(Mike Puican, Nora Brooks Blakely, Quraysh Ali Lansana, Rosellen Brown) 2017 marks the 100th anniversary of the birth of Gwendolyn Brooks, the first African American to win the Pulitzer Prize. Despite her accomplishments and immense influence on 20th-century writing, her place in the canon does not sufficiently reflect her work as a poet, member of the Black Arts movement, and agent for social change. Four people who knew her, including her daughter, Nora Brooks Blakely, will read her work and share thoughts of her enduring artistic, social, and personal impact.

Published Date: August 30, 2017

Transcription

Speaker 1 (00:00:04):

Welcome to the A W P podcast series. This event was recorded at the 2017 A W P conference in Washington dc. The recording features Mike Kin Koray Ali Lasana, Rosalyn Brown, and Nora Brooks Blakely. You will now hear Mike Pui again provide introductions.

Speaker 2 (00:00:34):

Welcome to the Gwendolyn Brooks 100th anniversary tribute. My name's Mike Kin. I'm a poet. I'm also on the board of the Guild Literary Complex. I'm going to talk a little bit about Gwendolyn Brooks' relationship with the Guild Literary Complex. If anybody would like more information, I'll have some flyers up here. After the panel, five years ago, the Guild literary Complex came up with the idea to put on an all day tribute to Gwendolyn Brooks. That idea took hold and a small group of people among them people on this panel worked for almost a year to make that idea a reality. We amassed a group of 65 writers, singers, dancers, drummers, media celebrities, people who knew Gwendolyn Brooks, people who were touched by his work. By her work. These people over an entire day took turns reading her work on June 7th, 2012, which happens to be her birthday.

Speaker 2 (00:01:45):

We called it Brook's Day. Over a thousand people attended and it was an amazing outpouring of love for her and her work. We've put on these Brooks Day celebrations every year since then with a very special one planned for this, her 100th year where there will be a hundred individual presentations paying tribute to her. Gwendolyn Brooks died 17 years ago, but her presence as a poet, as someone who gave generously of her time, her money, her encouragement is still felt not only in this country and throughout the world, but especially throughout Chicago. It's not unusual for our Brooks Day committee to meet in coffee shops on the south side of Chicago where someone will overhear our conversation and come up and tell us a story about the time they met Gwendolyn Brooks at a reading at their school, a time when they received some encouragement from her or were touched in some way by one of her poems. I'd like to ask everyone to imagine what you would do if you won the Pulitzer Prize. Perhaps in some way you'd find a way to give back to others. Gwendolyn Brooks, after she won the Pulitzer Prize, gave back in some astounding ways. She was the Illinois poet laureate from 1998 to the year 2000, and during those years, one of the things she did was she invited children from Chicago school children from grades one through 12 to send her poems. She'd read the poems, pick about 30 of them, and put them in a book

Speaker 2 (00:03:32):

And she'd make sure that there was at least one from every grade. Then she would rent out a hall at the University of Chicago and invite each of these children to come and read their poem to an audience that included their parents, teachers, fellow students. These children had never had this kind of attention to their work before. Some of them, this was the first poem they'd ever written. Each winner would come up onto the stage, they'd read the poem. They'd say a little bit about why they liked to write poetry because she asked them to do that, and then they would receive the book with her poem in and an envelope with some cash. This was entirely funded by Gwendolyn Brooks. She did this every year for 30 years. Here's another example from among many Gwendolyn Brooks approached the Guild literary Complex to start an open mic poetry contest back in 1992. She wanted to encourage people to write poetry and to read it out loud. Well, and the Guild Complex continues to put this on. 24 years later, we still put on the Gwendolyn Brooks Open Mic Awards with the same cash prize of $500.

Speaker 2 (00:04:45):

These contests are pretty structured now, but in the early days, they were long unwieldy affairs. They were, there'd be a steady stream of open mic poets reading their work, and it would last three, three and a half, four hours. Gwendolyn Brooks would sit in the audience and she'd listened to every single poem, and then when a winner was selected by the audience, she would walk up onto the stage, pull a checkbook out of her purse and write the winner a check for $500. I have a personal experience I'd like to share personal experience with Gwendolyn Brooks. 20 years ago as a very beginning poet, I entered the Gwendolyn Brooks Hope in Michael Warz. About an hour into the evening, it was my turn. I went up onto the stage, read my poem, sat back down, and as I was listening to the next poet, someone tapped me on the shoulder, handed me a note and said, this is from Gwendolyn. I did not win the $500 prize that night, but that note from Gwendolyn Brooks contained encouragement that has lasted much longer than $500 ever would have. I still have it. It's framed. It's above my desk where I write and when I look at it to this day, I still feel her encouragement. The note said, you are unique and splendid. Gwendolyn.

