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The forties and fifties were years of high poet-incense; the language-flowers were thickly sweet. Those flowers whined and begged white folks to pick them, to find them lovable. Then the ’60s: Independent fire!

Gwendolyn Brooks

I swear to keep the dead upon my mind, / Disdain for all time to be overglad.
GWENDOLYN BROOKS

Death Mindset Myself Remember Time
I felt that I had to write. Even if I had never been published, I knew that I would go on writing, enjoying it and experiencing the challenge.
GWENDOLYN BROOKS

Challenge Enjoyment Experience Feeling Publish Writing
No man can give me any word but Wait.
GWENDOLYN BROOKS

Man Patience Poet Wait Word Writing
There are no magics or elves or timely godmothers to guide us. We are lost, must wizard a track through our own screaming weed.
GWENDOLYN BROOKS

Guide Lost Magic Scream Time
Be yourself. Don’t imitate other poets. You are as important as they are.
GWENDOLYN BROOKS

Be Yourself Imitation Important Poet Yourself
When you use the term minority or minorities in reference to people, you’re telling them that they’re less than somebody else.
GWENDOLYN BROOKS

Minority People Reference Worth Yourself
I believe we should all know each other, we human carriers of so many pleasurable differences. To not know is to doubt, to shrink from, sidestep or destroy.
GWENDOLYN BROOKS

Believe Destroy Difference Doubt Each Other Happiness Human
Do not be afraid of no, Who has so far, so very far to go.
GWENDOLYN BROOKS

Afraid Journey Path Travel
I think it must be lonely to be God. Nobody loves a master. No.
GWENDOLYN BROOKS

Deep God Lonely Love Master Thinking
It is brave to be involved. To be not fearful to be unresolved.
GWENDOLYN BROOKS

Brave Character Fear
I am a writer perhaps because I am not a talker.
GWENDOLYN BROOKS

Myself Talk Writing
Exhaust the little moment. Soon it dies. And be it gash or gold it will not come again in this identical guise.
GWENDOLYN BROOKS

Death Gold Identity Moments
When I start writing a poem, I don’t think about models or about what anybody else in the world has done.
GWENDOLYN BROOKS

Poem Start Thinking World Writing
The music is in minors.
GWENDOLYN BROOKS

Minority Music One Liner
When you love a man, he becomes more than a body. His physical limbs expand, and his outline recedes, vanishes. He is rich and sweet and right. He is part of the world, the atmosphere, the blue sky and the blue water.
GWENDOLYN BROOKS

Blue Body Himself Love Man Rich Right Sweet Water World
I am interested in telling my particular truth as I have seen it.
GWENDOLYN BROOKS

Interest Myself See Truth
The forties and fifties were years of high poet-incense; the language-flowers were thickly sweet. Those flowers whined and begged white folks to pick them, to find them lovable. Then the ’60s: Independent fire!
GWENDOLYN BROOKS

Fire Flower Independent Language Poet Sweet
We real cool. We Left school. We Lurk late. We Strike straight. We Sing sin. We Thin gin. We Jazz June. We Die soon.
GWENDOLYN BROOKS

Cool Death Reality Sing
Each body has its art.
GWENDOLYN BROOKS

Art Body One Liner
Books are meat and medicine and flame and flight and flower steel, stitch, cloud and clout, and drumbeats on the air.
GWENDOLYN BROOKS

Air Book Flame Flower Medicine
When white and black meet today, sometimes there is a ready understanding that there has been an encounter between two human beings. But often there is only, or chiefly, an awareness that Two Colors are in the room.
GWENDOLYN BROOKS

Black Color Human Room Understand White
Art is a refining and evocative translation of the materials of the world.
GWENDOLYN BROOKS

Art Material Translation World
Art hurts. Art urges voyages – and it is easier to stay at home.
GWENDOLYN BROOKS

Art Easy Home Hurt Stay
Don’t let anyone call you a minority if you’re black or Hispanic or belong to some other ethnic group. You’re not less than anybody else.
GWENDOLYN BROOKS

Black Identity Minority Worth Yourself
I tell poets that when a line just floats into your head, don’t pay attention ’cause it probably has floated into somebody else’s head.
GWENDOLYN BROOKS

Attention Float Head Poet Yourself
She was learning to love moments. To love moments for themselves.
GWENDOLYN BROOKS

Deep Hereslf Learning Love Moments
There can be no whiter whiteness than this one: An insurance man’s shirt on its morning run.
GWENDOLYN BROOKS

Insurance Man Oneself White

The forties and fifties were years of high poet-incense; the language-flowers were thickly sweet. Those flowers whined and begged white folks to pick them, to find them lovable. Then the ’60s: Independent fire!

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The forties and fifties were years of high poet-incense; the language-flowers were thickly sweet. Those flowers whined and begged white folks to pick them, to find them lovable. Then the ’60s: Independent fire!

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Popular Authors

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