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Gwendolyn BrooksA modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
“A Bronzeville Mother Loiters” is written in free verse, meaning that Brooks does not adhere to any specific formal or metrical rules. Although the poem alludes to the ballad form—which is often rhymed and written in quatrains—“A Bronzeville Mother Loiters” is not written in quatrains or rhymed. In a particularly postmodern twist on form and meter, Brooks’s primary concern with the ballad form in this poem is its deconstruction. The poem is structured conceptually so that the ballad form is referenced and cast at the beginning, then is slowly deconstructed, in content and form, throughout the remainder of the poem. Even as the speaker sets up the rules and archetypes of the ballad, Brooks deconstructs the speaker’s view by purposefully avoiding set line lengths and rhymes, choosing instead to structure the poem formally around symbols and allusions.
Brooks’s poem is built upon allusions to the ballad form, and the ultimate falsehood of the speaker’s fantasy is wrapped in the trappings of romance. In order to fully analyze the speaker’s mindset, Brooks has to set-up the ballad allusion and then deconstruct it to illustrate its inability to live up to the brutality and violence of Emmett Till’s murder.
By Gwendolyn Brooks
A Sunset of the City
A Sunset of the City
Gwendolyn Brooks
Boy Breaking Glass
Boy Breaking Glass
Gwendolyn Brooks
Cynthia in the Snow
Cynthia in the Snow
Gwendolyn Brooks
Maud Martha
Maud Martha
Gwendolyn Brooks
my dreams, my works, must wait till after hell
my dreams, my works, must wait till after hell
Gwendolyn Brooks
Speech to the Young
Speech to the Young: Speech to the Progress-Toward (Among them Nora and Henry III)
Gwendolyn Brooks
The Ballad of Rudolph Reed
The Ballad of Rudolph Reed
Gwendolyn Brooks
The birth in a narrow room
The birth in a narrow room
Gwendolyn Brooks
The Blackstone Rangers
The Blackstone Rangers
Gwendolyn Brooks
The Chicago Defender Sends a Man to Little Rock
The Chicago Defender Sends a Man to Little Rock
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The Crazy Woman
The Crazy Woman
Gwendolyn Brooks
The Lovers of the Poor
The Lovers of the Poor
Gwendolyn Brooks
The Mother
The Mother
Gwendolyn Brooks
the rites for Cousin Vit
the rites for Cousin Vit
Gwendolyn Brooks
To Be in Love
To Be in Love
Gwendolyn Brooks
To The Diaspora
To The Diaspora
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Ulysses
Ulysses
Gwendolyn Brooks
We Real Cool
We Real Cool
Gwendolyn Brooks