I Know That The Black Emphasis Must

Books Are Meat And Medicine And Flame And Flight And Flower Steel, Stitch, Cloud And Clout, And Drumbeats On The Air.

What I'm Fighting For Now In My Work... For An Expression Relevant To All Manner Of Blacks, Poems I Could Take Into A Tavern, Into The Street, Into The Halls Of A Housing Project.

What, What Am I To Do With All Of This Life?

I Don't Want People Running Around Saying Gwen Brooks's Work Is Intellectual. That Makes People Think Instantly About Obscurity. It Shouldn't Have To Mean That, But It Often Seems To.

As You Get Older, You Find That Often The Wheat, Disentangling Itself From The Chaff, Comes Out To Meet You.