A Life of Gwendolyn Brooks

George E. Kent, Author University Press of Kentucky $19.95 (287p) ISBN 978-0-8131-1659-4

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Completed shortly before the death of University of Chicago professor Kent, this major study of Pulitzer Prize-winning Chicago poet Gwendolyn Brooks ends with the death of her mother in 1978. Based on interviews, correspondence and the poet's private notebooks, the biography examines the change in her verse from the formality and traditionalism of her early work to the later inclusion of ordinary speech, loose rhythms and communal reference points that won her a mass audience. Also noted is Brooks's identification and solidarity with the black struggle and the consequences of blacks' ``strangerhood'' in America. (Sept.)

Reviewed on: 11/28/1989
Release date: 12/01/1989

Paperback - 298 pages - 978-0-8131-0827-8

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