Speaker 2 (00:06:20):

Today you're going to hear from three people with their own experiences and perspectives about Gwendolyn Brooks. Let me introduce them first. There's Ali Sana teaches at the School of the Art Institute. He has authored and edited 18 books of poetry essays in children's literature. Most recently, the Bestselling Breakbeat Poets New American Poetry in the Age of Hip Hop, and a book that was just released and it's a beautiful book, the Psalm work, celebrating the writing of Gwendolyn Brooks. Then we'll hear from Rose Ellen. Brown. Roselin has published 10 books, novels, short stories, poetry and essays, including Civil Wars before and after, and Ries Pillow book. She has received an award in literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, a Janet Kafka Award and a Guggenheim Fellowship. She teaches at the M F A program at the School of the Art Institute in Chicago. And then finally there is Nora Brooks Blakely. Nora is a playwright, author, teacher, and director. She was founder and executive director of the much loved Chocolate Chips theater company. She's founder and president of Brooks' Permission and she's also the daughter of Gwendolyn Brooks. We will start with presentations, then open it up for questions from the audience. Koha,

Speaker 3 (00:07:57):

Good afternoon everyone. Thank you all for being here to celebrate Ms. Brooks to honor someone who I believe was one of the most important writers of the 20th century and someone whom I had the pleasure and privilege of being mentored by for the last decade that she was with us. I want to start by showing you a bit of this letter. If you can see it, we can try and make it a little larger, but I would encourage you to move a little closer. This is the actual jury report from the Poetry Committee of the Pulitzer Prize in 1950. Now, I think it's important for us to remember that Ms. Brooks was the first black person to win the Pulitzer, not poet, first black human in 1950, and that there were 37 years between Ms. Brooks and Ms. Rita. Do just think about what was happening in the country in those 37 years, right? Many, many things, but I want to just briefly go through this letter. You can access this letter on the Pulitzer Prize website, but this letter I think speaks in many ways to our current state of politic and race and class and literature as well.

Speaker 3 (00:09:25):

I should mention before we sort of go through this letter that when Ms. Briggs received the call that she'd been awarded the Pulitzer Prize, she had a five-year-old, your brother, and the electricity was off in the house. It's real. It's real. Being an artist, it's real life. The next day when the media came to interview her about receiving the Pulitzer, somehow the community had found the switch to flip and the electricity was on the south side of Chicago in her home to celebrate Ms. Brooks. And I think about the metaphor of both of those things that today we are struggling to get our voices out, to be heard, to make change, and that we are also the same folks who have to be responsible for finding the switch to flip, to turn on the lights for one another. Right? So this letter from 1950 written from the poetry committee, Henry Seidel Canby, Alfred Crem Borg, Louis Meyer to Dr.

Speaker 3 (00:10:39):

Dean Carl Ackerman from Columbia from the Pulitzer Prizes. Want you to look at the first paragraph. Can you scroll down a bit? The second right there. Right there. That's fine right there. So just look at that paragraph. The finest book of poetry this year is very naturally the complete poems of Robert Frost, which summarizes his whole career. For various good reasons, the committee feels it'll be most unwise to give the award to this book unless no other worthy candidate was in sight. And then skipping down to that next paragraph, if the judges were to award the prize, the prize literally to the best book of the year, the prize would've to be given to the complete poems of Robert Frost. As the title indicates, this is the cumulative work of the greatest living American poet, possibly the greatest poet living today, and it is an important, but Frost has received the award four times, and with the exception of a few added titles for the same poems.

Speaker 3 (00:11:38):

Okay, just, yeah, okay, just deal with that for a second. So they were considering giving him a fifth Pulitzer for the book that contains the four books for which he'd already received four Pulitzers, right? This is real. This is not make believe. Alright, so then just scroll down Mike to the next paragraph. Okay, stop. I think that's okay. There is another important contribution to poetry this year, which also deserves a special statement. Mr. William Carlos Williams has been steadily growing in stature and published in 1949, a book of selected poems and the first resection of his long poem called Patterson. A number of Mr. Williams's briefer poems have already taken their place in anthologies, but he lacks self-criticism and his total output so far is frequently distinguished by an extreme of obscurity. Okay, this is real, y'all.

Speaker 3 (00:12:35):

Okay? This is real. This is especially true of his long poems. There is every reason to believe that his new selected poems to be published in 1950 will be much more representative of what he can do and less full of failures. Right? Okay, then scroll down. Just skip if you would, Mike. Fortunately. That's fine. Fortunately, among the other books of poems submitted for an award is a volume of great originality, real distinction, and high value as a book as well as poetry. Some years ago, Gwendolyn Brooks, a negro writer of unusual ability, published a street in Bronzeville, which made a great impression on all its readers and had what is unusual for poetry today, a wide sale. In 1949, she published Annie Allen a much better book, and indeed in our opinion, the outstanding volume of the year. If you exclude Robert Frost, no other negro poet has written such poetry of her own race, of her own experiences, subjective and objective, and with no grievance or racial criticism as the purpose of her poetry. It is highly skillful and strong poetry come out of the heart, but rich with racial experience. And then this quote from Creme Borg, keep scrolling, Mike, please.

Speaker 3 (00:14:05):

That's great. A few years ago, Gwendolyn Brooks, the young Chicago poet, made her debut in book form with a street in Bronzeville, a small spoon river anthology of the Negro. This was followed last year by Annie Allen and even finer volume, which introduces further characters out of her Southside background with Annie herself as the central figure with her pair of gradations from childhood through girlhood to womanhood. These notes, as the author modestly calls her very lyrics and ballots are finally developed in a single short narrative. The en whose title Deafly parodies the Enon and whose intellectual sweep over common experience is not only brilliant, but profound in its tragic and tragic comic implications. The book as a whole gives evidence that poet firmly resisted temptations of special pleading the bane of most social verse in our time. Her work is truly objective, never propagandistic and above all original. That's an actual document. That's an internal letter from the poetry committee sent to the Pulitzer. Folks, this is the document that awarded Ms. Brooks the Pulitzer in 1950.

