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

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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
It is brave to be involved. To be not fearful to be unresolved.
GWENDOLYN BROOKS

Brave Character Fear
She was learning to love moments. To love moments for themselves.
GWENDOLYN BROOKS

Deep Hereslf Learning Love Moments
Beware the easy griefs / that fool and fuel nothing.
GWENDOLYN BROOKS

Easy Fools Fuel Grief
This is the urgency: Live! and have your blooming in the noise of the whirlwind.
GWENDOLYN BROOKS

Live Noise Urgent World Yourself
I am interested in telling my particular truth as I have seen it.
GWENDOLYN BROOKS

Interest Myself See Truth
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
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
The poetry is myself.
GWENDOLYN BROOKS

Myself Poetry
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
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
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
Even if you are not ready for day it cannot always be night.
GWENDOLYN BROOKS

Day Night Yourself
Good health is a duty to yourself, to your contemporaries, to your inheritors, to the progress of the world.
GWENDOLYN BROOKS

Goodness Health Inheritance Progress World
Be yourself. Don’t imitate other poets. You are as important as they are.
GWENDOLYN BROOKS

Be Yourself Imitation Important Poet Yourself
Writing is a delicious agony.
GWENDOLYN BROOKS

Delicious One Liner Pain Poet Writing
No man can give me any word but Wait.
GWENDOLYN BROOKS

Man Patience Poet Wait Word Writing
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
To be in love Is to touch things with a lighter hand. In yourself you stretch, you are well.
GWENDOLYN BROOKS

Hand Lights Love Touch Yourself
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 like the concentration, the crush; I like working with language, as others like working with clay, or notes.
GWENDOLYN BROOKS

Focus Language Myself Note Work
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
There can be no whiter whiteness than this one: An insurance man’s shirt on its morning run.
GWENDOLYN BROOKS

Insurance Man Oneself White
I know that the Black emphasis must be not against white but FOR Black.
GWENDOLYN BROOKS

Black White
Abortions will not let you forget. You remember the children you got that you did not get.
GWENDOLYN BROOKS

Children Death Forget Remember Yourself
Do not desire to fit in. Desire to oblige yourselves to lead.
GWENDOLYN BROOKS

Brave Desire Inspirational Leadership
We don’t ask a flower any special reason for its existence. We just look at it and are able to accept it as being something different from ourselves.
GWENDOLYN BROOKS

Acceptance Different Existence Flower Ourselves Reason

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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