>> From The Library of Congress in Washington D.C. ^M00:00:05 [ Pause ] ^M00:00:24 >> All right, so we're going to get started. Thanks for coming out over noontime in this glorious, glorious day. My name is Rob Casper. I'm the head of the Poetry and Literature Center here at the Library of Congress and I want to welcome you to our final Literary Birthday's Event of the year to celebrate Gwendolyn Brooks. Miss Brooks served as consultant in poetry at the Library of Congress from 1985 to 1986 and she is still remembered for her great work here in the DC community. This is especially relevant today because of our announcement of the new Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry, Natasha Trethewey, who will take up residence here next spring. It's the first time since we've announced a poet laureate, or since we've had a poet laureate that we'll have a laureate here in residency. So it's very, very exciting news and I'm sure Gwendolyn Brooks would be happy to hear that we're returning to that. Let me just take a minute to ask you to turn off your cellphones and any electronic devices you have, which might interfere with the event. And let me tell you a little a bit about the Poetry and Literature Center. We are the home of the poet laureate and put on literary readings, lectures and panels of all sorts throughout the year with partners such as the Rare Books and Special Collections Division. If you like to find out more about events like this and hear about our fall and spring 2013 literal birthdays, you can sign up our sign up sheet. You can also check our website at www.loc.poetry and you can check out the website of our co-sponsor, the library's Rare Books and Special Collections Division at www.loc.gov/rr//rarebook/. You will have programs on your seats. You can read more about our future poet and our two readers here today. We're very excited to have Kyle Dargan here from the DC area and have Janice Harrington come from Illinois, two places that are key to Brooks' history. Both Kyle and Janice will read from their favorite Brooks poems and discuss the importance of her to their own work as well as read a few poems of their own. Following our reading is Amanda Zimmerman from the library's Rare Books and Special Collections Division who will come up to talk about our wonderful table top display we have here of Brooks materials. She will also talk about the work that the Rare Books and Special Collections does to help preserve such treasures for future generations of poets and poetry lovers. So it's a great treat. So please help me in welcoming Kyle Dargan and Janice Harrington. [Applause] >> Thank you all for coming. I know that this can be a tough time for many things including poetry. So I'm very happy to see the room full. I just want to start with some brief somewhat prepared comments and read a few of Brooks poems and as a wrap just a few of my own. When Gwendolyn Brooks transitioned in the year 2000, I was an undergraduate student at the University of Virginia, enrolled in [inaudible] advanced poetry workshop. As a 19-year-old neophyte writer, my prior experience and exposure to poetry came from reading that I did outside of my high school classes and while I owned a copy of Dudley Randall's, The Black Poets, the selections and then anthology can only be considered a course reintroduction to the breath of Brooks' work. And I do not remember reading then as a young man with no guidance. My encounter with that text provided me with much sense of Brooks' significance. When she transitioned, I did notice that Rita Dove, my teacher who I admired greatly and whose office hours are unwillingly monopolized, was less available on campus. This was due to the fact that she, like many other notable poets in other country had taken up the task of standing in the various events that Brooks had committed to before her passing. The writing aside, I found myself greatly impressed that Brooks was still giving some new public readings into her later years and that such notable poets, fellow laureate such as Rita Dove were willing to reorganize the schedule to accommodate covering her remaining commitments. It became clear to me then, that not only have we lost an accomplished writer, a sharp, ambitious and compassionate voice, but also a true ambassador for poetry. Someone kind enough to live publically as a poet and actually, I want to read a brief excerpt from an interview that one of the Brooks did with Eva B. Miller at the Library of Congress. I believe this is 1986 and she is talking about her work at the library. She says, "Yes. I do enjoy working with children and talking with them. They're amazing. I had about 30 children in this very poetry room about a week ago and what a time we had. They talked about not just poetry but about their grandmothers, about beer, about pizza and about hair. When I came here, I thought that, that was, what I was supposed to do to share my feelings