Speaker 3 (00:15:21):

It's remarkable, right? Remarkable thing. I'm going to close with a short essay, and again, you can access this. My good friend, major Jackson's writing a great essay on the letter that will be in the June issue of poetry, excuse me, poet writers. The essay that I'm about to read will be printed in the second anthology about Ms. Brooks that I've co-edited. This one is called The Whiskey of our Discontent, Gwendolyn Brooks as Conscious and Change Agent. It'll be out this summer by Haymarket books, and I have cards for that if you'd like. And then this book revised the Psalm works celebrating the writing of Gwendolyn Brooks that I co-edited with Sandra Jackson. Poku is out now from curbside splendor. Feel free to pick it up. It's an outstanding book. Alright, let's see if I can squeeze this. In. One late spring afternoon in 1999, Ms. Brooks called me at 79 23 South Evans Avenue, clearly distraught.

Speaker 3 (00:16:23):

She told me she needed to discuss something that had just happened and sought my opinion on the matter. I heard an anger and disbelief in her voice I had not known previously, but would unfortunately experience again. Ms. Brooks was not only as one of her publishers and first cultural son, Dr. Haki Madi put it the last of the great letter writers. She also kept everything she touched or considered touching newspaper clippings, recipes, as well as correspondence books and hundreds of photographs. Her lesson plans and writing exercises were harbored on individual pages of notebook papers stacked one foot high, held together by a web of rubber bands. The aforementioned newspaper clippings possessed her handwritten commentary on every single article. Even her dictionary now at Emory University contains marginalia in her hand. In an effort to help Ms. Brooks move to a Hyde Park apartment, Baba Haki hired a group of men and sent them over to the house at 74th and Evans, the new owner, settled into the single family home while Ms.

Speaker 3 (00:17:30):

Brooks reveled in her new Lake Michigan view, though unclear if it was the movers or the new owner who discovered the boxes in the basement. What is clear is that someone found a gold mine and made some money. The boxes were delivered to an undisclosed rare books dealer for appraisal and sale. This book dealer didn't engage in the business of asking questions. A value was placed on the items, and shortly thereafter, a portion of Ms. Brooks' life was put on the market without her knowledge or consent, I just received a call from a book dealer representing the Bancroft Library at Berkeley. He offered me $10,000 for my own things, things I never intended for them or anyone to have. Not yet.

Speaker 3 (00:18:19):

The Bancroft Library is the primary special collections library of the University of California Berkeley. Most writers and artists I know myself included, would welcome invitation to be archived at the Bancroft ko. They will buy the boxes regardless of whether or not I take the money. I think, damn, I don't say damn, but I think it hard. Ms. Brooks found out about this purchase accidentally a friend identity withheld employed at uc, Berkeley called Ms. Brooks to share her excitement about the archival items soon to be on their way west. Ms. Brooks expressed she had no knowledge of this transaction. The friend then contacted the archivist at Berkeley at the Bancroft, who in turn informed the book dealer. The purchase would not occur unless Ms. Brooks was happy. The dealer contacted Ms. Brooks and offered her a portion of the proceeds for the deal to be finalized.

Speaker 3 (00:19:14):

But Ms. Brooks, to her last breath, was never happy about this transaction. The Bancroft discovered the materials available for acquisition via routine, legitimate channels. They did nothing wrong or illegal. To be clear, if I take the money, I'm offering consent and legitimizing the purchase. If I don't take the money, they still acquire my things through legitimate means. She sounded almost in tears. What do you think I should do? Her voice was dark, heavy with anguish. Ma'am, if the library is going to buy your items either way and there's no way to get them back, you should take the money. The words hurt like chewing glass, you think. So? This is an awful situation and I wish we could find the men who did this to you, but if the Bancroft is making the purchase regardless, you should probably take the money. I'm inclined to agree, she said.

Speaker 3 (00:20:10):

But I'm going to speak with Haki and Nora again. Thank you, Ko. You're welcome, man. I'm so sorry. When that conversation occurred, Ms. Brooks was only peripherally aware of the volume and scope of the items in those boxes. She was told they contained personal photographs, correspondence, and copies of poems. But in truth, according to a January 11th, 2001 uc, Berkeley press release, they contained much more quotes retrieved from a former Brooks home on the south side of Chicago, the collection now uc, Berkeley contains manuscripts of her poems and speeches. Family photos awards, weekly journals, clippings that reflect source material for poems. 50 years of correspondence with her publishers and letters library officials said they yet to be cataloged. 22 boxes of materials constitute a representative sample of her papers from the 1930s to 1980. The letters mentioned above, again from the press release include letters between Brooks and poet, art critic Ted Barrigan, author Anthologist Arnold Bomb Top, who helped lead the Harner Renaissance and Robert Creeley of the Black Mountain Poets Group, as well as the late writer and Black Panther activist Eldridge Cleaver. The press release later quotes Daphne Muse, then the advisor to the Bancroft Libraries and African-American Writers Collection, as well as longtime friend of Ms. Brooks as stating she Brooks was most graceful, grateful. We had these documents. She said, you have my blessings to buy it.

