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What I'm Fighting For Now In My Work... For An Expression Relevant To All Manner Of Blacks, Poems I Could Take Into A Tavern, Into The Street, Into The Halls Of A Housing Project.

-Gwendolyn Brooks

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What I'm Fighting For

Gwendolyn Brooks

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What I'm Fighting For Now In My Work... For An Expression Relevant To All Manner Of Blacks, Poems I Could Take Into A Tavern, Into The Street, Into The Halls Of A Housing Project.

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More From Gwendolyn Brooks

We Are Each Other's Harvest; We Are Each Other's Business; We Are Each Other's Magnitude And Bond.

Be Yourself. Don't Imitate Other Poets. You Are As Important As They Are.

I Don't Like The Idea Of The Black Race Being Diluted Out Of Existence. I Like The Idea Of All Of Us Being Here.

Art Hurts. Art Urges Voyages - And It Is Easier To Stay At Home.

People Like Definite Decisions, / Tidy Answers, All The Little Ravelings / Snipped Off, The Lint Removed, They / Hop Happily Among Their Roughs / Calling What They Can't Clutch Insanity / Or Saintliness.

Books Are Meat And Medicine And Flame And Flight And Flower Steel, Stitch, Cloud And Clout, And Drumbeats On The Air.

Life For My Child Is Simple, And Is Good.

I Who Have Gone The Gamut From An Almost Angry Rejection Of My Dark Skin By Some Of My Brainwashed Brothers And Sisters To A Surprised Queenhood In The New Black Sunam Qualified To Enter At Least The Kindergarten Of New Consciousness Now... I Have Hopes For Myself.

The Music Is In Minors.

This Is The Urgency: Live! And Have Your Blooming In The Noise Of The Whirlwind.

It Frightens Me To Realize That, If I Had Died Before The Age Of Fifty, I Would Have Died A 'negro' Fraction.

She Was Learning To Love Moments. To Love Moments For Themselves.

Learning To Love

I Am A Writer Perhaps Because I Am Not A Talker. It Has Always Been Hard For Me To Say Exactly What I Mean In Speech But If I Have Written A Clumsiness, I May Erase It.

Each Body Has Its Art.

What I'm Fighting For Now In My Work... For An Expression Relevant To All Manner Of Blacks, Poems I Could Take Into A Tavern, Into The Street, Into The Halls Of A Housing Project.

I've Always Thought Of Myself As A Reporter. When People Ask Why I Don't Stop Writing, I Say, `look At What's Happening In This World. Every Day There's Something Exciting Or Disturbing To Write About.’ With All That's Going On, How Could I Stop?

A Poem Doesn't Do Everything For You. You Are Supposed To Go On With Your Thinking. You Are Supposed To Enrich The Other Person's Poem With Your Extensions, Your Uniquely Personal Understandings, Thus Making The Poem Serve You.

People Are So In Need, In Need Of Help. People Want So Much That They Do Not Know.

Don't Let Anyone Call You A Minority If You're Black Or Hispanic Or Belong To Some Other Ethnic Group. You're Not Less Than Anybody Else.

I Am A Writer Perhaps Because I Am Not A Talker.

It Is Brave To Be Involved

First Fight. Then Fiddle.

What Shall I Give My Children? Who Are Poor, / Who Are Adjudged The Leastwise Of The Land...

And If Sun Comes / How Shall We Greet Him? / Shall We Not Dread Him, / Shall We Not Fear Him / After So Lengthy A / Session With Shade?

We Real Cool. We Left School. We Lurk Late. We Strike Straight. We Sing Sin. We Thin Gin. We Jazz June. We Die Soon.

Art Is A Refining And Evocative Translation Of The Materials Of The World.

Do Not Be Afraid Of No, Who Has So Far, So Very Far To Go.

I Think There Are Things For All Of Us To Do As Long As We're Here And We're Healthy.

When You Use The Term Minority Or Minorities In Reference To People, You're Telling Them That They're Less Than Somebody Else.

The Poetry Is Myself.

When White And Black Meet Today, Sometimes There Is A Ready Understanding That There Has Been An Encounter Between Two Human Beings. But Often There Is Only, Or Chiefly, An Awareness That Two Colors Are In The Room.

Already I Am No Longer Looked At With Lechery Or Love.

There Are No Magics Or Elves / Or Timely Godmothers To Guide Us. We Are Lost, Must / Wizard A Track Through Our Own Screaming Weed.

I Like The Concentration, The Crush; I Like Working With Language, As Others Like Working With Clay, Or Notes.

There Can Be No Whiter Whiteness Than This One: An Insurance Man's Shirt On Its Morning Run.

My Last Defense / Is The Present Tense.

Live In The Moment

Words Can Do Wonderful Things. They Pound, Purr. They Can Urge, They Can Wheedle, Whip, Whine. They Can Sing, Sass, Singe. They Can Churn, Check, Channelize. They Can Be A "hup Two Three Four." They Can Forge A Fiery Army Of A Hundred Languid Men.

