Tribute to Gwendolyn Brooks by Joanne Gabbin


 

by Joanne V. Gabbin

 

 

Until her death in December 2000, Gwendolyn Brooks was the furious flower whose heroic and eloquent portraiture of the lives of black people seeded and pollinated poetic expression throughout the second half of the Twentieth Century. Her winning the Pulitzer Prize in 1950 opened the gates for writers of African descent to win other major literary awards. In 1968, when the Black Arts Movement was gaining strength and followers, she succeeded Carl Sandburg as Poet Laureate of Illinois. From this position she conducted writers' workshops for the Blackstone Rangers, inspired the activities of the Organization of Black American Culture, and became a major supporter of black publishers, namely Dudley Randall's Broadside Press and Haki R. Madhubuti's Third World Press. In the 70's when those in the feminist/womanist movement were looking for models, Brooks had a gallery of portraits of women that were anything but monolithic. Brooks became the 29th and final Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress in 1985. As the first black woman to be appointed to this position, she, in Sonia Sanchez's words, "demystified the Library." In her autobiography, Report From Part Two, Brooks delighted in the fact that all kinds of writers, once intimidated by its "cool magnificence, had felt free to come past marble and gold to see [her]" (84).

  

In 1994, the author of nearly thirty books, including poetry for adults and children, Maud Martha (her novel), and Part One of her autobiography, Brooks was showered with numerous awards: the Jefferson Lecturer from the National Endowment for the Humanities, National Book Award For Distinguished Contribution to American Letters, and the Furious Flower Lifetime Achievement Award. When more than 1300 people gathered in Wilson Hall on the James Madison University campus to celebrate her distinguished career and her legendary generosity, two generations had grown up nurtured and nourished by her poetry. Michael S. Harper called her a pioneer who had written beautiful sonnets and ballads and after carving out that territory had used the creative process to work against the tradition to create poems like "A Bronzeville Mother Loiters in Mississippi. Meanwhile, a Mississippi Mother Burns Bacon." Dolores Kendrick, who sees poetry as a way to move people into a finer and truer recognition of themselves, said of Brooks's poems that they "Take you into yourself and bring you out whole again." Eugene Redmond acknowledges the continuing contribution of Gwendolyn Brooks and other poets who began writing in the 40's and 50's. He said in a conversation at the 1994 conference, "you can never fill their steps, you can never take their place, but you stand there because you want their light."