Speaker 3 (00:21:43):

Bancroft Holdings were available for public consumption in 2001 shortly after Ms. Brooks' death.

Speaker 4 (00:22:04):

Well, that is some fascinating history. I'm afraid that mine is kind of non-story or antis history. This was, we were advertised as people all of whom knew Ms. Brooks. But I have a slightly different story to tell a very brief one. I'm been fortunate enough to be someone who hasn't had a lot of regrets in her life, but here is one of them. My husband and I came to Chicago in 1995 just for a year. We were subletting an apartment, and I was not very connected with the literary community. It was only near the end of that year that somebody said to me, did you know that Ms. Brooks lives in the other half of this building, Gwendolyn Brooks? I said, really? Of course, I knew her work. I knew nothing about her personally, and I thought in spite of all the books that Mike was nice enough to name of mine and so on.

Speaker 4 (00:22:55):

In spite of the fact that I had been in Mississippi during civil rights times and so on, I thought, she's not going to want to know me. I did not knock on her door. I did not ring her bell. I was kind of like, why would she want to pay any attention to me? And I never met her. This is one of my really great, great regrets because I didn't know. Nobody told me that she was such a marvelously, open, welcoming, wonderful woman who would've talked to any stranger. She certainly would've talked to me. So there it is,

Speaker 4 (00:23:27):

Non-story. So last week I read an essay in hor courageous book about the impression that Gwendolyn Brooks', great novel Maude Martha had made on a young Latino man. In his essay, the writer Manuel Munoz quoted James Baldwin writing from what he calls the margin about what it meant to be an American writer. To be an American writer, Baldwin says, I wanted to find out in what way the specialness of my experience could be made to connect me with other people instead of dividing me from them. Now, those of you who have read it know, and those of you who haven't read it, you really must know that Maude, Martha, which is the book that Munoz was writing about, is extremely specific. For example, Maude is a dark girl whose sister is lighter, fairer in the eyes of the world. She grows up with kitchenettes rent parties, works briefly as a domestic in the house of a ghastly white suburban woman and so on.

Speaker 4 (00:24:36):

Not my experiences, not those of that young Latino student, Manuel Munoz. But the book is truly about the way in which our lives all lives without the current political implication of that phrase, how our lives can be savored in all their modesty with praise for the fragmentary pleasures that comprise them. I've taught the book a dozen times because I want all my students to experience and appreciate it, and I have never had a single student who could resist its gentle and sometimes furious voice, but to the poems. And what I really want to do today is just read you poems and not say too much about them. I don't intend to do a close analysis, but I want to read a few and savor them and point out just a few things to listen for. And it's interesting when I think about it. When I was in school, when we thought about universality and writing, we were all told to look at Flannery O'Connor.

Speaker 4 (00:25:37):

She was Catholic. She wrote a great deal about that. And we were always instructed, you don't have to be Catholic. Do you remember the ad? And well, maybe some of you hadn't seen it in the New York subways that used to have levy's rye bread and it said, you don't have to be Jewish to like levy's. Same thing. So it used to be Flannery O'Connor, and I am making the case for Gwendolyn Brooks first hour. Ms. Brooks is so good at longing. At yearning. There are voices, again, very specific. They emerge from her characters experience, black experience, not so often written about in her time, but without discounting it, race is not their only subject. I want to read you a couple of poems about longing. One of them I'm not going to read because I won't have time, but you all probably know from a street in Bronzeville kitchenette, kitchenette building, which is about wanting to take a warm bath if only those neighbors would get out of the bathroom.

Speaker 4 (00:26:37):

That's right. I will read you a marvelous poem called A song in the Front Yard. And if there is a woman in this room who cannot identify with this, I don't know where her head is. I've stayed in the front yard all my life. I want to peek at the back where it's rough and untended and hungry. Weed grows. A girl gets sick of a rose. I want to go in the backyard now and maybe down the alley to where the charity children play. I want a good time today. They do some wonderful things. They have some wonderful fun, my mother sneers, but I say it's fine how they don't have to go in at quarter to nine. My mother, she tells me that Johnny Maye will grow up to be a bad woman. That George will be taken to jail soon or late on account of last winter.

Speaker 4 (00:27:35):

He sold our back gate. But I say it's fine, honest, I do. And I'd like to be a bad woman too, and wear the brave stockings of night black lace and strutt down the streets with paint on my face. And I remember once hearing Rita dove, I may have been at a W p, I don't remember where it was. She actually talked about the front of her house going out the front door, represented propriety going out the back door into the backyard, represented freedom, right? It's exactly the same. Exactly the same. Another one, longing again. Yearning. This is hunch. Hunchback girl thinks of heaven, my father, it is surely a blue place and straight, right, regular where I shall find no need for scholarly nonchalance or looks a little to the left or guards upon the heart to halt love that runs without crookedness along as crooked corridors.

