She’s a woman.
She’s black.
Moreover, she’s a poet.
What else could destiny give as other blessing&pain to a person?
It would be nice to ask this question to Gwendolyn Brooks, an African American poet born in Kansas and grown up in the Chicago of the early decades of 20th Century. She was shy and silent, though a talented writer since the age of seven.
She was the first afro American writer who won the Pulitzer prize for poetry, J. F. Kennedy read publically one of her poetries and she also was a teacher of creative writing in the most prestigious Colleges of USA.
Though, her sensibility, her attention to social issues and the black people conditions and inequalities, influenced the style and writing, though the apparently easy way to success.
We can see It, for instance, in the short e direct lines of the poem My Dreams, My Works, Must Wait Till After Hell.
In this poem she seems to be aware of having precious and sweet things in front of her (honey and bread). But she has to store it while waiting to be able to enjoy them (again). Now she can’t, because she feels incomplete though hungry. Her disappointment doesn’t allow her to live fully, but keeps her still on her regrets.
She’s aware she must just wait for her hurt not to pain anymore. The adult poet knows it is possible, but waiting s painful.
That’s something we can read in the last lines.
On such legs as are left me, in such heart
As I can manage, remember to go home,
My taste will not have turned insensitive
To honey and bread old purity could love.
She knows that when the disappointment will stop hunting her mind, she’ll be able to taste the honey and love again.
I hold my honey and I store my bread
In little jars and cabinets of my will.
I label clearly, and each latch and lid
I bid, Be firm till I return from hell.
I am very hungry. I am incomplete.
And none can give me any word but Wait,
The puny light. I keep my eyes pointed in;
Hoping that, when the devil days of my hurt
Drag out to their last dregs and I resume
On such legs as are left me, in such heart
As I can manage, remember to go home,
My taste will not have turned insensitive
To honey and bread old purity could love.
