The Bean Eaters

Gwendolyn Brooks, author of the poem "We Real Cool," is interesting to me, mostly because I'd never heard of her before this class This is not to say that I know all of the poets, but that I hope to learn more about highly influential ones. 

After doing a little bit of outside research on Brooks, I found that she wrote about the civil rights movement, that she was the first African American to win the Pulitzer Prize, and also was the first African American to become the laureate for Congress. This is inspiring to me because she fought with her words but also helped to picture the lives of urban, African Americans (Poetry Foundation). 

An article on Brooks from the Poetry Foundation notes that Langston Hughes said “the people and poems in Gwendolyn Brooks’ book are alive, reaching, and very much of today” (Poetry Foundation). This is very much true in one of my new favorites of her works, "The Bean Eaters". 

The characters in this poem are not only characters, even when the poem only tells us they are "Mostly Good" (5). But the list of things scattered on the table breathes life into this snapshot to speak of material items that are of little worth in the world around them, but things that nevertheless evoke memories and emotion for them.

I relate to the feeling and emotions of this poem and appreciate that these things are established without explicitly talking about what they are feeling. This poem is one of my new favorites. I hope to study more of her work and find new poets that I enjoy.