Quotessence
Home / Quotes / Quote by Gwendolyn Brooks

Quote by Gwendolyn Brooks

“What mannerisms I present, employ, Are camouflage, and what my mouths remark To word-wall off that broadness of the dark Is pitiful, I am not brave at all.”

Quote by Gwendolyn Brooks

Book:Selected poems
Create image

Work

Selected poems

This book compiles a selection of poems that showcase the depth and diversity of the author's poetic voice, exploring a range of subjects and employing different literary techniques. more

Author

Gwendolyn Brooks
Gwendolyn Brooks

Gwendolyn Brooks was a prominent American poet whose work delved into the African American experience. Born on June 7, 1917, in Topeka, Kansas, she spent much of her life in Chicago, Illinois. Brooks' poetry frequently depicted the struggles and victories of the African American community, and she became the first African American to win the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1950 for her collection 'Annie Allen'. She passed away on December 3, 2000. more

You May Also Like

“One of Aggie, mum & I's favourite poems, it turns out. / You do not have to be good. You do not have to walk on your knees for a hundred miles through the desert repenting. You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves. Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine. Meanwhile the world goes on. Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain are moving across the landscapes, over the prairies and the deep trees, the mountains and the rivers. Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air, are heading home again. Whoever you are, no matter how lonely, the world offers itself to your imagination, calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting - over and over announcing your place in the family of things.”

Poem
Book:Wild Geese
Create image

“I’ve lived on both sides of the abuse. I wear bruises on both sides of my fist. I have wept “what am I doing” and I have cried “why did they do that”. The child of an alcoholic and the alcoholic of a child. It’s strange how broken spirits, broken hearts, and broken homes walk hand-in-hand. How they leave a clear trail of shattered to follow. We are all picking out sins of the father like shrapnel left over from the day we were born. Bang. Welcome to life. Try not to step on a landmine before you get to twenty. Here are your parents. They hate you. Sorry that you won the race. Me? I’ve got a piece of broken mirror lodged dangerously close to my heart. I never know which twist in the story will be the one to open up my insides and help me drown in my own soul. People asked me where I picked up the wisdom. I don’t know that any of this actually is made of wisdom. There’s just too much fluff and well-meaning for my taste. For me, the path was always made of pain. I haven’t found feel better or act right yet... not for myself. I’m not the best one to help anybody else find it... that’s for certain... but I know every road that leads to resentment. I’ve walked them more times than I can count. I can’t tell you how to get where you’re going, but I can give you a roadmap that highlights the places I wish I never went. The first place on the list sits pretty damn close to home. There’s a town called Grief & Regret just north of Salvation, USA. I’m putting do not enter signs on every road that goes there.”

InspirationalPoetryPoemAbuseTraumaSurvivor
Author:Kalen Dion
Create image

“I watched as he ignored the world and focused on his hands. He creased a simple paper plane and dreamt of other lands. I watched him reach to throw that plane into the open sky. A passing breeze upheld its wings and made the paper fly. I watched a pleasant smile control his lips throughout the flight, until the little paper plane had floated out of sight. I hoped to see him chase the plane into the light of day. Instead, he creased another one and threw it too away.”

PoetryPoetPoemRichelle GoodrichRichelle E GoodrichPaper Plane
Book:Being Bold: Quotes, Poetry, & Motivations for Every Day of the Year
Create image

“The accident has occurred, the ship has broken, the motor of the car has failed, we have been separated from the others, we are alone in the sand, the ocean, the frozen snow I remember what I have to do in order to stay alive, I take stock of our belongings most of them useless I know I should be digging shelters, killing seabirds and making clothes from their feathers cutting the rinds from cacti, chewing roots for water, scraping through the ice for treebark, for moss but I rest here without power to save myself, tasting salt in my mouth, the fact that you won't save me watching the mirage of us hands locked, smiling, as it fades into the white desert. I touch you, straighten the sheet, you turn over in the bed, tender sun comes through the curtains Which of us will survive which of us will survive the other”

PoetryPoem
Book:Power Politics: Poems
Create image