Speaker 4 (00:28:43):

My father, it is a planned place, surely out of coils, unscrewed released no more. To be marvelous. I shall walk straightly through most proper halls, proper myself, princess of properness. She explains. And for some of us, what she explains may come as a revelation for others as a confirmation she uses with characteristic Witt, the apparent naivete of the nursery. Rhyme rhythms ironically set against very sophisticated subjects. And I'm going to read you Sadie and Maude. I'm sure that some of you know these poems, but it's it's wonderful to hear them again. I think a minute I got it marked off, but I think my little thing fell off, whereas Sadie and log on page eight.

Speaker 5 (00:29:42):

Yeah,

Speaker 4 (00:29:44):

Maude went to college. Sadie stayed at home. Sadie scraped life with a fine tooth comb. She didn't leave a tangle in her comb, found every strand. Sadie was one of the living ast chits in all the land. Sadie bore two babies under her maiden name, Maude and Ma and Papa nearly died of shame when Sadie said her last so long, her girl struck out from home. Sadie had left as heritage, her fine tooth comb. Maude who went to college is a thin brown mouse. She is living all alone in this old house.

Speaker 4 (00:30:32):

Sounds like a nursery rhyme, surely is not. She plays complexity against straightforwardness, intricate sentence structure to contain honest and difficult emotion over again using the sound of patient explanation to probe. Sometimes intimate pain or pride, specificity of experience becomes shared and universal. And I want to read you one of my very, very favorite poems called The Mother. I was at Catholic University last night reading with a wonderful kick-ass bunch of women reading poetry. And I was going to read this poem called The Mother, which is about abortion. And I decided that for the sake of my hosts, I would spare them that. And I changed. I read them the poem about wanting to go out the back. Listen to the way Ms. Brooks addresses to us, her address to us, her readers becomes in the middle of the poem, a conversation with and then a confession to the aborted children that she's writing about. This is a difficult poem. It is incredibly complex, I think, and I think it is really magnificent. This is called The Mother. How am I doing on time? Okay?

Speaker 4 (00:31:59):

Abortions will not let you forget. You remember the children you got that you did not get the damp small pulps with a little or with no hair. The singers and workers that never handled the air, you'll never neglect or beat them or silence or buy a sweet. You'll never wind up the sucking thumb or scuttle off ghosts that come. You'll never leave them controlling your luscious sigh. Return for a snack of them with gobbling mother. I have heard in the voices of the wind, the voices of my dimm killed children. I have contracted, I have eased my dimm dears at the breasts. They could never suck. I have said sweets. If I sinned, if I seized your luck and your lives from your unfinished reach, if I stole your births and your names, your straight baby tears and your games, your stilted or lovely loves your tumults, your marriages aches, and your deaths.

Speaker 4 (00:33:21):

If I poisoned the beginnings of your breaths, believe that even in my deliberateness, I was not deliberate though. Why should I whine, whine that the crime was other than mine since anyhow, you are dead. Or rather, or instead, you were never made. But that too, I am afraid is faulty. Oh, what shall I say? How is the truth to be said? You were born, you had body, you died. It is just that you never giggled or planned or cried. Believe me, I loved you all, believe me. I knew you though faintly and I loved. I loved you all finally. And I don't really think I have time to read it because it's really long the lovers of the poor, but I have to mention it. And those of you who have a book of Gwendolyn Brooks really must read this. This is an extraordinary poem, but it is very long and complex that describes quotes, indicts, singes, its subjects with unbridled contempt.

Speaker 4 (00:34:42):

It is possibly her angriest poem. It is about those who love the poor and come to sucker them and raise a little money, but don't want to get too close to all that dirt and smell and s worthiness. She says, please pick us some people to visit who aren't too swarthy. It is possibly her angriest poem. It is also possibly her most effective, I think. Yet even this one speaks about an attitude, complacency, self-satisfaction that is born of distance that is both extremely specific and yet as we look around the world is also a portrait of familiar and dangerous absence of understanding and empathy. I have to just add one more thing. I read yesterday about the man who was taking Jeff Session's place as the Senator now that he's a different job and he is a guy named Lucas Strange, which is a wonderful name who belongs to some, what do they call it? White shoe law firm or white gloves, law firm or something like that, who plays golf, who lives in the suburbs. And I thought, there it is. I don't even know if he loves the poor. But it was so appalling that as one man gets kicked upstairs to a job that he does not deserve, this man who might at best be a lover of the poor is the one to take his place, right?

Speaker 4 (00:36:15):

Yeah. Thank you. Real,

Speaker 6 (00:36:30):

I couldn't figure out how to ease into this subtly, so I'm just going with the massive shameless plug first.

Speaker 4 (00:36:44):

Well, she's your mother.

Speaker 6 (00:36:47):

So first of all, yes, REIA mentioned revising the psalm, which is wonderful Whiskey of our discontent, which is coming out. And also Angela Jackson's biography will be coming out in late May, early June. And there's another book that's coming out that I'll mention later. And then of course there's, oops, there's this one. Okay, so this is Seasons a Gwendolyn Brooks experience. Brooks, our company. I'm President Cynthia Wall, sitting out of the audience as the vice president, and we've been telling people that we have been trying to birth this child since 2008, off and on. So there has been a delivery and we are very excited. We took the four Seasons of the year and looked at the themes, connected to each of those seasons, and went through my mother's work poetry and prose and selected the pieces that we thought were most effective in addressing those themes.

