Library Poetry Salon to Discuss Gwendolyn Brooks

The monthly poetry salon at the Abbot Public Library is back in session this Sunday, Sept. 27 at 2 p.m.

For the 2015-16 season, the salon will focus on African-American poets of the 20th and 21st centuries.

The new season will start with a discussion of the poet Gwendolyn Brooks, a highly regarded and much-honored poet. Brooks was the first black author to win the Pulitzer Prize, she also was poetry consultant to the Library of Congress - the first black woman to hold that position - and poet laureate of the State of Illinois. Many of Brooks’s works display a political consciousness, especially those from the 1960s and later, with several of her poems reflecting the civil rights activism of that period.

Brooks once described her style as “folksy narrative,” but she varied her forms, using free verse, sonnets, and other models.

Claire Keyes, Professor Emerita of Salem State University,will lead the discussion at 2 p.m. on Sept. 27 on The Essential Gwendolyn Brooks, edited by Elizabeth Alexander, American Poets Project, the Library of America.

The Abbot Public Library is located at 235 Pleasant Street in Marblehead. For additional information, please call (781) 631-1481 or visit www.abbotlibrary.org.