Gwendolyn Brooks poetry reading and commentary at the University of Iowa, March 4, 1974

Speaker 1: The following was recorded March 4, 1974 as part of the Black Kaleidoscope Three Cultural Series at the University of Iowa. Pulitzer Prize winning poet, Gwendolyn Brooks, will be heard presenting a program of poetry readings and commentary. Introducing Miss Brooks is Darwin Turner, Professor and Chairman of the Department Afro-American Studies at the University of Iowa. Darwin Turner: It's my pleasure this evening to welcome you to another presentation in the Black Kaleidoscope Series, a program which is being co-sponsored these evening by the Afro-American Studies Program and by the University Lecture Series. Judging by the attendance, I need not tell you that our guest reader this evening is Gwendolyn Brooks, a Pulitzer Prize winning poet, or if she will excuse the order in which I prefer it, a Black, a woman, a poet, and a Pulitzer Prize winning poet. Gwendolyn Brooks was born in Topeka, Kansas, reared in Chicago, Illinois where she began to write poetry at the age of seven and not deterred from writing poetry by education in the public schools of Chicago. She continued... Darwin Turner: I should point out there are many residents of Chicago who attend school here. She published her first volume of poetry, A Street in Bronzeville, in 1945. Her second volume, Annie Allen, which appeared in 1949, won the Pulitzer Prize. Since then, she has published nine additional books, including an autobiography, Report from Part One, a novel, Maud Martha. She is presently editor of a new magazine called the Black Position. Now, all of this is very academic. It's the kind introduction that you're accustomed to. And for an ordinary person, I think I'd end at that point, but Gwendolyn Brooks is not an ordinary person. Darwin Turner: In the mid-1960s, a torrid love affair developed between Gwendolyn Brooks and a number of Black poets. A love affair which resulted in part not only in the production of excellent poetry by those poets, but in the preparation of a volume which was dedicated to Gwendolyn Brooks called To Gwen with Love. And perhaps the best introduction that I can make is simply to read parts of two of those poems. One by Dudley Randall who is known as the publisher of Broadside Press. It's called On Getting An Afro For Gwendolyn Brooks. Darwin Turner: She didn't know she was beautiful, though her smiles were dawn, her voice was bells, and her skin deep velvet Night. She didn't know she was beautiful, although her deeds, kind, generous, unobtrusive, gave hope to some, and help to others, and inspiration to us all. And beauty is as beauty does, they say. Then one day there blossomed a crown upon her head, bushy, bouffant, real Afro-down, Queen Nefertiti again. And now her regal wooly crown declares, I know I'm Black AND beautiful. Darwin Turner: And the other from Don L. Lee called An Afterword for Gwen Brooks. Darwin Turner: Knowing here is not knowing her. It's not autograph lines or souvenir signatures and shared smiles. It's not Pulitzer's, poet laureates, or honorary degrees. You see, we ordinary people just know ordinary people. To read Gwen is to be. To experience her in the real is the same. She is her words. More like a fixed part of the world is there, quietly penetrating slow. Gwen. Pour smiles of African rain, a pleasure well-received among uncollected garbage cans and heatless basement apartments. Her voice, the needle for new songs plays unsolicited messages. Ladies and gentlemen, Gwendolyn Brooks. Gwendolyn Brook...: Thank you. Thank you very much. It's a pleasure to be here with you, again, because I visited this campus oh some five years ago. I am very appreciative of such rich tributes, as I just heard from Darwin Turner. But after hearing such things, I always feel like replying, gee whiz. It doesn't sound like me. Well, I have come to distill for you. That is what I believe poetry to be, life distilled. Here is Life Distilled by an author named anonymous. Gwendolyn Brook...: Now I lay me down to rest, to dream about tomorrow's test. If I should die before I wake, at least the test I shall not take. Gwendolyn Brook...: I think that most of you students will agree that that is indeed life distilled. And here is another instance of distillation, somebody else's distillation. This was a 13-year-old named Moral Thirus, a young Chicagoan. Gwendolyn Brook...: Things. I love to hear the things that our world is made of. I love to hear a gypsy singing a tune of love. I like to hear the birds and bees singing and humming around me. I like to hear the wind, singing a forlorn long song to the sea. Even when I die, I think I'd like to see the thousands and thousands of insects, digging their way to me. And even when I die, I know I'd like to hear the insects, or the parasites; munching on my ear. Gwendolyn Brook...: What an authentic love of life is distilled in that even unto the borders of death. And here is a poem Clear Speech by Langston Hughes. Langston Hughes distilled in this way in a dour or I am sure. And this is a word that all my knowledgeable years I have pronounced dour, D-O-U-R, dour. But recently, I heard one of our eminent senators referring to our situation was dour, and I believe he would be an expert in the pronunciation of the word. "I could tell you if I want to what makes me what I am. But I really don't want to and you don't give a damn," said Langston Hughes. Gwendolyn Brook...: I found a very talented young Black girl on the Madison Campus of the University of Wisconsin, and she distilled her Blackness in this way, and you'll understand why I certainly must emphasize Blackness, her Blackness, when you hear. Gwendolyn Brook...: Like most children, I was born on the day my mother couldn't stand it any longer. And all over, people came to see what she had had. Not knowing, of course, that she had had me. When they found that she had had me, they all left, wondering how she could ever have done such a thing. Gwendolyn Brook...: And last in this little segment of other people's distillation is SOS by Imamu Amear Baraka, known to a good many of you I'm sure as LeRoi Jones. Gwendolyn Brook...: Calling Black people, calling all Black people, man, woman, child, wherever you are, calling you. Urgent. Come in, Black people. Come in. Urgent. Calling you. Calling all Black people. Calling all Black people. Come in, Black people. Come on in. Gwendolyn Brook...: Some of you may deplore that amount of repetition, but others of you that I see here will agree with me that that amount of repetition, more than that amount of repetition is terribly necessary. So I proceed to...my own distillation, beginning with my abortion poem. I haven't had any abortions. If I had in this year of frankness and freedom, I would frankly and freely tell you, but I have known a good many women who have had abortions and I'm sure many of you here can say the same, and some of them at least felt as this mother felt about the experience. Sometimes after I have read this poem, people ask me, "Well, how do you really feel about abortions?" Gwendolyn Brook...: And that means, doesn't it, that the poem that approximately failed because you should know how I feel by the time I've reached the end of it. However, I always reply to such questioners as best I can. I say that if I had known that I was going to have a child with six heads or three arms, four legs, something of that sort, I would consider the matter very carefully because I would feel that such a child couldn't make a proper contribution to his society. Gwendolyn Brook...: But right behind there, I insist on saying that I'm very glad that I did not abort my very splendid 33-year-old son who is a contribution to his society in Washington, DC, or my very splendid 22-year-old daughter who's teaching sixth grade, as she sees it, contributingly in Chicago. Gwendolyn Brook...: 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 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. Gwendolyn Brook...: 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 seized 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. Gwendolyn Brook...: 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. Gwendolyn Brook...: Obituary For A Living Lady earned for me a new enemy because Lula did not appreciate my publishing her positives and negatives. Gwendolyn Brook...: When I say Lula to audiences across the country, I always wonder if maybe in one of them Lula may not be sitting. Gwendolyn Brook...: My friend was decently wild as a child. And as a young girl, she was interested in a brooch and pink powder and a curl. As a young woman, though, she fell in love with a man who didn't know. That even if she wouldn't let him touch her breasts, she was still worth his hours. Stopped calling Sundays with flowers. Sunday after Sunday, she put her on clean, gay, (though white) dress. Worried the windows. There was so much silence. She finally decided that the next time she would say "yes." But the man had found by then a woman who dressed in red. My friend spent a hundred weeks or so wishing she were dead. Gwendolyn Brook...: But crying for yourself when you give it all of your time gets tedious after a while. Therefore, she terminated her morning, made for her mouth a sad sweet smile and discovered the country of God. Now she will not dance and she thinks not the thinness of any type of romance. And I can't get her to take a touch of the best cream cologne. However even without lipstick she is lovely and it is no wonder that the preacher (at present) is almost a synonym for her telephone and watches the neutral kind bland eyes that moisten the first few center on Sunday - I beg your pardon - Sabbath nights. And wonders as his stomach breaks up into fire and lights how long it will be before he can, with reasonably slight risk of rebuke, put his hand on her knee. Gwendolyn Brook...: Moving about the country and certainly in Iowa, I see as you see, cowls and horses grazing. And this is a very calming sight. I'm sure you agree. This poem is called Horses Graze. Gwendolyn Brook...: Cows graze. Horses graze. They eat eat eat. Their graceful heads are bowed bowed bowed, in majestic oblivion. They are nobly oblivious to your follies, your inflation, the knocks and nettles of administration. They eat eat eat. And at the crest of their brute satisfaction, with wonderful gentleness, in affirmation, they lift their clean calm eyes and they lie down and love the world. They speak with their companions. They do not wish that they were otherwhere. Perhaps