Mass Media?

I found much of Gwendolyn Brooks’ poetry to be extremely interesting in its varied form, content, and time. Her poem “the Mother” was particularly different than other ‘mother’ poems we have read so far and also connected with the piece we read by Hortense Spillers in a unique way. I also found her commentary on the Civil Rights movement, black pride and the leaders of this time period particularly interesting and felt that she covered an enormous amount of space and issues in very short, descriptive writing. Her form, diction and content choices seemed in particular parallel.

The final thing that struck me about Brooks was the mention in her bio about how she strove to keep her books short, small and cheap so as to be affordable to the black community. It was interesting to read this because while many of the poets we have read so far may have had similar goals (publishing in papers and other mass-media forms) we have yet to hear a literary author with similar considerations of her audience. I wonder then, how successful she was in this drive to appeal to a larger audience? Did they buy her stuff? Did they like it? How did the influence the world of African American thought and the future generations writing on similar issues?