Among the most innovative poets in the United States we find a seat for Gwendolyn Brooks whose uses of form and language as well as her perspicacious evocation of life as she saw it have made her a significant twentieth-century literary figure. In Brooks's poetic corpus readers find an economy of language, apt neologisms, unique turns of phrases, and expansions of genre, all wrought from her sixty eight years as an active poet with numerous awards and honours to match her prolific body of work. Brooks, a post Harlem Renaissance writer, was nonetheless part of the New Negro era, and as a lifetime resident of Chicago participated in the energetic intellectual and artistic life of the Depression era Chicago Group of black writers. Even thou

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First published 27 December 2001

Citation: Jimoh, A Yemisi. "Gwendolyn Brooks". The Literary Encyclopedia. 27 December 2001.
[http://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=4931, accessed 9 February 2010.]