they know that creature feet may press only a few earth inches at a time, that earth is anywhere earth, that an eye may see, wherever it may be, the immediate arc, alone, of life, of love. In Sweden, China, Africa, in India or Maine, the animals are sane; they know and know and know there's ground below and sky up high. Gwendolyn Brook...: I want to introduce you to a darling little boy of my own invention. The Life of Lincoln West. Gwendolyn Brook...: Ugliest little boy that everyone ever saw. That is what everyone said. Gwendolyn Brook...: Even to his mother it was apparent, when the blue-aproned nurse came into the northeast end of the maternity ward bearing his squeals and plump bottom looped up in a scant receiving blanket, bending, to pass the bundle carefully into the waiting mother-hands, that this was no cute little ugliness, no sly baby waywardness that was going to inch away as would baby fat, baby curl, and baby spot-rash. The pendulous lip, the branching ears, the eyes so wide and wild, the vague unvibrant brown of the skin, and, most disturbing, the great head. These components of That Look bespoke the sure fibre. The deep grain. Gwendolyn Brook...: His father could not bear the sight of him. His mother high-piled her pretty dyed hair and put him among her hairpins and sweethearts, dance slippers, torn paper roses. He was not less than these, he was not more. Gwendolyn Brook...: As the little Lincoln grew, uglily upward and out, he began to understand that something was wrong. His little ways of trying to please his father, the bringing of matches, the jumping aside at warning sound of oh-so-large and rushing stride, the smile that gave and gave and gave. Unsuccessful! Gwendolyn Brook...: Even Christmases and Easters were spoiled. He would be sitting at the family feasting table, really delighting in the displays of mashed potatoes and the rich golden fat-crust of the ham or the festive fowl, when he would look up and find somebody feeling indignant about him. Gwendolyn Brook...: What a pity what a pity. No love for one so loving. The little Lincoln loved Everybody. Ants. The changing caterpillar. His much-missing mother. Gwendolyn Brook...: His kindergarten teacher. His kindergarten teacher, whose concern for him was composed of one part sympathy and two parts repulsion. The others ran up with their little drawings. He ran up with his. Gwendolyn Brook...: She tried to be as pleasant with him as with others, but it was difficult. For she was all pretty! All daintiness, all tiny vanilla, with blue eyes and fluffy sun-hair. One afternoon she saw him in the hall looking bleak against the wall. It was strange because the bell had long since rung and no other child was in sight. Pity flooded her. She buttoned her gloves and suggested cheerfully that she walk him home. She started out bravely, holding him by the hand. But she had not walked far before she regretted it. The little monkey. Must everyone look? And clutching her hand like that... Literally pinching it... Gwendolyn Brook...: At seven, the little Lincoln loved the brother and sister who moved next door. Handsome. Well-dressed. Charitable, often, to him. They enjoyed him because he was resourceful, made up games, told stories. But when their More Acceptable friends came they turned their handsome backs on him. He hated himself for his feeling of well-being when with them despite. Everything. Gwendolyn Brook...: He spent much time looking at himself in mirrors. What could be done? But there was no shrinking his head. There was no binding his ears. Gwendolyn Brook...: "Don't touch me!" cried the little fairy-like being in the playground. Gwendolyn Brook...: Her name was Nerissa. The many children were playing tag, but when he caught her, she recoiled, jerked free and ran. It was like all the rainbow that ever was, going off forever, all, all the sparklings in the sunset west. Gwendolyn Brook...: One day, while he was yet seven, a thing happened. In the down-town movies with his mother a white man in the seat beside him whispered loudly to a companion, and pointed at the little Linc. "THERE! That's the kind I've been wanting to show you! One of the best examples of the specie. Not like those diluted Negroes you see so much of on the streets these days, but the real thing. Gwendolyn Brook...: Black, ugly, and odd. You can see the savagery. The blunt blankness. That is the real thing." Gwendolyn Brook...: His mother, her hair had never looked so red around the dark brown velvet of her face, jumped up, shrieked "Go to-" She did not finish. She yanked to his feet the little Lincoln, who was sitting there staring in fascination at his assessor. At the author of his new idea. Gwendolyn Brook...: All the way home he was happy. Of course, he had not liked the word "ugly." But, after all, should he not be used to that by now? What had struck him, among words and meanings he could little understand, was the phrase "the real thing." He didn't know quite why, but he liked that. He liked that very much. When he was hurt, too much stared at, too much left alone, he thought about that. He told himself "After all, I'm the real thing." It comforted him. Gwendolyn Brook...: 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 thing gin. We jazz June. We die soon. Gwendolyn Brook...: