1917-2000
Poet

Gwendolyn Brooks, the first African American to receive the Pulitzer Prize, is recognized today as one of America's most gifted writers. Brooks received the Prize in 1950, for her second collection of poems, Annie Allen. Her love of poetry began at an early age and she began writing poems or as she said, "putting rhymes together", when she was seven. Brooks' first book of poems, A Street in Bronzeville, published in l945, grew out of her experiences living in Chicago, after World War II. In l968, Brooks was appointed Poet laureate of Illinois, a post that she would hold until her death on December 3, 2000. Gwendolyn Brooks was a masterful artist who left a momentous treasure behind to enrich our lives for generations to come. The poet, Sonia Sanchez, writes: "...Each time I read Miss Brooks, each time I revisit her poems, they climb up on my knees and sit in tight contentment. They speak to me of form and color, patterns and dawns. They talk of myths; they tell me where the flesh lives; where a troop of young heroes and sheroes "lean back in chairs, beautiful. Impudent. Ready for life."

The poem, "We Real Cool", is one of Brooks' most anthologized poems:

We Real Cool
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.