about poetry with anyone who is interested." And being in Washington DC and learning through oral histories how Brooks work as poetry consultant at the Library of Congress embodied that ethos, is very much shaped to what I think about my own public persona and duty as a poet. And I think a great way to celebrate her birthday is the announcement, you know, of another African-American female poet laureate, and I can't wait to talk to Natasha, convince her to get some kids in here. And so you can have some more laughter and discussions that include possibly beer and pizza. [Laughter] In terms of the writing and my personal connection that Gwendolyn Brooks, I was born in North New Jersey. When I came to DC, I lived in Glover Park for a while but now I live in Southeast DC. So pretty much, most of my life except from my colleges years are spent in primarily African American urban environments, working class environments. And I think if anything, that when I think about Gwendolyn Brooks is one, the many levels of interiority she brings to the African American working class community, if you think about going inside the house, you think about going inside the community, you can think about going inside the mind and that we get so many layers and why that's important is--it's something I didn't feel as much as when I lived in the North, but definitely living here, there's a lot of judgment in terms of, you know, who the people are that live on the other side of the river and what they do. And if you read Brooks' work about those communities, Chicago, you can see how much they're very much absent of judgment or a need to explain, you know, most of her work. It comes from her genuine interest in trying to understand. If I can get this to work class, we could play a little bit of her reading, We Real Cool, I'm not going to read that, I wouldn't dare read that if I can actually access the audio so hopefully that work. You know, one of the things she says is that, you know, she generally want to not judge those children that she saw playing a fool but understand like what is it that put them in that situation. So that's definitely one thing and also her compassion. Gwendolyn Brooks made me a very compassionate poet and that's one of the things I try to strive for my own work and I'm actually writing some poems about Southeast DC. I'll say maybe fashioned after what some of Brooks is doing in Street in Bronzeville and Annie Allen. I don't want to say it's like my version of that 'cause I wouldn't dare. But, you know, I'm sort of working in that tradition a bit with that in mind. So I'll read some of those poems. I'll read a few of my own and that would be the [inaudible]. So, but I want to start, you know, with that idea, the interior and going inside with the poem, having most people familiar with Kitchenette Building. We are things of dry hours and the involuntary plan, grayed in, and gray. Dream makes a giddy sound, not strong like rent, feeding a wife, satisfying a man. But could a dream sent up through onion fumes. Its white and violet, fight with fried potatoes and yesterday's garbage ripening in the hall. Flutter, or sing an aria down these rooms even if we were willing to let it in. ^M00:10:03 Had time to warm it, keep it very clean, anticipate a message, let it begin? We wonder but not well! Not for a minute! Since Number Five is out of the bathroom now, we think of lukewarm water, hope to get in. Again, just the compassion with what she treats the people and the dignity of their lives, she tries to express. The first, one of the Brooks poem that really knocked me out was The Mother 'cause I tend to be very impressed by, when I meet a poet, and they do something that I would ought to be afraid to do, or I had never thought to do before. So when I encounter that poem, at first, I was so much shocked. But then, once I got past that I was, you know, again amazed at what Brooks was able to do. Speaking of the piece in a 1961 interview, and this is interesting, you know, to give us some context she says, "Once again, I was trying to understand how people must fill in this case, a mother who never really became a mother. This poem was the only poem in the book that Richard Wright, who first looked at it, wanted to omit and he felt that a proper poem cannot even be written about abortions but I felt otherwise and I was glad that the publishers left it in." So, The Mother. ^M00:11:55 [ Pause ] ^M00:12:00 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 will never neglect or beat them, or silence or buy with a sweet. You will never wind up--you'll never wind up the sucking-thumb or scuttle off ghosts that come. You will never leave them, controlling your luscious sigh, return for a snack of them, with gobbling mother-eye. I have heard in the voices of the wind the voices of my dim killed children. I have contracted. I have eased. My dim dears at the breasts they could never suck. I have said, Sweets, if I sinned, if I seize 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. 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. And this is a poem that I actually maybe foolishly attempted to respond to from a male perspective. This piece, somewhat predictively is called The Father. ^M00:14:54 [ Pause ] ^M00:15:00 And the poem takes a few lines from another Gwendolyn Brooks' poem, To Be In Love. The Father, after Brooks. To be in love is to touch things with a lighter hand. Know this me, I loved her all. Loved the anomaly of you who did not have form bright, gnarl of tissue on the inner hull. Yes, you could have traveled with us, you do carry with us. This ball we bounced and stilled, the floating throb of unresolved energy because, because amusing as though you can hear me, denied spirit, off to another body-gate. You are the beautiful half of a golden hurt. So let her hate me today for never having to know the remnant blood in carnal seams. Your silence never lets me forget her. I believe that mine was love for her, with you and her without. ^M00:16:38 [ Pause ] ^M00:16:41 Okay. ^M00:16:43 [ Pause ] ^M00:16:49 I think Brooks also had a way of being dark and funny. I think another poem from Street in Brownsville, A Song in the Front Yard captures that. And I will try to read one of my southeast poems that maybe speaks on the other side of this experience, so. A Song in the Front Yard. 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 back yard 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 Johnnie Mae will grow up to be a bad woman. That George will be taken to jail soon or late on account of last winter, he stole of that 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 strut down the streets with paint on my face. So one night, I was looking at my window and I saw a young girl walking down the street with the someone who I imagine, I believed was her parent in pursuit in this by 11:35 at night. And, you know, one of those situations will make you think if you haven't had kids it might be possibly something you want to do, if you're going to wind up chasing children down the street 11:35 at night [laughters]. But then, you know, I was thinking about the Brooks poem and you think about, you know, that desire to go out and be bad and that at some point, as a parent like you're going to loose, like at some point she is going to go out to the back yard, at some point, she is going to be the bad woman. And what do you do in that situation? So this poem is called Sixteen. And the Sixteen in the poem was this girl who was walking. Sixteen. Sixteen, turns her back to you and walks into the night. Her back pack of fading pink weaken in the shadowless streets or these streets where all is shadow. 11:35, and darkening. Hush, save the bright house windows of those still awake. You're shouting after her only accents the trunk will be lying that she is marching, not vice versa. Her flight gives you no new sense of purpose, you are a parent, you are wrapped with the parental motions of giving chase but the evening has already been abandoned by the stars. And tonight, there's little hope that sixteen-snickered heels will pivot and return to you. ^M00:20:53 [ Pause ] ^M00:21:00 So now we get to see if this is going to work. ^M00:21:03 [ Pause ] ^M00:21:11 Let me try to share you this. ^M00:21:20 [ Pause ] ^M00:21:25 >> Hi. I guess I better offer you "We Real Cool." Most young people know me all may by that poem. I don't think that I dislike it but I would prefer it as the textbook compilers and the anthologist would assume that I've written a few other poem. I wrote it because I was passing by a pool hall in my community one afternoon during school time, and I saw, therein, a little bunch of boys. I say here in this poem, seven, and they were shooting pool. But instead of asking myself, "Why aren't they in school?" I asked myself, "I wonder how they feel about themselves?" And just perhaps, they might have considered themselves contemptuous of the establishment, or at least they wanted to feel that they were contemptuous of the establishment, might want to bump their noses at the establishment. And I represented the establishment with the month of June which was nice, gentle, non-controversial, enjoyable, pleasant fragrant month that everybody loves. >> I must I say June in Chicago must be very different than June in DC, right? [Laughter] >> This poem has been banned here and there because of the word jazz, which some people have considered a sexual reference. That was not my intention though I have no objection if it helps anybody. But I was thinking of music. "The Pool Players. Seven at the Golden Shovel." We real cool. We left school. We lurk late. We strike straight. We sing sin. We thin gin. We Jazz June. We die soon. I'm going to read you three more poems. [Applause] >> And that would be one more poem but I wanted to play that. And I do think there's something