This next poem, Ballad of Pearl May Lee, was Langston Hughes' favorite among the poems of mine that he knew. And Langston Hughes was a mischief, as well as an integritist noble. Integritist is my own invented word. The poem I wrote long ago and it contains a couple of naughty words, but you'll forgive me for using them when you understand that they are quotations. As I say, I wrote the poem a long time ago, but many of the little Black sisters that I meet on these campuses tell me that it is still appropriate. Gwendolyn Brook...: Then off they took you, off to the jail, A hundred hooting after. And you should have heard me at my house. I cut my lungs with my laughter, Laughter, Laughter. I cut my lungs with my laughter. Gwendolyn Brook...: They dragged you into a dusty cell. And a rat was in the corner. And what was I doing? Laughing still. Though never was a poor gal lorner, lorner, lorner, Though never was a poor gal lorner. Gwendolyn Brook...: The sheriff, he peeped in through the bars, and (the red old thing) he told you, “You son of a bitch, you're going to hell!” 'Cause you wanted white arms to enfold you, enfold you, enfold you. 'Cause you wanted white arms to enfold you. Gwendolyn Brook...: But you paid for your white arms, Sammy boy, and you didn't pay with money. You paid with your hide and my heart, Sammy boy, for your taste of pink and white honey, honey, honey. For your taste of pink and white honey. Gwendolyn Brook...: Oh, dig me out of my don't-despair. Pull me out of my poor-me. Get me a garment of red to wear. You had it coming surely, surely, surely. You had it coming surely. Gwendolyn Brook...: At school, your girls were the bright little girls. You couldn't abide dark meat. Yellow was for to look at, Black was for the famished to eat. Gwendolyn Brook...: Yellow was for to look at, Black for the famished to eat. You grew up with bright skins on the brain, and me in your Black folks bed. Often and often you cut me cold, and often I wished you dead. Often and often you cut me cold. Often I wished you dead. Gwendolyn Brook...: Then a white girl passed you by one day, and, the vixen, she gave you the wink. And your stomach got sick and your legs liquefied. And you thought till you couldn't think. You thought, you thought, you thought till you couldn't think. Gwendolyn Brook...: I fancy you out on the fringe of town, the moon an owl's eye minding; The sweet and thick of the cricket-belled dark, The fire within you winding... Winding, Winding... The fire within you winding. Gwendolyn Brook...: Say, she was white like milk, though, wasn't she? And her breasts were cups of cream. In the back of her Buick you drank your fill. Then she roused you out of your dream. In the back of her Buick you drank your fill. Then she roused you out of your dream. Gwendolyn Brook...: “You raped me, nigger,” she softly said. (The shame was threading through.) "You raped me, nigger, and what the hell do you think I'm going to do? What the hell, what the hell do you think I'm going to do? Gwendolyn Brook...: "I'll tell every white man in this town. I'll tell them all of my sorrow. You got my body tonight, nigger boy. I'll get your body tomorrow. Tomorrow. Tomorrow. I'll get your body tomorrow." Gwendolyn Brook...: And my glory but Sammy she did! She did! And they stole you out of the jail. They wrapped you around a cottonwood tree. And they laughed when they heard you wail. Gwendolyn Brook...: And I was laughing, down at my house. Laughing fit to kill. You got what you wanted for dinner, but brother you paid the bill. Brother, brother, brother you paid the bill. Gwendolyn Brook...: You paid for your dinner, Sammy boy, and you didn't pay with money. You paid with your hide and my heart, Sammy boy, for your taste of pink and white honey, honey, honey. For your taste of pink and white honey. Gwendolyn Brook...: Oh, dig me out of my don't-despair. Oh, pull me out of my poor-me. Oh, get me a garment of red to wear. You had it coming surely. Surely. Surely. You had it coming surely. Gwendolyn Brook...: Here is an innocent little love poem dedicated to my husband, so that everything in it is perfectly properly. When you have forgotten Sunday: the love story. Gwendolyn Brook...: And when you have forgotten the bright bedclothes on a Wednesday and a Saturday, and most especially when you have forgotten Sunday. When you have forgotten Sunday halves in bed, or me sitting on the front-room radiator in the limping afternoon looking off down the long street to nowhere, hugged by my plain old wrapper of no-expectation and nothing-I-have-to-do and I'm-happy-why? And if-Monday-never-had-to-come. Gwendolyn Brook...: When you have forgotten that, I say, and how you swore, if somebody beeped the bell, and how my heart played hopscotch if the telephone rang; And how we finally went in to Sunday dinner, that is to say, went across the front room floor to the ink-spotted table in the southwest corner to Sunday dinner, which was always chicken and noodles or chicken and rice and salad and rye bread and tea and chocolate chip cookies. Gwendolyn Brook...: I say, when you have forgotten that, when you have forgotten my little presentiment that the war would be over before they got to you; And how we finally undressed and whipped out the light and flowed into