Abstract
This paper compares two of Gwendolyn Brooks' books of poetry: "Street in Bronzeville" and "Bronzeville Boys and Girls". It examines the way in which each poem depicts black life and the influence of Bronzeville on Brooks' writing.

From the Paper
"With her stunning use of form and language, Gwendolyn Brooks is often considered one of the most innovative American poets of the twentieth century. More importantly Brooks stands out as a post-Harlem Renaissance writer who speaks honestly and passionately .."

Tags:Brooks, Bronzeville, Chicago, black life

Abstract
This paper examines a poem by Gwendolyn Brooks' "Song in the Front Yard" and explore its peculiar construction; use or non-use of poetic devices and its underlying message. In particular, the paper delves into the manner in which Brooks carefully uses her art to amplify her message and how her narrator pining for freedom encapsulates the yearnings of young female children and of African Americans more generally, in 1940s America.

From the Paper
"The following paper briefly examines a poem, "A Song in the Front Yard", by Gwendolyn Brooks. In particular, the paper looks at the structure of the poem, the poetic devices employed and the underlying message of the poem (at least in the view of this writer). In the final analysis, the message of the poem seems to be about the allure of the "night life" and (more subtly) about how Gwendolyn Brooks wants to explore the world around her in a way that most young girls - certainly African-American girls - could not in the days of her youth. To begin with, the structure of Brook's poem contributes mightily to its power. For one thing, three of the four stanzas in the poem are comprised of four lines, with only the third stanza (comprised of eight) breaking this pattern (Brooks 1993)."

Tags:poetry, gwendolyn, brooks

Abstract
The paper discusses how Brooks' white audience affected her writing. The paper also considers whether her work was more geared toward these white readers, or rather toward a black audience.

From the Paper
"When Gwendolyn Brooks began publishing her poetry, her readers were in for a surprise. Appearing mostly in magazines aimed at upper and middle white audiences, Brooks' poems revealed the inner world of urban blacks, a realm previously unknown to white readers. Indeed much of the critical reaction to Brooks' poetry fixated on her race as a means of judgment; critics seemed to praise the work in spite of the fact that Brooks was an African American woman."

Tags:gwendolyn brooks, poetry, audience, white, black, racial, segregation, bronzeville, urban

Abstract
This paper compares and contrasts two poetic works about youth and experience in very different voices. The first poem is entitled "We Real Cool" by Gwendolyn Brooks. In her work, Brooks imitates the language of African-American youth, describing in their own words their decision to leave school and lead a hedonistic life of drinking and going to clubs. Brooks implies in her work this was due to poor schools and society giving up on them. In contrast, the paper analyzes an unnamed poem by British writer A.E. Housman. Houseman writes about a young man who just ended his first romantic relationship at age twenty-two. He speaks of how much wiser he is not than at twenty-one. The paper contrasts the use of language in the poems: Brooks uses the words of the street whereas Housman writes from the British tradition of letters, and makes use of archaic turns of phrase to let the reader know that he is educated, and aware of a greater poetic tradition.

From the Paper
"The language of Brooks' poem is also significant in that she takes on the language of young, African-American individuals living on the margins of society. This adds an extra resonance to her commentary, as the reader assumes that one of the reasons that these students are not 'turned on' by school is not their own laziness, but that society has given up on them, and their schools are of poor quality. No wonder the world of the street seems so much more alive and meaningful to them."

Tags:drop-outs, first love, schools, romance, hedonism

Abstract
This paper presents a look at the author Terry Brooks. The writer provides Mr. Brooks' background as well as his current works. The writer of this paper discusses how Brooks makes the reader see what he is writing and understand its meaning and content.

Abstract
This paper describes the work of Cleanth Brooks who was a figure in the founding of the formalist school of "New Criticism". The author of this paper provides several examples of texts that Brooks claimed should be freed from authorial, historical, and socio-political associations, to create a space in which the text is able to speak for itself.

