Happy National Poetry Month! Welcome to the April edition of Blue Heron Speaks. In honor of National Poetry Month, we always shine a spotlight on a voice from the past – someone who can enter our current world and offer up some wisdom through verse. Our featured author this month is renowned poet, Gwendolyn Brooks (1917-2000).

(photo credit: The Poetry Foundation)

There exists in words many doors, many roads, and many fields leading to the open terrain of the human heart. In Gwendolyn Brooks’s poems, we find inner pathways, leading to places of longing, regret, captured reflections, and raw truth. The reader may wander in knowingly, but will never leave unchanged by Ms. Brooks’s ability to leap into what is most difficult – the workings of the mind. She reveals the depths of shadows, which we must all face. Don’t forget the lamplight, which Gwendolyn Brooks leaves on for us. There is light. There is always light.

Visit the Blue Heron Speaks page of our site to read 3 sample poems by Gwendolyn Brooks, and to learn more about her legacy.

“We are each other’s magnitude and bond.”
~Gwendolyn Brooks