bed, and lay loose-limbed for a moment in the week-end bright bedclothes, then gently folded into each other. When you have, I say, forgotten all that, then you may tell, then I may believe you have forgotten me well. Gwendolyn Brook...: I'm always telling groups that I no longer sonnets, although I have written hundreds and hundreds of sonnets. But it seems to me that it is now a sonnet time. I don't know when it was a sonnet time, but it certainly seems to me as though this is not a sonnet time. It seems to me that this is a free versed, a raw ragged undisciplined time. But I think I should offer you at least one sonnet and here is the first in a series called The Children of the Poor. Gwendolyn Brook...: People who have no children can be hard: Attain a mail of ice and insolence: Need not pause in the fire, and in no sense hesitate in the hurricane to guard. And when wide world is bitten and bewarred they perish purely, waving their spirits hence Without a trace of grace or of offense to laugh or fail, diffident, wonder-starred. While through a throttling dark we others hear the little lifting helplessness, the queer Whimper-whine; whose unridiculous Lost softness softly makes a trap for us. And makes a curse. And makes a sugar of the malocclusions, the inconditions of love. Gwendolyn Brook...: Malcolm X is a name that continues to curdle many spines, but I think friend and enemy will agree that this was a man, a man who stood up straight and tall and strode into any confrontations it offered. Gwendolyn Brook...: Original. Hence ragged-round, rich-robust. He had the hawk-man's eyes. We gasped. We saw the maleness. The maleness raking out and making guttural the air And pushing us to walls. And in a soft and fundamental hour A sorcery devout and vertical Beguiled the world. He opened us. Who was a key. Who was a man. Gwendolyn Brook...: And interestingly enough, right next to it, is The Chicago Picasso. And I'm sure many of you have seen our Picasso. And when our mayor asked me to write poem in dedication of the Picasso, I wondered what I should say about such a phenomenon because I had seen pictures of it. Well, I listened to what many people of the people in town were saying. They were quite angry there for a while. They felt, as they said, that Picasso had played a joke on Chicago. And one of our alderman, alderman Hoellen, announced in the press what he would like to see, and I believe he was serious about this, was a huge statue of Ernie Banks in Civic Center Plaza. Gwendolyn Brook...: Well, it seemed to me the people who do not know a great deal about art feel disinclined to cozy up to it, to hug it familiarly. They coldly respect it. They stand off from it, but they'd really rather be doing something else. Gwendolyn Brook...: Does man love art? Man visits art, but squirms. Art hurts. Art urges voyages, and it is easier to stay at home, the nice beer ready. In common rooms we belch, or sniff, or scratch. Are raw. But we must cook ourselves and style ourselves for art, who is a requiring courtesan. We squirm. We do not hug the Mona Lisa. We may touch or tolerate an astounding fountain, or a horse-and-rider. At most, another Lion. Observe the tall cold of a flower which is as innocent and as guilty, as meaningful and as meaningless as any other flower in the western field. Gwendolyn Brook...: A poet is very fortunate when he or she has children because children are always giving you material from which to distill. And when my daughter was 13, she said to me, "I like aloneness, but I don't like loneliness. Aloneness is different from loneliness." So stealing from her, I said, "Aloneness is different from loneliness." Loneliness means you want somebody. Loneliness means you have not planned to stand somewhere with other people gone. Loneliness never has a bright color, perhaps it is gray. Loneliness does not have a lovely sound. It has an under buzz, or it does not have a sound. When it does not have a sound, I like it least of all, but aloneness is delicious. Gwendolyn Brook...: Sometimes aloneness is delicious. Once in a while, aloneness is delicious, almost like a red small apple that is cold, an apple that is small and sweet and round and cold and for just you. Or like loving a pond in summer. There is the soft water looking a little silver dark and kind. You lean most carefully and you like the single picture there. Rest is under your eyes and above your eyes. And your brain stops its wrinkles and is peaceful as a windless pond. You make presence to yourself. Presence of clouds and sunshine and the dandelions that are there. Aloneness is like that sometimes. Sometimes I think it is not possible to be alone. Gwendolyn Brook...: You are with you and pulse and nature keep you company. The little minutes are there building into hours. The minutes that are bricks of days and years. I know another aloneness within it there is someone. Someone to ask until. One who is Mary, Willy, John or James or Joan whose other name is love. Gwendolyn Brook...: Some of you can see this nice distillation of love. It's then illustrated, this little book, by Leroy Foster of Detroit. While I mentioned Malcolm X, and here is another Black hero. When Martin Luther King was assassinated, as many of you may remember, there was a riot in Chicago, and