The Waste Land by T. S. Eliot (1922)

Gwendolyn Brooks read a variety of writers, from the novelist Richard Wright and the playwright and poet William Shakespeare, to the Modernist poet, playwright, and essayist T. S. Eliot. The Waste Land is one of Eliot’s most famous poems. In the long poem, Eliot tells—or “sings”—about gray, disquieting things, including death, abortion, and many unfulfilled desires. In Brooks’s poem, the speaker who gives voice to woe is a woman, while Eliot’s poem is spoken in the voice of multiple people, including an “old man with wrinkled dugs.” Similar to Eliot, Brooks rejects the typical associations with springtime, as Eliot’s poem links springtime to unhappiness with his famous opening line that announces, “April is the cruellest month.”

“the mother” by Gwendolyn Brooks (1945)

Brooks published “the mother” in her first collection of poems, A Street in Bronzeville (1945). The distinguished writer Richard Wright helped prepare the manuscript, but he did not think Brooks should include the poem due to its main theme: abortion. Brooks went against his advice and kept the poem in the book. The poem itself demonstrates how Brooks, like the so-called crazy woman, was not afraid to address fraught issues.