to that idea of June as a peaceful month because in Southeast DC it's quite opposite. June is when people start getting shot. But, it is interesting as she talks about the different ways that people take the jazzing of June. I never thought of it as sexual. But, you know, coming out of the urban environments I came up out of--you know, I took the jazzing of June as like the moment of, you know, improvisation where you let kids out for the summer and they start making it up for themselves and things start happening. So I guess I want to write a poem from that perspective, in terms of engaging with June on a different level. And this actually, this piece takes a--is titled from the last line of We Real Cool but it's also invoking the proceeding line. It's "We Die Soon." This jazz, once you learn it as your own, you will listen to the brassy chatter of old brown men riffing on recent murder. The boy who was killing folks, the one who have the claw hammer, know in Virginia, the boy slashed the woman's behinds. No sir, this boy was stabbing people, cold. Seated on concave milk crates or their sweat and motor oil, anointed limbs drooping off a pick-up trucks gate all slack except for their fingers clutching a cold beer. Through appreciation, you will learn to distinguish when the hollers of youngins will end with sweet jeps in depth. From when the hollers will summon sirens, red and blue lights up the hill. Electricity drowns the nights, the restless birds sing back to the evening gunshots, the magnums baritone--pow. With age, you'll come to fear June's music, it's melodies of bleeding voice, another uneven temple of assault in armed thefts omitted from the newspaper. They want to get white folk moving over here. This is not transcribed music, these notes puncture large invertebrate, make duke boxes of our spines. To know this jazz well is to be rigid with song, and then, to be eventually bent by it. Where am I on time? All right, this is about Gwendolyn Brooks' not about me. So let me cut my poems and read one last piece. Again, I thank Brooks so much of her works about the dignity of the people on these communities. And I often wonder myself whether or not, you know, what we call the hood, what I call the hood, and that's not necessarily derogatory. The last of people who think of home as the hood. But, you know, think about the hood, it's where the nicer place that actually chokes out different aesthetics. And I think, directly and indirectly, this poem from the one with the hood section of Annie Allen, Brooks is engaged in that discourse of thinking about when you're in these harsh environments, how do you find or make time to create art? So this is the fourth verse, "Children of the Poor." First fight. Then fiddle. Ply the slipping string with feathery sorcery. Muzzle the note with hurting love. The music that they wrote bewitch, bewilder. Qualify to sing threadwise. Devise no salt, no hempen thing for the dear instrument to bear. Devote the bow to silks and honey. Be remote a while from malice and from murdering. But first to arms to armor. Carry hate in front of you and harmony behind. Be deaf to music and to beauty blind. Win war. Rise bloody, maybe not too late for having first to civilize a space wherein to play your violin with grace. And I'll stop there and turn it over to Janice, so. ^M00:29:14 [ Applause ] ^M00:29:18 >> Happy birthday Gwendolyn Brooks. And thank you for this marvelous legacy of poetry. Thank you also to the Library of Congress for giving me the opportunity to be here. To Rob Casper, and thank you all of you for supporting the literary birthday celebrations. For over 22 years, I've been a children's librarian at the Champagne Public Library in Champagne Illinois. And that means that for over 22 years, I've helped grade school children who've come in during the National Month of Poetry, during Black History Month to do their reports on a famous African-American, on a famous African-American poet and of course on our beloved Gwendolyn Brooks, who was the poet laureate of Illinois from 1968. They would come in to do a report about her. I went into middle school classrooms, with We Real Cool and turned it into a call and response participation poem. I took the poems from Bronzeville boys and girls and did them as fingerplays with preschool children. And we were especially fortunate, because in the mid '90s, Gwendolyn Brooks came to visit our library. Everybody came to see her. We were totally enchanted and funny, witty, that woman made razor blades seem dull. [Laughter] ^M00:30:47 Okay? And what everybody talked about afterwards was that when you stood before her, it was as if the entire world disappeared. She gave you her full attention. And Gwendolyn Brooks gave her attention to the world around her, to the black community of Chicago, to its youth, to her neighbors and especially to her family. I want start with this poem, "In Honor of David Anderson Brooks, My