In the following essay, Lindberg discusses Brooks's artistic development, critical reception, and identity as a spokesperson for African-American women. According to Lindberg, Brooks sought to overcome "the double bind of a black woman artist who would be heard as something other than victim of or exile from her race and class."

In the following essay, Taylor offers an overview of Brooks's poetry, artistic development, and critical interpretation.

In the following essay, Christian examines the social context and presentation of Maud Martha. According to Christian, Brooks's "emphasis on the black girl within the community is a prefiguring of black women's novels of the sixties and seventies, which looked at the relationship between the role of women in society and the racism that embattled the black community."

In the following essay, Washington discusses the critical reception of Maud Martha and the suppressed rage, self-loathing, and reticence displayed by Brooks's autobiographic heroine.

In the following essay, Miller examines the major themes and structure of In the Mecca. According to Miller, Brooks draws upon Anglo-American poetry, Judeo-Christian myth, and folklore to explore the paradox of the American Dream within the context of African-American experience.

In the following essay. Tate examines the form, structure, and heroine of Annie Allen. As Tate notes, Brooks presents "an emotionally charged satirical comment about the tragedy of a woman's inactive life, a tragedy compounded by racial prejudice."

In the following essay, Mootry discusses the appropriation of folk ballad and blues conventions in Brooks's poetry. "While, on the surface, these folk elements make her poetry more accessible to the reader," writes Mootry, "a closer examination reveals insinuations and refinements of technique that augment the complexity so characteristic of her work."

In the following essay, Clarke examines the significance of ambiguity, indeterminacy, and postmodern subjectivity in In the Mecca. According to Clarke, "'In the Mecca' is an enunciation of place, fragmentation, despair, death, and a frantic splitting of the narrative strategies of showing and telling."

In the following essay, Spillers examines the form, language, and unassuming subjects of Brooks's poetry. "The style of Brooks's poetry," writes Spillers, "gives us by implication and example a model of power, control, and subtlety."

In the following essay, Hansell examines political themes and aspirations in the "second period" of Brooks's poetry. According to Hansell, Brooks "dramatically portrays the black poet's role in the revolution which is intended to bring about a rededication to American ideals."

In the following review, Baker offers an overview of Brooks's poetry and favorable evaluation of Blacks.

Miss Brooks writes tense, complex, rhythmic verse that contains the metaphysical complexities of John Donne and the word magic of Appollinaire, Eliot, and Pound…. [Her style], however, is often used to explicate the condition of the black American trapped behind a veil that separates him from the white world. What one seems to have is "white" style and "black" content—two warring ideals in one dark body. (p. 43) The real duality appears when we realize that Gwendoly...

More than twenty-five years ago, in 1950, Gwendolyn Brooks listed three "impressive advantages" possessed by black poets: subjects that are "moving, authoritative and humane"; "great drive"; and "inspiriting emotion, like tied hysteria." She voiced her fear, however, that precisely because of these advantages, the poets might yield to the temptation to substitute them, with "no embellishment, no interpretation, no subtlety," for artȂ...

In the following review, Brown offers positive evaluation of Beckonings.

Gwendolyn Brooks once said in an interview that she wrote poetry because she liked "working with language, as others like working with paints and clay, or notes."… Her skill in shaping and modulating her words is apparent in one of the finest twentieth-century sonnets, "Piano After War," in which diction, imagery, and the sonnet form are used with consummate craft and artistry. The octave of the poem depicts in selected detail a piano recital which, for the narrator, reviv...

Prior to 1967, Miss Brooks' poetry was widely heralded for its lyricism and technical virtuosity. But, when a critic of the stature of J. Saunders Redding favorably compared Annie Allen to a work by Cellini …, he was actually saying many things: First, that she had successfully become a luxury, to be savored by an élite whose training and money afforded them the leisure to peruse her; and second, that she had, with equal success, imposed one of the finest sensibilities of the twentieth ...

Beckonings exemplifies Brooks' movement toward her new style, which is characterized by a struggle between her normal tendency to make each word bear its full measure of weight and suggestion and an insistence upon directness and simplicity of diction. Actually, despite her reputation for complexity, there are already many poems across the body of her work which are simple and direct. A Street in Bronzeville contains a large number of simple poems, some of which become favorites with readers. I would...