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“TRUTH” POET GWENDOLYN BROOKS

“TRUTH” POET GWENDOLYN BROOKS. BY: Jarrett Smullen. BIOGRAPHY OF GWENDOLYN BROOKS. She was born on June 7, 1917 in Topeka, Kansas--the first child of David and Keziah Brooks. She was the first black author to win the Pulitzer Prize.

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“TRUTH” POET GWENDOLYN BROOKS

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  1. “TRUTH” POET GWENDOLYN BROOKS BY: Jarrett Smullen

  2. BIOGRAPHY OF GWENDOLYN BROOKS • She was born on June 7, 1917 in Topeka, Kansas--the first child of David and Keziah Brooks. • She was the first black author to win the Pulitzer Prize. • She was thirteen when her first poem,“Eventide” was published and seventeen when Chicago Defender, the newspaper in Chicago, was publishing her poems often.

  3. BIOGRAPHY OF GWENDOLYN BROOKS • She once described her style as "folksy narrative," but she varied her forms, using free verse, rhythm and sonnets. • In 1945 her first book of poetry, “A Street in Bronzeville” was published. • She was selected by the National Endowment for the Humanities as the 1994 Jefferson Lecturer, the highest award in the humanities given by the federal government.

  4. TRUTHLiterary Analysis The fear of truth is essentially the main idea of the poem. She personifies truth as harsh. The truth is not pleasant and on our consciousness. At a time spent in ignorance, people will generally wish for the “sun” or truth. Not knowing the truth is more comfortable. If you make up your own truth, you can never be hurt. Brooks uses shade and shelter as a comfortable ignorance. Although people want the truth, they are afraid of it when it actually comes. Two statements can be applied to this poem: “The truth hurts” and “Ignorance is bliss.”

  5. TRUTHPoem’s Structure This poem uses the sun as a metaphor for the truth, shade and shelter and the unawareness or the ignorance that people have about the truth. In this poem, the speaker is saying how the truth can hurt and how people continue to run and hide from it. The sun is the light (truth) for a dark world (ignorance).

  6. LITERARY & POETIC ELEMENTS Mrs. Brooks liked to use metaphors and personification to expand the meaning of her poems. Although Mrs. Brooks’spoems depict black life, her themes are universal.

  7. LITERARY & POETIC ELEMENTS Poetic forms that are often used are sonnet, the ballad, the blues and free verse.

  8. WORKS CITED • https://www.english.illinois.edu/maps/poets/a_f/brooks/life.htm‎ • https:// www.poetryfoundation.org › Poems & Poets • https://www.google.com/search?q=gwendolyn+brooks/ images • http://www.enotes.com/topics/gwendolyn-brooks/critical-essays

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