father." July 30th, 1883 to November 21st, 1959. A dryness is upon the house my father loved and tended. Beyond his firm and sculptured door his light and lease have ended. He walks the valleys, now-replies to wind and sun forever, No more the cramping chambers' chill, no more the hindering fever. Now out upon the wide clean air, my father's soul revives, all innocent of self-interest and the fear that strikes and strives. He who was Goodness, Gentleness, and Dignity is free, translates to public Love. Old private charity. The deep feelings that she felt for her father, she also felt for the struggle of women, for the struggles of the black community and of the poor. And for this next poem, I'm going to need you to use your imagination, okay? You're going to be in a car, driving through a wealthy neighborhood. I don't know if you've ever done that. [Laughter] Seen people who seem have a little bit more than you do, okay. So you're going to be in that car and maybe you're going to compare yourself. Maybe, you'll hear their cellphones going off. [Laughter] And you'll say, what the hell with those fancy phones, that's what you'll say. But you're in that car and this is "Beverly Hills, Chicago." The dry brown coughing beneath their feet, only a while, for the handyman is on his way. These people walk their golden gardens. We say ourselves fortunate to be driving by today. That we may look at them, in their gardens where the summer ripeness rots but not raggedly, even the leaves fall down in lovelier patterns here. And the refuse, the refuse is a neat brilliancy. When they flow sweetly into their houses with softness and slowness touched by that everlasting gold, we know what they go to. To tea. But that does not mean that they will throw some little black dots into some water and add sugar and the juice of the cheapest lemons that are sold. While downstairs that woman's vague phonograph bleats, "Knock me a kiss." And the living all to be made again in the sweatingest physical manner. Tomorrow, not that anybody is saying that these people have no trouble. Merely that it is trouble with a gold-flecked beautiful banner. Nobody is saying that these people do not ultimately cease to be. And sometimes their passings are even more painful than our own. It is just that so often they live till their hair is white. They make excellent corpses, among the expensive flowers. Nobody is furious. Nobody hates these people. At least, nobody driving by in this car. It is only natural, however, that it should occur to us how much more fortunate they are than we are. It is only natural that we should look and look at their wood and brick and stone and think, while a breath of pine blows, how different these are from our own. We do not want them to have less. But it is only natural that we should think we have not enough. We drive on, we drive on. When we speak to each other our voices are a little gruff. Gwendolyn Brooks said we are each others' business. We are each others' bond. We are here to be a witness for justice and compassion. Today, be willing to stand up for truth by your presence, your words, and actions. People who recall Gwendolyn Brooks, always talk about her generosity, her generosity to poets, and especially to the young. As Kyle pointed out, if she had a passion, it was for young people to the core. She cared about them. And rereading her poems, I find so many that speak to us about problems that we're facing today, the same problems that her words are still contemporary and that, as always, she's standing up for youth and that her words are an instrument of hope, to the young who want to die. ^M00:37:38 [ Pause ] ^M00:37:43 To the Young Who Want to Die. Sit down. Inhale. Exhale. The gun will wait. The lake will wait. The tall gall in the small seductive vial will wait, will wait: will wait a week: will wait through April. You do not have to die this certain day. Death will abide, will pamper your postponement. I assure you death will wait. Death has a lot of time. Death can attend to you tomorrow. Or next week. Death is just down the street; is most obliging neighbor; can meet you any moment. You need not die today. Stay here--through pout or pain or peskyness. Stay here. See what the news is going to be tomorrow. Graves grow green--graves grow no green that you can use. Remember, green's your color. You are Spring. Gwendolyn Brooks told stories. She took snapshots of people with words. I tried to do the same thing with my poetry. And I'm going to read the two poems from my newest book, The Hands of Strangers, poems from a nursing home. I worked part time and full time as a nurse's aide in a county nursing home and as well as a private nursing home and these are the stories that I put together in this book. And I hope that you will like them. Pinch. Pinch. In a room bright with sunlight, an aide feeds prey to an old woman in a wheelchair. The old woman blinded, by cataracts rolls the brownish