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NPM: Gwendolyn Brooks

Lauren

I’m bored with politics. Perhaps it’s papaphobia.

Today’s poet (since I’m apparently following National Poetry Month) is Gwendolyn Brooks, best known for her bluesy poem often featured in high school text books, “We Real Cool.”

I love “The Bean Eaters” because of its quiet tone and use of subtle detail.

They eat beans mostly, this old yellow pair.
Dinner is a casual affair.
Plain chipware on a plain and creaking wood,
Tin flatware.

Two who are Mostly Good.
Two who have lived their day,
But keep on putting on their clothes
And putting things away.

And remembering . . .
Remembering, with twinklings and twinges,
As they lean over the beans in their rented back room that
is full of beads and receipts and dolls and cloths,
tobacco crumbs, vases and fringes.

There’s something desperately somber about this picture, an elderly couple going about the day-to-day monotony surrounded by trinkets of better times past. I’ve always been excited about growing old (strange, enit?) gathering stories and gems of wisdom throughout my life. But this poem reminds that it isn’t always pleasant and, oftentimes, lonely.

6 thoughts on NPM: Gwendolyn Brooks

  1. Quite the contrary–I think this speaks of the comfortable familiarity of the two. Remembering times before and the things and memories collected together. It’s a sweet kind of secret between just the two of them. That is a very sensual, loving feeling.

  2. In context, Brooks often wrote about people living in poverty in the inner city. I believe she was raised in Chicago’s south side. Anyhow, I think this poem speaks of a poverty of sorts, although I agree that there is a level of romantic familiary suggested between the two.

  3. Even more are those who have survived the economic and cultural challenges over an extended period and still remain. They are content.

  4. hmmm…. i don’t really read it as either lonely or comforting, at least not entirely. more, it seems to be evoking a kind of wistful nostalgia – the kind that autumn brings – the sense of life passing, inevitably – & that neither regret nor celebration will change that.

    it also conveys the idea that as you get older, memory becomes ever more something you live within instead of it being something inside you.

    either that or it’s meant to convey that ol’ perennial & frequent poetic theme: “too old to rock’n’roll, too young to die” 😉

  6. I’m actually sort of living that poem. You know, there isn’t loneliness. Maybe missing your child, who grew up long ago, but then you know, both of you miss him the same, so you even share that. When you’re growing old with the love of your life, nothing is better than being there doing what the two of you have always done, which is live together and love each other, unconditionally, all the time. There are other lovely people in our lives, and it’s nice some times to just be alone, but, generally, being with my sweetheart is what I call living. But even poetry can’t communicate it to anyone who doesn’t experience it. And, besides, she’s unique, so nobody but me will ever know what it’s like to grow old with her.

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