Poet Gwendolyn Brooks was born on this day in Topeka, Kansas, in 1917. Brooks published more than twenty poetry collections, as well as a novel and two volumes of autobiography. She was the first African American author to receive a Pulitzer Prize, which she was awarded for her second collection, Annie Allen (1949). Her most famous poem is “We Real Cool” (she reads it wonderfully here), which originally appeared in the September 1959 edition of Poetry. I’m especially fond of “The Rites for Cousin Vit,” a sonnet from Annie Allen:

The Rites for Cousin Vit 

Carried her unprotesting out the door
Kicked back the casket-stand. But it can’t hold her,
That stuff and satin aiming to enfold her,
The lid’s contrition nor the bolts before.
Oh oh. Too much. Too much. Even now, surmise,
She rises in sunshine. There she goes
Back to the bars she knew and the repose
In love-rooms and the things in people’s eyes.
Too vital and too squeaking. Must emerge.
Even now, she does the snake-hips with a hiss,
Slaps the bad wine across her shantung, talks
Of pregnancy, guitars and bridgework, walks
In parks or alleys, comes haply on the verge
Of happiness, haply hysterics. Is.