mash between her lips. The aide scrapes the woman's lips and chin with a spoon edge and pushes the spillings between her lips again. But the old woman does not want to eat or perhaps needs more time to swallow, or perhaps does not like the brown mash and instead, she spits. The aide spoons more mash between her lips. And the old woman reaching, snatches the skin on the aide's bare arm and squeezes it. Squeezes its fold hard between two ruddy fingers, smiling. She stinks by the small violence that she is one. That she is the victor of the contest, not to be ignored, not defenseless. But this aide pinches her back: fierce and sharp. The old woman whines opaque eyes straining to see the scorpion, this scissor-beaked bird, this awl and mirror image, this enemy. But in her eyes, are cloud banks, splinters of dazzle and shadow. She sees nothing and feels pinpricks, ice, broken glass and hate, hate. They spar, pinch for pinch. ^M00:41:33 [ Pause ] ^M00:41:42 I'm just doing this because I want your sympathy [laughter]. It's always an [inaudible] [coughs] to watch a poet choke to death on the stage. ^M00:41:56 [ Laughter ] ^M00:42:04 I should say too, that the aide in this poem is not me [laughter]. So, it is not guilt that you're seeing. Okay, let me back up a little bit. But in her eyes are cloud banks, splinters of dazzle and shadow. She sees nothing and feels pinpricks, ice, broken glass and hate, hate, hate. They spar, pinch for pinch, until the eyes draw their curtains, until at last, there comes a cry that no one hears but the aide who takes the tray and taps the spoon against the glass, clears the pureed splatter. Whatever is uneaten remains so. Whatever hungers goes unfed. All right. Okay. The next poem--I have to recoup, because I have to get my voice back. It's the poem that I need your help with. And I'm going to make the Library of Congress very unhappy because clearly, you can never have to me powerful enemies [laughter] by not using the mic. When I point to you like this, unless I'm choking [laughter] you're suppose to say Engles. >> Engles. >> You're supposed to say it like you're alive. >> Engles. >> You're supposed to say it like you mean it. >> Engles. >> All right. When I was working on this book, you know, I'm recalling my memories, I'm talking about my mother because my mother is a nurse aide, and [inaudible]. And I'm printing out poems and writing and writing and writing, I ask myself, I wonder if in any of my old diaries, I have written something that I could use for a poem. And I went through these old diaries and I found one thing. This poem is called May Engels and I'm going to make sure that I get through it without having a coughing fit. ^M00:44:04 [ Pause ] ^M00:44:08 >> It has an epigraph. May Engles died yesterday. No family no friends, no possessions, just a room provided by county, no pastor, no nurses, no anything. No book will ever give her a sentence. Aides diary, August 11, 1977. May Engles died and she died of scurvy. May Engles died and she died of sorrow. May Engles died and she died like this, oh-oh, oh-oh. May Engles died or maybe she didn't. Tomorrow, ring bells, burn effigies of crones, declare it, May Engles is dead. Let mothers name their babies May or Engles. Let astrologers re-name Orions belt and call May Engles garter. Let believers see her face on mildewed wallpaper in a Days Inn end in Biloxi. Let biologists name a newly discovered orchid May Engles, or a moth, or a deep sea squid not seen since the Pliocene era. Let poets write in the form of May Engles, small, and plain and calm. May you travel with 30 other pilgrims to find her grave, but not finding it. May you open a boutique to sell May Engles memorabilia and sack lunches to tourists who want to lie in the country bed where May Engles died. May you live out your days as happy as May Engles. May you whisper before pressing your tongue against the slope of your beloved's neck. May Engles O May Engles. May Engles plucked the feathers of the last Lord God Bird. Yesterday, anthropologists discovered the image of a small woman leaping amidst a herd of antelope at Lascaux. They have called her May Engles. May Engles has seven overdue library books. Before your right kidney, the doctor will find proof of May Engles. Yes. >> Engles. >> You are a good health. On a playground in Alabama. Black girls clap their hands. They've made a ride for May Engles. Oh May Engles-- >> Engles! >> Looks like shingles. >> Engles! >> Her bones go jingle. >> Engles! >> Her toenails tingle. >> Engles! >> Your daddy stole a puddin.' >> Engles! >> He made your mama cry. >> Engles! >> Now they gonna hang em on the Fourth of July. The water laps, May and May against the shore. The earth answers and the wind and the boy swinging his tones above the dock, all with the same glad syllable: May and May and May. Afterward, the boy will snatch a fish from the dark water. He'll split its belly and find a golden ring. Lifting