The Golden Shovel Anthology

New Poems Honoring Gwendolyn Brooks

Terrance Hayes, Peter Kahn, Ravi Shankar, Patricia Smith

• Publisher: University of Arkansas Press
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN: 9781682260951
• eBook ISBN: 9781610756648
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Multicultural Education
• Index: Literature

"The cross-section of poets with varying poetics and styles gathered here is only one of the many admirable achievements of this volume."
—Claudia Rankine in the New York Times

The Golden Shovel Anthology celebrates the life and work of poet and civil rights icon Gwendolyn Brooks through a dynamic new poetic form, the Golden Shovel, created by National Book Award–winner Terrance Hayes.

An array of writers—including winners of the Pulitzer Prize, the T. S. Eliot Prize, and the National Book Award, as well as a couple of National Poets Laureate—have written poems for this exciting new anthology: Rita Dove, Billy Collins, Danez Smith, Nikki Giovanni, Sharon Olds, Tracy K. Smith, Mark Doty, Sharon Draper, Richard Powers, and Julia Glass are just a few of the contributing poets.

This second edition includes Golden Shovel poems by two winners and six runners-up from an international student poetry competition judged by Nora Brooks Blakely, Gwendolyn Brooks's daughter. The poems by these eight talented high school students add to Ms. Brooks's legacy and contribute to the depth and breadth of this anthology.

Contents

1. Cover Page
2. Title Page
3. Copyright Page
4. Contents
5. Foreword
6. Acknowledgments
7. Preface to the Second Edition
8. Introduction
9. The Golden Shovel Terrance Hayes
10. Selected Poems by Gwendolyn Brooks
    1. A Sunset of the City
    2. kitchenette building
    3. Boy Breaking Glass
    4. a song in the front yard
    5. The Bean Eaters
11. The Anniad
    1. After
    2. What There Is to Spend
12. Appendix to the Anniad
    1. Next Time Honey
    2. A Halo for Her Invisible Hair
13. The Artists’ and Models’ Ball
    1. Weather Report
14. An Aspect of Love, Alive in the Ice and Fire
    1. First Summer Song
    2. An Aspect of Love
15. Ballad of Pearl May Lee
    1. Stay, Dear
16. The Ballad of Rudolph Reed
    1. Conjunction
17. The Bean Eaters
    1. Resurrection
    2. The Parrot Man
    3. The Fava Bean-Eaters
    4. At the Evening of Life
    5. Evening
    6. Roadside Diner: Fairfield, Maine
    7. Next to the Flatware
    8. New Year’s Eve in Times Square
18. Beverly Hills, Chicago
    1. Golden Shovel Buddha
    2. Stand Your Ground
    3. September, Chicago
19. The Birth in a Narrow Room
    1. Child Tipping Forever
20. The Blackstone Rangers
    1. What is betrayal but a construct?
    2. The Ache
    3. A Love Jones in a Booming Economy
    4. 1972 ford ltd
    5. FUNERAL Sign
    6. After the Eulogy
    7. Cure and Curry
    8. i. Cecil Park—High as the Swings ii. Dutch Pot Dancing
21. Boy Breaking Glass
    1. Imagine This
    2. Boys Breaking Glass
    3. Asked why I always have to be so negative I
    4. Ornithology
    5. Behind in the Count
    6. Sleeping under Stars
    7. The Second Going
    8. Meadowlands
    9. Opening Ceremonies, 2012
    10. When He Doesn’t Come Home
    11. Boy Breakin...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Foreword
• Acknowledgments
• Preface to the Second Edition
• Introduction
• The Golden Shovel Terrance Hayes
• Selected Poems by Gwendolyn Brooks
• The Anniad
• Appendix to the Anniad
• The Artists’ and Models’ Ball
• An Aspect of Love, Alive in the Ice and Fire
• Ballad of Pearl May Lee
• The Ballad of Rudolph Reed
• The Bean Eaters
• Beverly Hills, Chicago
• The Birth in a Narrow Room
• The Blackstone Rangers
• Boy Breaking Glass
• A Bronzeville Mother Loiters in Mississippi. Meanwhile, a Mississippi Mother Burns Bacon
• Bronzeville Woman in a Red Hat
• The Chicago Defender Sends a Man to Little Rock
• The Chicago Picasso
• The Children of the Poor
• The Coora Flower
• Exhaust the Little Moment. Soon It Dies.
• The Explorer
• First Fight. Then Fiddle.
• Garbageman: The Man with the Orderly Mind
• Gay Chaps at the Bar
• Jessie Mitchell’s Mother
• Kitchenette Building
• The Last Quatrain of the Ballad of Emmett Till
• The Life of Lincoln West
• A Light and Diplomatic Bird
• A Lovely Love
• The Lovers of the Poor
• A Man of the Middle Class
• Mentors
• The Mother
• My Dreams, My Works, Must Wait till after Hell
• My Own Sweet Good
• The Near-Johannesburg Boy
• Negro Hero
• Of De Witt Williams on His Way to Lincoln Cemetery
• Of Robert Frost
• Old Mary
• One Wants a Teller in a Time like This
• A Penitent Considers Another Coming of Mary
• Primer for Blacks
• Pygmies Are Pygmies Still, Though Percht on Alps
• Queen of the Blues
• Riders to the Blood-Red Wrath
• Riot
• The Rites for Cousin Vit
• Sadie and Maud
• The Second Sermon on the Warpland
• The Sermon on the Warpland
• A Song in the Front Yard
• The Sonnet-Ballad
• Speech to the Young, Speech to the Progress-Toward
• Still Do I Keep My Look, My Identity
• Strong Men, Riding Horses
• The Sundays of Satin-Legs Smith
• A Sunset of the City
• Throwing Out the Flowers
• To An Old Black Woman, Homeless, and Indistinct
• To Be In Love
• To Black Women
• To the Young Who Want to Die
• Truth
• The Vacant Lot
• We Real Cool
• When You Have Forgotten Sunday: The Love Story
• XV
• You Did Not Know You Were Afrika
• Young Afrikans
• Non-Brooks Golden Shovels
• Variation and Expansions on the Form
• The Golden Shovel Poetry Prize
• Afterword
• Title Index
• Author Index