19 pages • 38 minutes read
Gwendolyn BrooksTo Be in Love
Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1963A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Further Reading & Resources
Related Poems
“when you have forgotten Sunday: the love story” by Gwendolyn Brooks (1945)
This poem appeared in Brooks’s first collection, A Street in Bronzeville. In this poem, the speaker goes through the little details of their existence with their partner, who seems to have said they have forgotten their love. If the partner can remember these details, which include Sunday or “the bright bedclothes on a Wednesday and a Saturday” (Line 1), then they remember the speaker. This poem is more imagistic than “To Be in Love,” but the idea of the comingled experience and the threat of loss is the same.
“A Lovely Love” by Gwendolyn Brooks (1960)
Poet Amaud Jamaul Johnson discusses the poem and provides a handwritten version of “A Lovely Love” by Gwendolyn Brooks for Poetry Daily, a poem that first appeared in The Bean Eaters (1960). As Johnson points out, this poem is a hybrid sonnet that uses Blues rhythms. Like the free-verse “To Be In Love,” the subject examines the pains and pleasures of love. The speaker here has felt that “you have thrown me, scraped me with your kiss / Have honed me, have released me after this” (Lines 6-7), which bears similarities to the passion and parting of the couple in “To Be in Love.”
“We Real Cool” by Gwendolyn Brooks (1959)
Also published in The Bean Eaters, “We Real Cool” is probably Brooks’s most anthologized poem. It contrasts with “To Be In Love” in its non-romantic focus, its concentrated rhyming form, and its realistic depiction of Chicago’s Black youth. “We Real Cool” shows Brooks’s ability to create a tight rhyme scheme inspired by jazz music. This helps convey the false sense of control the boys in the pool hall have, much as the loose construction of “To Be in Love” conveys the speaker’s feeling of dissolution.
Further Literary Resources
“1994 Gwendolyn Brooks Interview” by B. Denise Hawkins (1994)
This interview took place at James Madison University during the Furious Flower Conference in 1994 when Brooks was 77. Brooks discusses her role as the Black poet with Hawkins, along with her influences and her ties to Chicago. Brooks also reveals her writing process and how it is ever-evolving. She also discusses her winning of the Pulitzer Prize, and that in the moment of the interview, she was by some considered “old-fashioned.”
An Interview with Gwendolyn Brooks by Audrey Cason (1980)
This interview is conducted by Cason in 1980 for Kalliope literary magazine. In it, Brooks talks about the support of her family and her early influences—Langston Hughes and James Weldon Johnson, as well as T. S. Eliot. She also discusses what it means to be a Black poet and her connection to the poets of the Harlem Renaissance and those who came slightly later, such as Richard Wright and Margaret Walker, as well as the responsibility to embrace the entirety of the Black experience.
“Heartbroken? There’s a scientific reason why breaking up feels so rotten” Interview with Florence Williams by Terry Gross (2022)
In this interview for National Public Radio about her book Heartbreak: A Personal and Scientific Journey, science writer Florence Williams details her discoveries regarding the connection between love, heartbreak, and physical pleasure and pain. Her discussion of the physiological processes one experiences in love and during a break-up directly applies to the situation in Brooks’s poem.
“Djed” in World History Encyclopedia by Josh J. Mark (2016)
This entry covers the definition of Egyptian djed, its evolution into a symbol of stability, and its connection with Osiris, the Egyptian god of the underworld. The entry gives a detailed description of the myth of Osiris and explains how the djed is also called “The Column of Gold,” a representation of the god’s spine.
Listen to Poem
In a short essay recorded in 2022 for The Poetry Foundation’s The Slowdown Show, poet Ada Limón discusses the physiological effects of love. Bodily signals match the beloved when in love and then shift during heartbreak. At the three-minute mark, Limón reads Brooks’s poem to exemplify these ideas.
Related Titles
By Gwendolyn Brooks