the ring, he'll cry, May Engles. Some say, a small woman now stands beside Death. She touches those whom Death chooses. She lifts the dead from their tangled veins, as if their bodies were beds they lay in for too long. Some say that before dying, if you whisper the woman's name, Death will slow, surprised that you remember a woman without family, or monument, or possession. Death will slow and you will have a moment and maybe another moment more. May Engles, May Engles, May Engles. [Applause] I'm going to close with two poems by Gwendolyn Brooks. You can't be from Alabama. I was born in Vernon, Alabama and live in the state of Illinois, without reading of De Wit Williams on his way to Lincoln Cemetery. He was born in Alabama. He was bred in Illinois. He was nothing but a plain black boy. Swing low swing low sweet, sweet chariot. Nothing but a plain black boy. Drive him past the Pool Hall. Drive him past the Show. Blind within his casket, but maybe he will know. Down through Forty-seventh Street: Underneath the L, and Northwest Corner, Prairie, that he loved so well. Don't forget the Dance Halls, Warwick and Savoy, where he picked his women, where he drank his liquid joy. Born in Alabama. Bred in Illinois. He was nothing but a plain black boy. Swing low, swing low, sweet, sweet chariot. Nothing but a plain black boy. It was an honor to read to you today and it seems so appropriate then to share with you a poem that from the Brooks used to thank her audiences and to recognize them. ^M00:50:00 It's called Infirm. Everybody here, well let--maybe we should set you up for this and if you have aches and pains-- [Laughter] You--we wait that people here are going to sympathize, all right. Infirm, everybody here is infirm. Everybody here is infirm. Oh mend me, mend me lord. Today, I say to them, say to them, say to them, lord look, I'm beautiful, beautiful with my wing that is wounded, my eye that is bonded or my ear not funded, or my walk all the wobble. I'm enough to be beautiful. You are beautiful too. Thank you. [Applause] >> Good afternoon everyone. >> Good afternoon-- >> I'm delighted to be here today honoring Gwendolyn Brooks who was a remarkable woman, poet, novelist, essayist. The rare book in special collections division has strong holdings in American literature and is committed to building comprehensive collections of the works of the all poet laureate. And the books that I have on display for you today spanned the various periods of Brooks career and speaks to her talent as well as her ability to be a voice for generation after generation of poets and African Americans. I have to start out by saying that the first book that Brooks published "A Street in Brownsville" published by Harper and Bothers in 1945 is not on the table because it is being prepared to go into our books that shaped America exhibit which is starting at the end of this months, so I encourage everyone to come back on June 25th and check out that exhibit, it's going to be fantastic. What I do have is in 1949, Gwendolyn Brooks published "Annie Allen" which she won the Pulitzer Prize for in 1950, making her the first African American in any genre to win that prize. And what I have here is a--it's a first edition and it's the coming of age story of a girl's growth from childhood to the age of love and marriage and on to motherhood while she is experiencing racism and sexism in her community. Brooks through out this the book has used varying poetic forms and she explores such themes as love, war and womanhood. Langston Hughes when he was reviewing the book, he wrote and I quote that the book provided sharp pictures of neighborhoods, relatives, friends, illnesses and deaths of big city slums cafes and beauty shops. In 1953, Harper and Brothers published her only prose novel called "Maud Martha" and what we have here is actually signed by Brooks on the title page and after, you can come up and take a look at everything. This novel depicts racism, sexism and then classes in through the eyes of an African American woman just before, during and after World War II. And what I really loved about this work is you can tell how particular she is in her word choice even in her prose writing and I found a quote of hers then she wrote: Even in writing pros, I find my self weighing the possibilities of every word just as I do in a poem." This was true when I used to write reviews as well and I thought that said a lot about how careful she was and how important every word really was to her in everything that she wrote and that says a lot about her as a writer. The next book I have brought out today is "The Bean Eaters" published in 1960. This is the first edition and it explores the racial and economic tensions that play out in the lives of everyday people on Chicago's outside neighborhood. At this time, she had started to experiment with free verse while still using the strict poetic styles a little bit, so it was kind of a more