Brooks, Gwendolyn: The Essential Gwendolyn Brooks

The Essential Gwendolyn Brooks edited by Elizabeth Alexander (The Library of America, hardcover) Publication Date: May 1, 2013 Publisher Marketing: Discover the most enduring works of legendary poet Gwendolyn Brooks--the first black author to win a Pulitzer Prize--in one collectible volume    "If you wanted a poem," wrote Gwendolyn Brooks, "you only had to look out of a window. There was material always, walking or running, fighting or screaming or singing." From the life of Chicago's South Side she made a forceful and passionate poetry that fused Modernist aesthetics with African-American cultural tradition, a poetry that registered the life of the streets and the upheavals of the 20th century. Starting with A Street in Bronzeville (1945), her epoch-making debut volume, The Essential Gwendolyn Brooks traces the full arc of her career in all its ambitious scope and unexpected stylistic shifts. "Her formal range," writes editor Elizabeth Alexander, "is most impressive, as she experiment