Speaker 6 (00:38:05):

We also have memories from different people, a few family pictures, and the incredible artwork from Jan Spi Gilchrist, who is an award-winning illustrator having done approximately illustrated approximately 80 books. So most of the things that I will refer to in what I wanted to say are in, yes, this book. Okay, it is available. Gwendolyn brooks.net is our website for Brooks permissions. So that's gwendolyn brooks.net. Did I mention gwendolyn brooks.net and should in a couple of weeks be available on Amazon as well. But you should really check out gwendolyn brooks.net because you can see some more information about my mother, et cetera. So the other thing that I have noticed is over the past few weeks and leading into this wonderful centennial is that there's a legend beginning to build. And so I thought that I would first address what I'm referring to as a glossary of Gwen.

Speaker 6 (00:39:22):

And because there are some things that need to be a little clarified, some words in terms that are being attached to her that may or may not be correct. So first of all, so it's separating the legend from her own self interpretation. So first of all is the word is the word feminist. I don't think mama would ever have had any problem being called a feminist. I think that if somebody had said that to her, she would've agreed that she had the appropriate traits, actions, and qualities. But I don't ever remember in Croatian, I were talking about this. I don't ever remember her actually using the word in connection with herself. So to quote from something that she said about We real cool, when they banned her book for the phrase jazz, June, because they thought it was a sexual reference, and she said that that was not her intent, but if that interpretation helped anybody, that they were fine, they could go ahead and use it.

Speaker 6 (00:40:34):

Civil rights icon, she has been defined as, I think that mama would just look at you in puzzlement if, because she would not have defined herself in such a way, her civil rights icons, people who were trying to get rights for other people, freedom for other people were people like Malcolm X, Martin Luther, Martin Luther King Jr. Paul Robeson, Harriet Tubman, Jane Adams, Angela Davis. Those were the people that she would've looked at in that light. I think that there's a lot that we can look at and say, oh, okay, I can see why you would now consider her to be a civil rights icon. But I think that certainly in Paul Robeson, those last lines that she uses, that we are each other's harvest. We are each other's business, we are each other's magnitude. And bond certainly speaks as a message to the world. But I think that your poetry can be your polemics or your poetry can paint.

Speaker 6 (00:41:52):

That's not to say that either one is better or worse than the other. They're both important. I think that mama did both. I think that sermon on the warp land and black love are certainly examples of what might fall into the more the polemics category. But I think that fundamentally, although she definitely had messages, I think that fundamentally a significant amount of her work was painting, was creating the pictures, the images of people in lovers of the poor. She's not saying anything that directly says these are horrible people, or that these are people who shouldn't be like this or who should think differently or whatever. She paints a picture of the people that came to these buildings. She paints a picture of the people who lived in the buildings, and then it is up to you to be able to take those paintings and to look at them and make your decisions about just what position you might take from there, what you think she might take from there. So pieces like that, major Jackson Red, Beverly Hills, Chicago yesterday. And again, it's two people in a car who are driving through a very well off neighborhood in the Chicago area.

Speaker 6 (00:43:30):

And so there's nothing about, oh, we are so poor. It is just so bad. Oh, it's really rough. So it's an understanding of the comparison between what they're seeing, what they imagine these people's lives to be like and what they see in their own. So as far as the civil rights icon, did she present images that encourage other people hopefully to think and to move forward and to take their own steps to address rights and wrongs? Definitely. Was she outside marching with a pick of sign? No, not so much. Okay. So also I think that an example of that is one piece that you can identify either as polemic or painted picture, but it speaks to Brooks' missions, our vision of our mission statement, which is demonstrating the continued relevance of Gwendolyn Brooks in the 21st century and go with it how you feel. Thank you.

Speaker 6 (00:44:56):

So Cynthia was very committed to making sure that that was part of it. And I think, yes, why stop at the 21st? Let's keep going. 22nd century and so forth. So this piece is called Patrick Bowie of Cabrini Green. And it's one of the pieces that I really point to when I say something about this continued relevance. What is devout is never to forget, never to shell. The value and the beauty, Patrick, vivid, valid, lyrical, we cannot reach, we cannot touch the radiant richness that was Patrick cannot be reached again, cannot be hugged, cannot be visited. What is devout is never to forget that he was with us for a little while. Our splendor, our creative spirit, our sparkling contribution, our flash of influence interrupted our interrupted man. And I think if that doesn't speak to a lot of what's been happening, especially over the past few years, although we know it's been happening for decades, centuries, but I think that speaks to a lot of what we're looking at with Trayvon Laquan and so many other people. So wrapping up the glossary of Gwen humble and genius. Well, only a daughter can do that. The rest of us would get struck down by lightning.

Speaker 6 (00:46:56):

But the thing is that she wasn't humble, and it doesn't mean that she was arrogant or anything like that. It was that she had a sense of place. I looked up humble, and one of the synonyms is dnt, and it said, a lacking confidence in one's own ability worth or fitness, timid, shy, restrained or reserved in manner conduct, et cetera. And I was like, not so much. So I looked at confident and it said, sure of oneself having no uncertainty about one's owns abilities, correctness, and successfulness. And I went, yeah, that's that one. So she understood a sense of place, a sense of perspective. And so she was not someone who over assessed herself, but let's be clear, if you under her or if you under assessed her or had something, or if she felt a wrong needed to be righted, then she would be very clear.