She Was Afraid To Suggest To Him That To Most People, Nothing "happens." That Most People Merely Live From Day To Day Until They Die. That, After He Had Been Dead A Year, Doubtless Fewer Than Five People Would Think Of Him Oftener Than Once A Year. That There Might Even Come A Year When No One On Earth Would Think Of Him At All.

A Writer Should Get As Much Education As Possible, But Just Going To School Is Not Enough; If It Were, All Owners Of Doctorates Would Be Inspired Writers.

Exhaust The Little Moment / Soon It Dies.

Live In The Moment

I Don't Want People Running Around Saying Gwen Brooks's Work Is Intellectual. That Makes People Think Instantly About Obscurity. It Shouldn't Have To Mean That, But It Often Seems To.

Beware The Easy Griefs / That Fool And Fuel Nothing.

To Be In Love Is To Touch Things With A Lighter Hand. In Yourself You Stretch, You Are Well.

As You Get Older, You Find That Often The Wheat, Disentangling Itself From The Chaff, Comes Out To Meet You.

I Think It Must Be Lonely To Be God. Nobody Loves A Master. No.

Nothing Could Stop Mississippi.

At A Certain Moment In Social Proceedings, I Am On Fire To Leave: I Have A Leaving-fit.

I Felt That I Had To Write. Even If I Had Never Been Published, I Knew That I Would Go On Writing, Enjoying It And Experiencing The Challenge.

Live Not For Battles Won. Live Not For The-end-of-the-song. Live In The Along.

I Tell Poets That When A Line Just Floats Into Your Head, Don't Pay Attention 'cause It Probably Has Floated Into Somebody Else's Head.

Abortions Will Not Let You Forget. You Remember The Children You Got That You Did Not Get.

We Are Each Other's Magnitude And Bond.

Reading Is Important - Read Between The Lines. Don't Swallow Everything.

When I Start Writing A Poem, I Don't Think About Models Or About What Anybody Else In The World Has Done.

Poetry Is Life Distilled.

When You Love A Man, He Becomes More Than A Body. His Physical Limbs Expand, And His Outline Recedes, Vanishes. He Is Rich And Sweet And Right. He Is Part Of The World, The Atmosphere, The Blue Sky And The Blue Water.

... Sometimes You Have To Deal / Devilishly With Drowning Men In Order To Swim Them To Shore.

Exhaust The Little Moment. Soon It Dies. And Be It Gash Or Gold It Will Not Come Again In This Identical Guise.

I Know That The Black Emphasis Must Be Not Against White But For Black.

Good Health Is A Duty To Yourself, To Your Contemporaries, To Your Inheritors, To The Progress Of The World.

Do Not Desire To Fit In. Desire To Oblige Yourselves To Lead.

I Believe We Should All Know Each Other, We Human Carriers Of So Many Pleasurable Differences. To Not Know Is To Doubt, To Shrink From, Sidestep Or Destroy.

Truth-tellers Are Not Always Palatable. There Is A Preference For Candy Bars.

Very Early In Life I Became Fascinated With The Wonders Language Can Achieve. And I Began Playing With Words.

Goodness Begins Simply With The Fact Of Life Itself.

I've Always Thought Of Myself As A Reporter.

The Civil Rights Situation Is Like A Pregnancy. It Will Get Worse, I Believe, Before It Gets Better. What The Usual Pregnancy Comes To Is A Decent Baby. That Is What We All Hope Will Be The End Product Of This Stress. It Is Customary, At The End Of A Pregnancy, To Have For Your Pains A Decent Baby.

With Melted Opals For My Milk, Pearl-leaf For My Cracker.

Writing Is A Delicious Agony.

Be Careful What You Swallow. Chew!

African American

Words Of Wisdom

Say To Them, Say To The Down-keepers, The Sun-slappers, The Self-soilers, The Harmony-hushers, "even If You Are Not Ready For Day It Cannot Always Be Night." You Will Be Right. For That Is The Hard Home-run. Live Not For Battles Won. Live Not For The-end-of-the-song. Live In The Along.

The Forties And Fifties Were Years Of High Poet-incense; The Language-flowers Were Thickly Sweet. Those Flowers Whined And Begged White Folks To Pick Them, To Find Them Lovable. Then The '60s: Independent Fire!

I Am An Ordinary Human Being Who Is Impelled To Write Poetry. ... I Still Do Feel That A Poet Has A Duty To Words, And That Words Can Do Wonderful Things, And It's Too Bad To Just Let Them Lie There Without Doing Anything With And For Them.

No Man Can Give Me Any Word But Wait.

It Is Brave To Be Involved. To Be Not Fearful To Be Unresolved.

We Don't Ask A Flower Any Special Reason For Its Existence. We Just Look At It And Are Able To Accept It As Being Something Different From Ourselves.

One Reason Cats Are Happier Than People Is That They Have No Newspapers.

I Shall Create! If Not A Note, A Hole./if Not An Overture, A Desecration.

What, What Am I To Do With All Of This Life?

Even If You Are Not Ready For Day It Cannot Always Be Night.

Life Must Be Aromatic. There Must Be Scent, Somehow There Must Be Some.

I Swear To Keep The Dead Upon My Mind, / Disdain For All Time To Be Overglad.

I Am Interested In Telling My Particular Truth As I Have Seen It.

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