The opening lines of Gwendolyn Brooks’s epic “The Anniad” are, like the rest of the poem, deceptively uncomplicated. “Think of sweet and chocolate,” she writes: Left to folly or to fate, / Whom the higher gods forgot, / Whom the lower gods berate; / Physical and underfed / Fancying on the featherbed / What was never and is notThe poem, published in 1950, sweeps through the life of Annie Allen, an ordinary black girl who dreams of finding happiness and attaining self-consciousness in 43 stanzas. At the same time, Brooks details the social conditions that ensure Annie’s dreams remain unrealized, …read more
Source: The New Republic
