The Essential Gwendolyn Brooks: (American Poets Project #19) -- Gwendolyn Brooks

<b>Discover the most enduring works of the legendary poet and first black author to win a Pulitzer Prize--now in one collectible volume</b> <p/> "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 <i>A Street in Bronzeville</i> (1945), her epoch-making debut volume, <i>The Essential Gwendolyn Brooks</i> traces the full arc of her career in all its ambitious scope and unexpected stylistic shifts. <p/> "Her formal range," writes editor Elizabeth Alexander, "is most impressive, as she experiments with sonnets, ballads, spirituals, blues, full and off-rhymes. She is nothing short of a technical virtuoso." That technical virtuosity was matched by a restless curiosity about the life around her in all its explosive variety. By turns compassionate, angry, satiric, and psychologically penetrating, Gwendolyn Brooks' poetry retains its power to move and surprise. <p/> <b>About the American Poets Project</b><br> Elegantly designed in compact editions, printed on acid-free paper, and textually authoritative, the American Poets Project makes available the full range of the American poetic accomplishment, selected and intro