Speaker 6 (00:48:22):

And so in the one example is John H. Johnson of a Johnson publishing company, Ebony Magazine, jet, et cetera, et cetera, when they first built their beautiful building downtown, and there was a wonderful presentation for it, and she was there to read a poem and to talk about the wonderfulness of it. And so for several people, including the mayor, had been referring to him as Johnny. And so when my mother got up, she said, well, the mayor called you Johnny. Somebody else called you Johnny. So Johnny, this is a really exciting time, just honoring. And the last thing about the glossary of Gwen is African-American. Okay?

Speaker 6 (00:49:29):

Homie didn't play that. She did not refer to herself as African-American. She did not that that was the correct term. And she always referred to herself as black. And with capitalizing the B as she mentions in black love about blacks from everywhere, from all over the different, all over the world. And so it is not so that African-American is very specific. And so when she said black, she was being inclusive. And so I thought, and I've mentioned this to some people, that it would be nice if people who are honoring her in the centennial might first honor her by identifying her the way she wanted to be identified. And if anybody is still confused about that, she wrote a poem called Kojo. I am a black, according to my teachers, I am now an African-American. They call me out of my name. Black is an open umbrella.

Speaker 6 (00:50:47):

I am black and a black forever. I am one of the blacks. We are here, we are there. We occur in Brazil, in Nigeria, Ghana, in Botswana, Tanzania, in Kenya, in Russia, Australia, in Haiti, Soweto in Grenada, in Cuba, in Panama, Libya, in England and Italy, France. We are graces in any places. So that's not Sorry about that. I am black and a black forever. I am other than hyphenation, I say proudly my people. I say proudly. Our people. Our people do not disdain to eat yams or melons or grits or to put peanut butter in stew. And she would always pause here and say that. That was really good. I am kojo in West Africa. Kojo means unconquerable. My parents named me the seventh day from my birth in black spirit, black faith, black communion. I am Kojo. I am a black and I capitalize my name. Do not call me out of my name. So I think we're all clear now.

Speaker 6 (00:52:19):

Okay, there was one thing. It's about four minutes I got. That's fine. Okay. Sometime ago while mama was still with us, I wrote this description of Mama called Three-Way Mirror. And so in the commitment to trying to make this year what I've been referring to as 360 degrees of Gwendolyn Brooks, so that you have more of a sense of her than strictly the poem on the page. Not that those are not wonderful, not that that is not important, but an opportunity to get a little bit more of a sense. And so it says, what's it like having Gwendolyn Brooks for a mother is the often asked question, I don't know. I never had another mother to compare her to, is the semi flip reply. And yet, even without an opportunity for comparison shopping, there are differences. Most people get to see their mothers as well as mothers.

Speaker 6 (00:53:18):

They may be peripherally aware of a career she has out there, but it doesn't really connect with their corner of reality. I got to see Mama in many different guises, mama as Mad Woman. Many people saw Gwendolyn Brooks as a shy, retiring, quiet sort of person. As her daughter, I knew the truth and will now expose it. Ms. Brooks watched soap operas. Yes, she did, and usually didn't answer her phone while they were on. One time I called and she said, all my children hung on as I was growing up. My mother would dance to the house hands high over her head to the sounds of Errol Garner on television. She loved to play the piano and would beat out Duke Ellington songs like Mood Indigo or Solitude. While I draped myself over the piano vamp style and sang, this quiet person was the one who gossiped and giggled with me on the phone often for two or three hours at a time talking about everything from the cataclysmic to the comic.

Speaker 6 (00:54:30):

The phone was not her only avenue of communication. However, my mother was a clip aholic. She would cut clippings out of newspapers by the truckload. When I was a child, I used to find these clippings attached to my bedroom mirror after I moved away from home. She would collect bundles of them that would lie and wait on the living room radiator. Until I came over in later years, she started mailing me clippings from out of town newspapers. While she was on the road, I finally had to face facts. If I took up residence on the moon, the next shuttle would contain clippings from my mother.

Speaker 6 (00:55:09):

Mama as midwife. Gwendolyn Brooks had always been interested in assisting in the birth and development of new writers in the sixties. She was a focal point for most of the young black writers in Chicago and across the country. Our house became a regular meeting place and think Tank. She thrived on the informal sessions she had on myriad college campuses, talking not only about literature, but also the world. Her mail was filled with the letters of people she touched. She was a firm believer in the phrase, give till it hurts. For years, she went around the country giving grants to individual students, offering awards, and even creating contests at schools. My father and I started calling her Our Lady of the Open Mouth because of the numerous times she got excited about an idea or a person and volunteered her funds. Most important of all, however, was her effect on children through the schools she visited and the Illinois Poet Lord Awards, which she created every year, hundreds of poems poured in from elementary and high school students all over the state. Over 30 years, she alone judged the poems and paid for the awards out of her own pocket. Annually, the winners got awards of a hundred dollars each, but she got an award too. The up faced excitement of parents and children alike last rama as mapper

Speaker 6 (00:56:45):

More than anything else. Though my mother was a mapper, she delineated and defined the scenery of her. Now her words are a mirror reflection of the roundness. Her poetic people are still friends and acquaintances that command instant recognition. You say, I know Big Bertha Pepita and Marissa, you say, I feel for the near Johannesburg boy, you say, I've been that crazy woman. You say Lincoln West was a friend of mine. Gwendolyn Brooks introduced and shared experiences when she said, the only sanity is a cup of teeth. You recognized a truth. Little girl songs, the grade in and grayness of the day-to-day animals, grazing computers. The fact that we are each other's business and the need to conduct our blooming and the noise and whip of the whirlwind. These are all entrances to the lives of people you might otherwise never know. Gwendolyn, whether as manic parent, literary midwife, or life mapper, open places and people, new doorways and mine pass. And after all, isn't that what a mother is supposed to do?

