if you wanted a poem wrote gwendolyn brooks you only had to look out of a window there was material always walking or running fighting or screaming or singing from the life of chicagos south side she made a forceful and passionate poetry that fused modernist aesthetics with africanamerican cultural tradition a poetry that registered the life of the streets and the upheavals of the 20th century starting with a street in bronzeville 1945 her epochmaking debut volume the essential gwendolyn brooks traces the full arc of her career in all its ambitious scope and unexpected stylistic shiftsher formal range writes editor elizabeth alexander is most impressive as she experiments with sonnets ballads spirituals blues full and offrhymes she is nothing short of a technical virtuoso that technical virtuosity was matched by a restless curiosity about the life around her in all its explosive variety by turns compassionate angry satiric and psychologically penetrating gwendolyn brookss poetry retains its power to move and surprise