this is surely a temptation to any poet's pen. And I got my particular inspiration for my riot poem when I saw a half page photograph in our Sun Times of young rioters coming down Madison Street in the West Side in Chicago. And they looked assumptive and ununciatory and ready to do something to and/or with the society. Martin Luther King frequently said, "A riot is the language of the unheard." Gwendolyn Brook...: My hero here is John Cabot, and I think that everybody here knows at least one John Cabot. Later, although I'm only going to read the opening poem to you, I did add two poems to the original one. And then I prefaced the ensuing little book with this paragraph from Henry Miller's Sunday After the War. He published this in 1944, 30 years ago. Gwendolyn Brook...: It would be a terrible thing for Chicago if this Black fountain of life should suddenly erupt. My friend assures me there's no danger of that. I don't feel so sure about it. Maybe he's right. Maybe the negro will always be our friend no matter what we do to him. Gwendolyn Brook...: And I thought that was sufficient introduction to a poem called Riot. Gwendolyn Brook...: John Cabot, out of Wilma, once a Wycliffe, all whitebluerose below his golden hair, wrapped richly in right linen and right wool, almost forgot his Jaguar and Lake Bluff; almost forgot Grandtully (which is The Best Thing That Ever Happened To Scotch); almost forgot the sculpture at the Richard Gray and Distelheim; the kidney pie at Maxim's, the Grenadine de Boeuf at Maison Henri. Gwendolyn Brook...: Because the Negroes were coming down the street. Gwendolyn Brook...: Because the Poor were sweaty and unpretty (not like Two Dainty Negroes in Winnetka) and they were coming toward him in rough ranks. In seas. In windsweep. They were Black and loud. And not detainable. And not discreet. Gwendolyn Brook...: Gross. Gross. "Que tu es grossier!" John Cabot itched instantly beneath the nourished white that told his story of glory to the World. "Don't let It touch me! the Blackness! Lord!" he whispered to any handy angel in the sky. But, in a thrilling announcement, on It drove and breathed on him: and touched him. In that breath the fume of pig foot, chitterling and cheap chili, malign, mocked John. And, in terrific touch, old averted doubt jerked forward decently, cried, "Cabot! John! You are a desperate man, and the desperate die expensively today." Gwendolyn Brook...: John Cabot went down in the smoke and fire and broken glass and blood, and he cried "Lord! Forgive these nigguhs that know not what they do." Gwendolyn Brook...: I think I would like to read one long-ish poem. Not too long. It's called The Lovers of the Poor, and I'd like to tell you the background for this poem. When I was awarded the Pulitzer Prize long ago, two of the wealthy stalwarts of the town came seeking me out. And I lived on 91st and Wentworth then and they knocked on the door. And in those days, I was opening the door to anybody who knocked. I don't do that anymore. And if you come to Chicago, I suggest that you be careful too. But I let these ladies in. They were very beautifully dressed, and they were perfumed, and they looked as though life have dealt very decently with them. Gwendolyn Brook...: And they asked me a lot of personal questions, and I very kindly answered them all. Well, I have them placed here in the old Mecca building. I have them coming to the old Chicago Mecca building to do good unto the poor. Gwendolyn Brook...: The Lovers of the poor arrived. The Ladies from the Ladies' Betterment League Arrive in the afternoon, the late light slanting in diluted gold bars across the boulevard brag of proud, seamed faces with mercy and murder hinting here, there, interrupting, all deep and debonair, the pink paint on the innocence of fear; Walk in a gingerly manner up the hall. Cutting with knives served by their softest care, served by their love, so barbarously fair. Whose mothers taught: You'd better not be cruel! You had better not throw stones upon the wrens! Herein they kiss and coddle and assault anew and dearly in the innocence with which they baffle nature. Gwendolyn Brook...: Who are full, sleek, tender-clad, fit, fiftyish, a-glow, all sweetly abortive, hinting at fat fruit, judge it high time that fiftyish fingers felt beneath the lovelier planes of enterprise. To resurrect. To moisten with milky chill. To be a random hitching-post or plush. To be, for wet eyes, random and handy hem. Their guild is giving money to the poor. The worthy poor. The very very worthy And beautiful poor. Perhaps just not too swarthy? Perhaps just not too dirty nor too dim nor passionate. In truth, what they could wish is something less than derelict or dull. Not staunch enough to stab, though, gaze for gaze! God shield them sharply from the beggar-bold! Gwendolyn Brook...: The noxious needy ones whose battle's bald nonetheless for being voiceless, hits one down. But it's all so bad! and entirely too much for them. The stench; the urine, cabbage, and dead beans, dead porridges of assorted dusty grains, The old smoke, heavy diapers, and, they're told, Something called chitterlings. The darkness. Drawn Darkness, or dirty light. The soil that stirs. The soil that looks the soil of centuries. And for that matter the general oldness. Old