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1. This link to the Academy of American Poets website on Gwendolyn Brooks offers a citation that the poet Adrienne Rich wrote to honor Brooks for winning the 1999 Fellowship award. Using examples from the poems by Brooks that you have read, show how her poetry "holds up a mirror to the American experience entire, its dreams, self-delusions, nightmares."


2. In her moving tribute to Gwendolyn Brooks, the former Poet Laureate Rita Dove describes Brooks' poems as containing "words that nourished like meat, not frosting," and praises Brooks for not being afraid to take language and "revamp it, twist it, and energize it so that it shimmied and dashed and lingered." Basing your response on the poems you have read, do you feel that Dove accurately describes what Brooks use of language? Is there something else that Brooks does with language that you feel deserves recognition?


3. Here is a photograph of Gwendolyn Brooks and Langston Hughes. Study it for a while and read the accompanying text. Hughes supported Brooks early in her career. In 1950 she was the first black recipient of the Pulitzer Prize. Can you identify elements of Brooks's poetry that focus exclusively on the black experience? What are some examples of universal themes in her poems?