Dec 23, 2009

First Fight. Then Fiddle | First Fight. Then Fiddle

At a glance:

Author: Gwendolyn Brooks
First Published: 1949
Type of Work: Sonnet
Genres: Poetry, Sonnet

The Poem

Gwendolyn Brooks’s “First Fight. Then Fiddle” is a sonnet that advocates the use of militancy to make the environment safe for art to flourish. The poem is the fourth sonnet in the sequence “children of the poor” in the “The Womanhood” section of Annie Allen (1949) and uses the persona of a black mother whose meditations on her fears, concerns, and hopes about her children lead to, in the poet’s own words, “preachments” to negotiate the pitfalls and dead ends they would face. “First Fight. Then Fiddle” can be better understood when...

[The entire page is 1487 words long]

First Fight. Then Fiddle | First Fight. Then Fiddle

At a glance:

The Poem

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