Poetry Project

GWENDOLYN BROOKS:
Gwendolyn Brooks was born on June 7,1917 Keziah and David Brooks in Topeak, Kansas. When her brother and sister were born thats when Brooks mother discoverd her talent for writing whe she was seven. Gwendolyn's mother encouraged her by showing her many types of literature. But as a child her parents were very strict about her playing with the other kids outside. Later Brooks and her family moved to chicago and attended Hyde park High school which was the leading white school in Chicago. But later transferred to all black wendell phillips High school, Then intergrated to Englewood High school. In 1936 she graduated from Wilson Junior College which gave a better perspective on what to write about in her work. Some of Gwendolyn Brooks greatest work include her first peom ''Eventide" which was published in American Childhood magazine in 1930. A few years later she met James Weldon Johnson and Langston Hughes, who urged her to read modern poetry, especially the work of Ezra Pound, T. S. Eliot, and e. c. cummings who were very great poets.


ALICE WALKER:
Alice walker was born in was born on February 9, 1944, in Eatonton, Georgia, the eighth and last child of Willie Lee and Minnie Lou Grant Walker, who were sharecroppers. When Alice Walker was eight years old, she lost sight of one eye when one of her older brothers shot her with a BB gun by accident. In high school she was valedictorian of her class when she graduated she went to spelman college which was a school for all black women in Atlanta , georgia. After 2 years at spelman she transferred to Sarah Lawrence College in New York. She was awarded for The Color Purple and amoung the other awards she has won like the Lillian Smith Award from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Rosenthal Award from the National Institute of Arts & Letters, a nomination for the National Book Award, a Radcliffe Institute Fellowship, a Merrill Fellowship, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and the Front Page Award for Best Magazine Criticism from the Newswoman's Club of New York. She also has received the Townsend Prize and a Lyndhurst Prize.


EDGAR ALLEN POE:
Edgar Allen Poe was born was born in Boston, January 19, 1809, and he died in the city of Baltimore, October 7, 1849. Edgar was the son of an officer in the Revolutionary army who was educated for law but married a english actress Elizabeth Arnold and had three children. Edgar, the second son, a bright boy was adopted by John Allen, a wealthy man of Richmond. Allen, having no children of his own, became very close to Edgar, and used his wealth freely in educating Allen . At the age of seven he was sent to school at Stoke Newington, near London, where he remained for six years. During the next three years he studied under private tutors, at the residence of the Allen's in Richmond. In 1826 he entered the University of Virginia, where he remained less than a year. In 1833 poe won two prizes of $ 100 each for a tale but after short but successful work on the messenger his old habits returned, he quarreled with his publishers and was dismissed. While in Richmond he married his cousin, Virginia Clem, and in January, 1837, removed to New York. Here he gained a poor support by writing for periodicals. In 1848 his wife died and later was engageg to a lady of considerable fortune .In october he started to New York for wedding plans. But in baltimore was found dead from a night of drinking.


more poets.

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-emily dickinson

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