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Conversations with Gwendolyn Brooks
Conversations with Gwendolyn Brooks features sparkling interviews with one of America's most valued poets. Throughout this book, which spans three decades, Brooks (1917-2000) speaks with simplicity, depth, candor, and passion about the making of a poem and about the position of the poet in humane society.
A poem, she believed, comes from the heart. In each interview, she speaks from the heart and wins over the reader. The interviews took place in various settings-in radio recording studios and in university classrooms, in the coveted spotlight of a National Endowment for the Humanities celebration, and in the intimacy of her living room.
Regardless of place or audience, Brooks speaks with humility. She was the first African American woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for poetry and to receive other coveted honors, and yet she sees herself as "an ordinary human being who is impelled to write poetry."
Brooks explains her experience within the creative process. She does not believe in a Muse. With gratitude to the Black Arts Movement, she celebrates both her blackness and the people in Bronzeville, the fictional community she created and whose lives she "put down" on paper.
Including interviews conducted by Studs Terkel and poet Haki Madhubuti, among others, Conversations with Gwendolyn Brooks underscores the legacy of one of the nation's most brilliant and humane poets.
A poem, she believed, comes from the heart. In each interview, she speaks from the heart and wins over the reader. The interviews took place in various settings-in radio recording studios and in university classrooms, in the coveted spotlight of a National Endowment for the Humanities celebration, and in the intimacy of her living room.
Regardless of place or audience, Brooks speaks with humility. She was the first African American woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for poetry and to receive other coveted honors, and yet she sees herself as "an ordinary human being who is impelled to write poetry."
Brooks explains her experience within the creative process. She does not believe in a Muse. With gratitude to the Black Arts Movement, she celebrates both her blackness and the people in Bronzeville, the fictional community she created and whose lives she "put down" on paper.
Including interviews conducted by Studs Terkel and poet Haki Madhubuti, among others, Conversations with Gwendolyn Brooks underscores the legacy of one of the nation's most brilliant and humane poets.
167 pages, Paperback
First published December 1, 2003
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
June 21, 2010
If you like Gwendolyn Brooks, you'll find this interesting. It's not hard to read- they're interviews from throughout her career: from Studs Terkel in 1961 up to 1994.
This has to be said, too, even though it's not really relevant: This book has more typos than any book I can remember reading.
This has to be said, too, even though it's not really relevant: This book has more typos than any book I can remember reading.
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June 4, 2008joyful reading
wished yesterday i had a longer commute (first time ever)
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews