21 pages • 42 minutes read
Gwendolyn BrooksThe Lovers of the Poor
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
“The Bean Eaters” by Gwendolyn Brooks (1963)
Like “The Lovers of the Poor,” “The Bean Eaters” relies on the motif of food. Beans are mentioned in both poems. In “The Lovers of the Poor,” the rich ladies are disgusted by the smell of “cabbage and dead beans” (Line 33), as well as other food items, dirt, and human waste in the home of the poor. However, “The Bean Eaters” focuses solely on beans. This humble meal illuminates how the old couple lives or what the everyday experience of being poor truly is. Unlike the ladies in “The Lovers of the Poor,” the speaker of “The Bean Eaters” is sympathetic to the poor.
“We Real Cool” by Gwendolyn Brooks (1959)
This is Brooks’s most famous poem. It has a jazz influence in its rhythm, and mentions “Jazz” in Line 9. Its short lines, and short number of total lines, make “We Real Cool” look and very different from “The Lovers of the Poor.” Rather than a satirical look at class relations, “We Real Cool” is a glimpse into the experiences of rebellious teenagers at a pool hall. Both poems utilize rhyme, but “We Real Cool” follows a consistent rhyming pattern, while “The Lovers of the Poor” does not maintain a consistent rhyme scheme.
“Dim Lady” by Harryette Mullen (2002)
Gwendolyn Brooks and Harryette Mullen are often discussed in tandem by academic scholars. “Dim Lady” is a retelling of one of Shakespeare’s dark lady sonnets (Sonnet 130). In both Shakespeare’s original poem and in Mullen’s revision of it, the white ideal of beauty that also appears in “The Lovers of the Poor” is questioned. The term “dim,” which appears in Mullen’s poem title also appears in Line 25 of Brooks’s poem. Brooks uses the word to refer to both lighting and on a sub-textual level, skin tone, while Mullen is more overt in her use of it to explicitly refer to skin tone.
Further Literary Resources
This extensive report on the Chicago Black Renaissance was prepared by Heidi Sperry, Susan Perry, Terry Tatum, and Brian Goeken for the George Cleveland Hall Branch of the Chicago Public Library. It includes extensive research and is illustrated with many photographs that provide context about the era and movement in which Brooks wrote “The Lovers of the Poor.”
This page includes a biography of Brooks, as well as links to audio recordings of her reading poetry and prose, and others reading her poetry. The related materials included on the site also contains a rare digitized poster version of “We Real Cool,” paired with her reading of the poem. This combined visual and auditory performance illustrates the complexity of the Chicago Black Renaissance and the power of contradiction, as the illustrated poem appears as white gaps in black brushed paint.
“Gwendolyn Brooks - Bio” (2022)
This site includes a more detailed biography of Brooks than the Library of Congress. It also hosts links to several of her poems. The biography included in this resource locates Brooks in different parts of Chicago throughout her life, which can be compared on a map to Michigan Street and the Art Institute, geographically locating elements from the space of the poem.
Listen to Poem
This is a 1985 audio recording of Brooks reading her poetry at the Coolidge Auditorium in the Library of Congress. “The Lovers of the Poor” starts at 23:50.
Related Titles
By Gwendolyn Brooks