Speaker 5 (00:58:22):

So we've got a few minutes. Any questions from the audience? Yes. I grew up in Evanston, but you probably know, and I would say I remember District 55. I was one of those students that submitted a poem. Oh, great. Other questions? Yes. Can we buy that book in the big room? It's

Speaker 6 (00:59:00):

Not in the bookstore here, but you can order it on Gwendolyn Books dot Debt.

Speaker 5 (00:59:13):

Is your book there?

Speaker 3 (00:59:14):

Yeah. Revise. The psalm is at the curbside. This book is at the curbside splendor booth, which I think is two 50, something like that. But this is at the curbside splendor booth

Speaker 5 (00:59:25):

Currently. Sir, I had the pleasure and the honor of meeting your mother and taught by your mother university 1970 when she was an honorary professor in college. And I can attest to getting the notes that would say, you're amazing. She brought a new writer, new poet to the campus to speak to us. His name did was Don l Lee. So it was just an amazing experience and I've been a better poet because I had her teaching for that semester. She went. So to take some of my, send them to publishing. Okay, that's great. Thank you. Yes, Centennial. I was to hear emotion about this right now. Each of you have this reaction and having had time to process this moment at all as it begins, and where do you think you might be? Okay. I couldn't hear that. I couldn't hear it.

Speaker 2 (01:00:50):

So Lisa, just to make sure we have it, you're asking how to process the fact that this is the 100th anniversary that all of this attention is gone, is being given to Gwendolyn Brooks and how does it strike us or Nora, or did we ever expect that this would happen?

Speaker 5 (01:01:21):

Yeah, she's saying yes. Okay. Nora, go ahead.

Speaker 6 (01:01:24):

Okay.

Speaker 6 (01:01:29):

I think obviously I'm not the most objective person on the panel, but I think that it is. I think also that my mother was a person who is not really into a lot of visibility. She didn't necessarily hide from it, but she hated having her picture taken. She hated being on video. And so a lot of writers that have come up during her time and since her time who have been so Toni Morrison or my Maya Angelou, or people who were much more open to being visible on television, et cetera, and so forth, I think are probably more firmly into the literary zeitgeist. And so I think that the centennial, I think will really help to clarify as a friend of ours, as clarify the vision as to just what she meant and means to literature by whatever category you choose, American literature, world literature, black literature, women's literature, any category. And the people. And the people who have been in her classes, the people, the poets who have been impacted by her, they know. But I think that it is going to be very important this year for a lot more people, to be clear.

Speaker 3 (01:03:10):

Very good. A hand in the

Speaker 6 (01:03:11):

Back. Yes, there's a hand in the back.

Speaker 5 (01:03:14):

So a teacher myself, outstanding here. The impact your mom has had, not only in Chicago, but throughout the universe, throughout the world. And she's inspired so many different people. But I wonder if you could speak to her inspirations as she was growing up. What did she read and who did she learn from, whether it was poets or people in literature speak to that, some of her own inspirations.

Speaker 6 (01:03:51):

Okay,

Speaker 3 (01:03:52):

I can help you

Speaker 6 (01:03:53):

Out, but you go Yeah, please. Because I was going to say several people need to answer this, but certainly one of the poets was Emily Dickinson, also Langston Hughes, who later became a friend. But the short answer, and thank you Kar, because he's going to give you other examples, but the short answer is everybody and everything, my mother read everything from great books of literature and history to TV guide. And as Raz mentioned, she wrote in all of them. She made comments in all of them. So I think that's the best answer I can think of right

Speaker 3 (01:04:42):

Now. Ms. Brooks was in conversation with everything she absorbed or consumed. So she was in conversation with all my children, like black folks talking back to the movie at the movie theater. I mean, she was in conversation with everything that she consumed, that she consumed everything. So newspapers, television, magazines. But in terms of poets, Nora mentioned Emily Dickinson for sure. She loved Frost. She was definitely influenced some of the romantic poets, Hopkins Ridge Wadsworth, and of course Whitman Whitman was a huge influence.

Speaker 6 (01:05:31):

And I should also add that she was also in post 67, when I call her post Fisk period, she was also inspired by a lot of the younger writers, some of the people that came to the workshop that ended up being at our house. So Haki uti, formerly Don Lee, Walter Bradford, Carolyn Rogers. So a lot of people and some of the people who lived in other cities, Nikki Giovanni, would come in to the workshops when she was in Chicago. So a lot of different people in that started coming out in the sixties and seventies and eighties and so forth as well. You see?

Speaker 3 (01:06:26):

Yes. Hi, Brenda.

Speaker 6 (