Wood. Old marble. Old tile. Old old old. Not homekind Oldness! Not Lake Forest, Glencoe. Gwendolyn Brook...: Nothing is sturdy, nothing is majestic, There is no quiet drama, no rubbed glaze, no unkillable infirmity of such A tasteful turn as lately they have left, Glencoe, Lake Forest, and to which their cars Must presently restore them. When they're done With dullards and distortions of this fistic Patience of the poor and put-upon. They've never seen such a make-do-ness as Newspaper rugs before! In this, this "flat," Their hostess is gathering up the oozed, the rich rugs of the morning (tattered! the bespattered...) Gwendolyn Brook...: Readies to spread clean rugs for afternoon. Here is a scene for you. The Ladies look, in horror, behind a substantial citizeness Whose trains clank out across her swollen heart. Who, arms akimbo, almost fills a door. All tumbling children, quilts dragged to the floor and tortured thereover, potato peelings, soft-Eyed kitten, hunched-up, haggard, to-be-hurt. Their League is allotting largesse to the lost. But to put their clean, their pretty money, to put Their money collected from delicate rose-fingers tipped with their hundred flawless rose-nails seems... Gwendolyn Brook...: They own Spode, Lowestoft, candelabra, Mantels, and hostess gowns, and sunburst clocks, Turtle soup, Chippendale, red satin "hangings," Aubussons and Hattie Carnegie. They Winter In Palm Beach; cross the Water in June; attend, When suitable, the nice Art Institute; Buy the right books in the best bindings; saunter on Michigan, Easter mornings, in sun or wind. Oh Squalor! This sick four-story hulk, this fiber With fissures everywhere! Why, what are bringings of loathe-love largesse? What shall peril hungers so old old, what shall flatter the desolate? Gwendolyn Brook...: Tin can, blocked fire escape and chitterling and swaggering seeking youth and the puzzled wreckage of the middle passage, and urine and stale shames and, again, the porridges of the underslung and children children children. Heavens! That was a rat, surely, off there, in the shadows? Long and long-tailed? Gray? The Ladies from the Ladies' Betterment League agree it will be better to achieve the outer air that rights and steadies, to hie to a house that does not holler, to ring Bells elsetime, better presently to cater to no more possibilities, to get away. Perhaps the money can be posted. Perhaps they two may choose another Slum! Gwendolyn Brook...: Some serious sooty half-unhappy home! Where loathe-love likelier may be invested. Keeping their scented bodies in the center of the hall as they walk down the hysterical hall, they allow their lovely skirts to graze no wall, are off at what they manage of a canter, and, resuming all the clues of what they were, try to avoid inhaling the laden air. Gwendolyn Brook...: A Song In the Front Yard has been said by many brilliant critics, and I'm sure that Darwin Turner, who is a brilliant critic, is not among them. This poem has been written on several levels and contains deep significances. I was not aware of this. This is not true. I felt that I was distilling the resentment that brother and I felt when we were children brought in too early we felt of a summer evening behind the front gate by our very careful mother. Gwendolyn Brook...: I've stayed in the front yard all my life. I want a peek at the back Where it's rough and untended and hungry weed grows. A girl gets sick of a rose. Gwendolyn Brook...: 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. Gwendolyn Brook...: 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'll be taken to jail soon or late (On account of last winter he sold our back gate). Gwendolyn Brook...: 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. Gwendolyn Brook...: I am going to offer you a surprise after I have offered you in my personal closing my personal credo. Sometimes it is considered that I am the last Black poet left alive. That is not true. There are many excellent young and old poets, and every once in a while I discover vibrant, vigorous poets on the campuses I visit. And when I have finished reading my last offering, I would like to introduce to you Teddy Gray and Sandy Govan who will read a poem to you, and I think that you will enjoy that. Gwendolyn Brook...: This credo has been oh so helpful to me. It's not a great poem, and indeed I have stolen the title from that very prolific author, anonymous. But it's seen me through many dire days. And I believe that if you want to subscribe to it, you'll find it will be helpful to you. Gwendolyn Brook...: When handed a lemon, make lemonade. I've lived through lemons, sugaring them. When handed a lemon, make lemonade. That is what some sage have said. Handed a lemon, make lemonade. There is always a youth for lemon juice. You can often win if you put sugar in. Do you know what to do with trouble, children? Handed a lemon, make lemonade. Thank you for your attention. Thank you. Thank you. Gwendolyn Brook...: Yes, mm-hmm (affirmative). Where are Teddy Gray and Sandy Govan? Here comes one of them. Darwin Turner: Let me make a brief introduction. Teddy Gray is a student at Luther College and Sandy Govan is a faculty member there. They're visiting briefly to pick up Gwendolyn Brooks and take her away with them this evening. Sandy