes,” “From Johannesburg, from Seoul, / Their struggles are all horizons, /
Their deaths encircle me.” There is little place here for the perception of a distinctive
inheritance of suffering, or its transcendence.
Opposed to this position, in turn, in this transitional generation is Gwendolyn
Brooks (1917–2000). Born in Kansas, but “a Chicagoan” as she called herself in
terms of upbringing, sentiment, and commitment, Brooks published her first
collection, A Street in Bronzeville, in 1945. Prior to that she had published more than
a hundred poems in her weekly column in the Chicago Defender. Following that, she
published numerous collections, among them, Annie Allen (1949), Maud Martha
(1953), Bronzeville Boys and Girls (1956), and In the Mecca (1968). In her early work,
admittedly, she was rather like Tolson. For, while her main subject was black life, her
style was mannered, academic, and sometimes difficult. Much of this poetry is
traditional, with regular stanzas and rhyme schemes, archaic diction and invented
syntax. Even at its best, such writing often offers a disconcerting contrast between
form and content, the elegant phrases and cadences and the violent, vivid experiences
being described. Gradually, however, as Brooks absorbed herself more in the lives of
urban blacks, particularly of the South Side of Chicago, her style became looser,
more idiomatic, incorporating such diverse influences as free verse, black vernacular,
and the blues. A catalyst for change was her association with the Black Arts movement
in the 1960s. With the encouragement of younger poets, and especially those like
Haki R. Mahubuti (Don Lee) involved in the Organization of Black American
Culture in Chicago, Brooks developed a more unequivocal, committed stance. She
became one of the most visible articulators of “the black aesthetic.” This reinforced
her lifelong interest in social issues, in street life and supposedly insignificant,
everyday characters like Annie Allen trying out her hat in a milliner’s shop or De
Witt Williams “on his way to Lincoln Cemetery” or Satin-Legs Smith trying to decide
what sharp suit to wear on Sundays. It sharpened her style, making it flintier, edgier.
And it prompted her to be more challenging and provocative because, as she put it
in 1967, “Art hurts. Art urges voyages.”
“It is my privilege,” Brooks said, “to present Negroes not as curios but as people.”
Like Hughes, she often adopts the voice of the poor and dispossessed (“the mother”),
but she can, just as easily, assume that of the more articulate and self-conscious
(“Negro Hero”). There is little sense of victimization in her work, even though many
of her subjects are social victims: these are people who manage to get by, who have
achieved the dignity of survival. There is, however, an almost overwhelming sense of
injustice, inequality, and anger in poems like “Riot,” and a sharp perception of the
gap between black and white that sometimes leads, as in say “The Lovers of the
Poor,” to crafty satire at the expense of white liberals. A hard, stony idiom, taut
syntax, and primitive, urgent rhythms are all harnessed to the recreation of black
street life: a recreation that combines sympathy for the oppressed with a sardonic
appreciation of the sources of their oppression. “We Real Cool” is exemplary. Taking
up the voice of some black streetwise kids, Brooks catches their nervous self-
confidence, their edgy slickness and smartness, and the forces simmering just below
the surface of their lives threatening any moment to boil over and destroy them.GGray_c04.indd 495ray_c 04 .indd 495 8 8/1/2011 7:54:05 AM/ 1 / 2011 7 : 54 : 05 AM