As reported in the Chicago Daily News, sister publication of the Chicago Sun-Times:
Long after Gwendolyn Brooks won a Pulitzer Prize in 1945 for her poetry collection, “A Street in Bronzeville,” Chicagoans still lauded her talents and looked forward to her latest endeavors.
In July 1961, M.W. Newman of the Chicago Daily News caught up with the prolific poet in her home on the South Side as part of an ongoing series on “Chicago’s cultural icons.”
Newman wrote that Brooks, who lived on South Evans Avenue in Park Manor with her husband and two children, “always tries to write in a way that ordinary people can understand.”
“If the audience for poetry has fallen off, it’s partly the poets’ fault,” Brooks told her.
During the interview, Brooks read one of her best-known poems, “We Real Cool,” which had been released the previous year in “The Bean Eaters.”
“The soft-voiced Miss Brooks read with a strong rhythmic beat,” Newman wrote.
When a listener remarked that the poem sounded jazz-like, Brooks replied, “No, no, but that’s what many people say about it, at that.”