mixed poetry. And it shows us the lived consequences of political injustices. So, another notable thing about this book is it includes "We Real Cool" which is often considered her popular work whether she would like that or not. I mean, you heard her earlier. And I have here the version that was published in 1966 by the Broadside Press which I will talk about a little bit more later. But what was interesting about this work is that these young boys are rebelling against the society that they feel don't--doesn't respect them, doesn't want them and so they're breaking of out from this society and they're finding a place where they can belong. And Brooks often noted the gangs also provided this kind of negative space where social outcast would feel more included. And in the late 60s, she began fostering the talents of young African-American writers. She would sponsor poetry workshops and contest and competitions where she would fund the awards with her own money and she also visited many schools, prisons, hospitals and drug rehabilitations centers in the hopes of teaching children that poetry can also provide a positive space where you can feel included and feel respected and understood. In 1967, Brooks experienced the political awakening when she attended Fisk University's Second Black Writers Conference and after that point, her work really changed and became more assertive and positive and so what I have from that period of her life, I have "In the Mecca" which was published by her from Harper and Brothers in 1968, it's a first edition. The Mecca was a vast fortress like apartment building erected on the south side of Chicago in 1891, which quickly deteriorated into Islam and the story follows a mother in search of her lost child and throughout the story, we're introduced to all these other characters and individuals who lived in the building and what's notable about each of these characters is that every one in the building seems to have adjusted to life there by isolating themselves and not having any sense of community or responsibility to anyone else in the building. And, so what's interesting is that--well the Mecca, this large building encloses and compresses everyone, it doesn't actually bring the people any closer together. And so this was published in the same year in 1968 that she was named Poet Laureate of Illinois which was a position she held until she passed in 2000. And in 1969, she left Harper and Brothers who's worked--who would publish her work since 1945. So this was a long standing relationship that she broke to go to Broadside Press which was a smaller African American press from Detroit run by Dudley Randall who was a poet and a librarian and he--they published "Riot" together which I have on the stand over there, which is also a first edition dedicated to Dudley Randall. And it's a series of three poems following the 1968 Chicago riots which resulted directly from the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., so they're really--they're very powerful poems. Next, I have her--the first part of her autobiography report from part one and that was published in 1972 and I found a really great quote from a reviewer of the book and I think that this is the way to describe it. It's a combination of memoirs and interviews and this quote really says it all. I quote--the book is, not to sustained dramatic narrative for the nosy, being neither the confession of a private women poet or the usual sort of Mahogany desk memoir public person to just inflict upon the populist at the first time of the cardiac. It documents the growth of Gwen Brooks and I really though that describes the book perfectly. In 1980, Gwendolyn Brooks started her own press. And in 1985, she became the Poet Laureate of Library of Congress. And in 1991, she published a book called "Children Coming Home." What I have in the tables are first edition signed by Brooks and it's a collection of 20 poems in children's voices and that each poem offers hope for children's potential to employ poetic language in order to understand and makes sense of the world around them. The book was published by the David Company which was Brooks' own publishing company named after her father. And it's really--what I liked about it was that its--the cover of it is in the shape of the composition book which brings kind of at least I think me back to school days and what it's like to be a child trying to figure out the world around you. And so I thought that was really--it's really beautiful book. Over her career, she was awarded a number of really amazing awards and she received approximately 50 honorary doctorates from different colleges and universities which I was shocked about and I invite everyone to come up and take a look at all the works that we have for you today. Many are signed and just take it all in. Thank you. [Applause] >> This has been a presentation of the Library of Congress. Visit us at loc.dot.gov.