From the Paper
"Cleanth Brooks' methodological approach to literary criticism seeks to locate the essential experiential voice of a text through an authentic interaction with the text as experience itself. Brooks was an instrumental figure in the founding of the formalist school of "New Criticism", which called for a freeing of the text from its historical and authorial intentions in order to focus upon the critical indications of the text itself. These indicated vectors of interpretation would be revealed by a close reading of the structural interplay of the textural elements, which could then be used to generate a normative evaluation of the work. Such strategies axiomatically located a meaning that transcended the formal indications of language to express 'concrete universal' truths of the human existential experience. The fact that these 'universals' are assumed on faith problemitizes such a methodology by essentially placing limits upon human comprehension even as it seeks to express that which is beyond it. Brooks, however, held that it was in this space of wonder that literature did its work by interacting with the 'real' world.
Brooks asserts that the study of literary texts must begin with a freeing of the text from its authorial, historical, and socio-political associations, to create a space in which the text is able to speak for itself. It is in this space that the critic performs a close reading of the text, from which the multitudes of associations emerge. The first of his interestingly termed "articles of faith" is "[t]hat literary criticism is a description and evaluation of its object". This assertion was intended to direct the focus of literary study away from the bibliographic and historical approach that dominated the discourse prior to the emergence of Formalism. The meaning and significance of the text was derived from its position in history and the assumed intentions of the author. Brooks was instrumental in the development of a new perspective that posited the text itself as the primary object of critical investigation. While a strict formalist approach would render the textural object wholly disassociated from anything but itself, Brooks' holds the belief that there is a value and meaning in literary objects that can be accessed through a thorough consideration of the structural unity created by the content of a text. From these assumptions, Brooks does not disregard extrinsic evidence, as amply demonstrated in his Historical Evidence and the Reading of Seventeenth-Century Poetry; rather, the text itself must dictate the necessity of such support."

Tags:structure, meaning, text

Abstract
In Gwendolyn Brooks' poem, "The Mother", the narrator expresses a reluctant regret and a desire for the children to which she did not give birth as a result of abortion. The paper analyzes the poem and its use of tone, diction, and imagery. It finds that the speaker is alternately regretful, self-recriminating, and motherly in her reactions to her unborn children. Taken together, Brooks' powerful shifts in tone, diction, and imagery all serve to highlight the narrator's longing, and tentative regrets over children that were never born.

From the Paper
"Taken together, the changing tone throughout "The Mother" helps to expresses the narrator's reluctant regret over abortion, and a desire for the children she did not give birth to. It is her very changes in tone and emotion throughout the poem that help to highlight her confusion and regret. She is by turns apologetic, regretful, reproachful and frustrated in her attempts to explain herself."

Tags:abortion, regret, children

Abstract
The paper provides an analysis of poet Gwendolyn Brooks' attitude toward prevailing social attitudes, moral beliefs and cultural positions of her time. The paper cites several of Brooks' poems as examples and explores their relation to the Civil Rights Movement.

From the Paper
"In his influential sociological study, "The Lonely Crowd" Riesman summarizes the content of American culture in the decade after World War II. He cites the inner-directed attitude toward generalized but nonetheless inescapably destined goals. (Riesman) More pervasive, he argues, is the attitude of the other-directed person who takes his life cues not from his inner spark but from others. The other-directed do not so much seek others' adulation as respect and more than the respect, the affection of an amorphous and shifting though contemporary jury of peers."

Tags:First, Fight., Then, Fiddle, Song, in, the, Front, Yard

Abstract
This six-page junior level paper focuses on the life and work of famous black American poet and author, Gwendolyn Brooks with special emphasis on her poem "The Chicago Defender sends a man to the Little rock". Brooks was an immensely talented African American writer and poet and she was deeply concerned about the plight and suffering of her community in the United States, therefore most of her work has focuses on that subject.

Abstract
This paper shows how Gwendolyn Brooks uses the daily experiences and struggles of her characters to comment on important issues, such as the societal views of women, race, and the poverty found in the inner city through her poetry. The paper looks at the poems, "The Hunchback Girl," "Sadie and Maud," and "The Mother," among others.

From the Paper
"Brooks describes a similar longing for unfulfilled dreams in her poem "kitchenette building". In the poem she describes the hardships of daily life in a black urban environment. It begins with "We are things of dry hours and the involuntary plan, / Grayed in, and gray. "Dream" makes a giddy sound, not strong / Like 'rent,' 'feeding a wife,' 'satisfying a man'" (Brooks 20). The terms "things" and "dry hours" portray the emptiness of their place in society, while "involuntary plan" describes the speaker's disappointment with life and the ache of responsibilities in place of forgotten dreams (Melhern 22)".

Tags:Mabbie, Chicago