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macklin's review
I got this almost a year ago during my birthday bookcrawl and I said I would read all of the books bought that day before I do another birthday bookcrawl. The planned date is coming up and I am now done three of the 6/7. I think I liked this one the most so far. I loved how it spans the author’s entire career and seeing all the history in lines. I’m
chicagobooknerd's review
4.0
I loved this collection because the poems were vivid and thought provoking . I felt strong emotions (which to me is a sign of a good poetry ) because of the raw nature and honesty of the topics she explores. I want to reread this collection in the future, both bc I enjoyed the poems and also some poems were a bit hard to follow (which is the only reason I deducted a star ).
bookiecharm's review
These poems are just not for me. This is an issue of personal taste so please don’t write off Brooks as a poet!
sydneyzahradka's review
Emmett’s mother is a pretty-faced thing;
the tint of pulled taffy.
She sits in a red room,
drinking black coffee.
She kisses her killed boy.
And she is sorry.
Chaos in windy grays
through a red prairie.
the tint of pulled taffy.
She sits in a red room,
drinking black coffee.
She kisses her killed boy.
And she is sorry.
Chaos in windy grays
through a red prairie.
readalotwritealot's review
5.0
Let me start with the fact that I am not a poetry reviewer. My criteria is simply that I feel a poem.
Gwendolyn Brooks makes you feel every poem. You get a rhythm. You somehow hear the lilt of her voice just from the words on the page. You see the irony. The details take you there. Her poems paint a picture, evoke strong emotions, and no word is wasted. Her poems are as important a part of history as any history book.
Gwendolyn Brooks makes you feel every poem. You get a rhythm. You somehow hear the lilt of her voice just from the words on the page. You see the irony. The details take you there. Her poems paint a picture, evoke strong emotions, and no word is wasted. Her poems are as important a part of history as any history book.
hilaritas's review
4.0
Brooks is a beautiful poet and this volume gives small samples of most of her corpus. The striking thing when seeing pieces spanning her entire career is just how versatile she is. Brooks works in lots of forms, on a range of subjects, and all of it is consistently high-quality. Of course her more famous poem "We Real Cool" is included here, but there are plenty of other gems too. I was particularly partial to The Anniad and some of the mid-period poems on Black Power figures.
Brooks' special talent is the ability to wed metaphysical hope to gritty particularity: in her hands, even a mock-heroic account of a hustler's closet speaks about the dignity of humans. In "The Last Quatrain of the Ballad of Emmett Till," a handful of lines about drinking black coffee in a red room twist into a devastating portrait of a mother's loss. She approaches her subjects with warmth, humor, and an appreciation for their particularity. There's a density of reference that Eliot would envy, but in the service of real people and real concerns. She is very much a poet for our time (read "Riot"); you ought to read this. You'll learn more about race relations and the Black experience than from a dozen of the haranguing essays pumped out in volume during the current moment.
Brooks' special talent is the ability to wed metaphysical hope to gritty particularity: in her hands, even a mock-heroic account of a hustler's closet speaks about the dignity of humans. In "The Last Quatrain of the Ballad of Emmett Till," a handful of lines about drinking black coffee in a red room twist into a devastating portrait of a mother's loss. She approaches her subjects with warmth, humor, and an appreciation for their particularity. There's a density of reference that Eliot would envy, but in the service of real people and real concerns. She is very much a poet for our time (read "Riot"); you ought to read this. You'll learn more about race relations and the Black experience than from a dozen of the haranguing essays pumped out in volume during the current moment.
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