Govan: To that introduction, I must add that we sort of trapped into it. Our egos got in the way. When asked if we wrote them, we had to say yes. And lo and behold, we got asked to stand by our word, so we did. The poem is called Instant Poem By Request, a creation story in four parts. I'm part one. This is part two, three, and four. Sandy Govan: Muted conversation in a four by four room, the guest, a Black woman, strong with the strength of intelligent flexibility, beautiful, with the beauty of Africa stamped on commanding face, a poet, a presence, commands our attention, our unmuted respect. Met first in a lobby devoid of color, except that which we created. And open and exchanges discovery is made, we are three voyages exploring the physical, perhaps mental wilderness of the Great Midwest. Toured bookshop, formerly designated IMU, applauded surprising variety of holdings translated classics, Black American and African books, new publishing ripoffs on Chicano experience. Sandy Govan: Sanity and faith in man restored. Exit. Travel upward and onward to room 228. Gentle revolutions guide our discussions, spotlight now on world of Black art. John Clark in New York. George Kit in Chicago. Darwin Turner at Iowa City. Nicky Cuts, a new record. Latest collection of African Voices. Don Lee keeps keeping on. Refocus spotlight on Black travelers. Question: do you write? Oh, I fancy myself a critic, says one, but I have been known to write on occasion. The speaker smiled disarmingly, secretly hoping the poet will come by and see her own work later. I write by inspiration and when the mood strikes, says the other, a bold young man with no false provado. Sandy Govan: Would you read for me? Comes the question. Pride, pressure, and ego all jumped together, "Oh, I'd be delighted," beams one. "I'll read anything of anybody you have for me to read," declares the other. "Oh no," says the poet, "read something of your own. I want the world to see young Black poets creating." Slowly, gradually, sinkingly the realization commences. Uh-oh, what have we done this time? Then asked to recall or create afresh. Been issued a challenge, can't let ourselves down, won't let the poet down. Rapid journey across the country, excuse me, across the campus, ignoring the traffic, creating new avenues, hurriedly making our way to the safety of the car. Sandy Govan: Got to think. Need a place to write. Write what? Oh, hey, what have we done? Can we do it? Do what? What do we write? In the car, aimless driving, down dodge across Iowa, up Burlington, passed streets with no names at all. And at this point, I like to tell you, you ought to do something about this city. We think fast. We found this four intersections with no names whatsoever. All right. To get back to the thing. All right. In the car, aimless driving, down dodge across Iowa, up Burlington, passed streets with no names at all. Sandy Govan: Checking out the communities scanning for Black faces seeking some inspiration and seeing a sister alike from a bus and find a smile to help write the next line. The first four lines come easily. The next grind themselves out over plastic dinners and plastic containers with plastic forks and spoons and a plastic union, desperately weeding out some plastic thoughts. To be a Black poet and to write poetry is to what? A range and array of tumultuous language, choose dances, grab current popular bag, reject the current for the intellectual wall, go avant-garde, or be authentic. Authentic may help. That's what it's all about. Sandy Govan: Not to worry about our reception, but to worry about our conception. To be able to truth of the word. The poem will speak. Will reflect the poet. Will be real as we are real, as Blackness is real. End part one, go to part two. Teddy Gray: Part two is dealing with myself as a poet, and I find myself to be a cosmic poet. I, a cosmic poet, cosmic poet, what is that? It is me. I am cosmic because I am here. Only in this strange asymmetrical shell of a form you know as human. My essence of life that which makes me an entity onto myself is my cosmicness. I am infinite. I am timeless, in time, out of time, your time, his time, her time, my time. I am time. I am everywhere and nowhere simultaneously. I am a cosmic poet because I can express this to you, but I am cosmic because I am. Teddy Gray: Second poem. My second one. Well, the third and fourth one has to deal with the polar regions of Black people and in Black poetry and especially of myself as a poet. I find that I have two very extreme regions. One of extreme hatred and one of love and compassion for my own type of people. Teddy Gray: Who am I? Snatched from my mother's womb into a world where I was taught to hate myself. Who am I? Grew up with rats and roaches. Who am I? Taught to love those who hated me. Who am I? I'm a young Black man trying to overcome the bullshit of America. But I am called in the American Dream. Teddy Gray: The last poem is a poem to the beautiful women of new Africa. In the sky, there are many stars that go unnoticed because of the brightest shining ones. Too long have I been looking at these brightest stars. I now long to look at the star that is me and give to me the true lust that it deserves. So beautiful Black woman, in my sky of peace and love, you are the sun.