![]() ![]() Brooks’ poem suggests that social progress can be effected not just by protest or action but by thinking, reading, and reflecting. ![]() This long poem was written in the wake of the assassination of Martin Luther King (who provides the poem with its epigraph) in 1968, and the social unrest that followed. ![]() The boy’s act of vandalism is also ‘art’, in a sense, because it is a means of expression. This poem, commissioned for a magazine by Marc Crawford (hence the dedication), is about the cry of despair from many young male Black Americans who have found themselves unable to advance themselves in life. The poem is matter-of-fact as Brooks bids farewell to a family who, despite airs and graces (note the satirical ‘rightful heir to the throne’ used to refer to the African son-in-law), were no better than their neighbours, and whose disappearance from the area, we suspect, nobody mourns. If ‘Kitchenette Building’ is about the conditions in which many Black Americans lived in Chicago during the mid-twentieth century, this short poem is about the end of an era: the African-American woman who once lived in a small home in the neighbourhood has gone, as has her daughter and the daughter’s husband (with the final lines suggesting the daughter was having an affair, or else supporting herself through sex work). ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |