Recording Now Available of Gwendolyn Brooks Reading Her Poetry

Gwendolyn Brooks's only solo album, Gwendolyn Brooks Reading Her Poetry (Caedmon Records, 1968), is the topic at hand in a new blog post from Brandon Wilner. Caedmon, an entirely women-run operation and "one of the most prominent U.S. publishers of literary albums," selected Brooks because "she was one of the most celebrated poets of the label's heyday," says Wilner. More:

The record features Brooks reading poems spanning her career at that point: A Street In Bronzeville, the Pulitzer-winning Annie Allen, The Bean Eaters, Don L. Lee's magazine Black Expression, and her then-new book In the Mecca. For me the most exciting inclusion is "Riot," the first section of her chapbook-length poem of the same name, which before acquiring this record I had not heard her read. She wrote RIOT in response to the uprisings that took place across the city of Chicago following the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr.

This section of the poem imagines the Italian explorer John Cabot being so appalled at the behavior he finds in the United States that he cannot focus on the luxuries of his home continent: the Jaguar he drives around a Chicago suburb, a favorite dish at Maxim's. He is subsumed by the rioting mass and cries out to god asking for their forgiveness. He does not appear in the other two sections of the poem, and "An Aspect of Love, Alive in the Ice and Fire" and "The Third Sermon on the Warpland." These other parts do not appear on the record, although the precursor sonnet-and-then-some "Sermon on the Warpland" does.

Wilner has also done the world a favor by digitizing the album—read more about it here!