To Be in Love

Gwendolyn Brooks is a central figure in American poetry, with a career that spanned 70 years. Early on she garnered attention from well-established Harlem Renaissance poets James Weldon Johnson and Langston Hughes, with whom she remained friendly until their deaths. Further, she was respected by younger Black writers like Richard Wright, bridging the gap between older writers and younger generations. Her poetry’s honest portrayals of disenfranchised urban communities, impoverishment, and misunderstood women immediately gained praise, making her both popular and renowned from the moment A Street in Bronzeville was published in 1945. The additional acclaim of Annie Allen and its Pulitzer Prize win in 1950 solidified Brooks as a major figure. The honor was also especially notable as Brooks was the first Black woman to win such an award.

Brooks’s ability to discuss desire and disillusionment, as well as their ties to injustice, make her a voice of the city of Chicago, a people, and a generation. “To Be in Love” displays both Brooks’s themes of desire and disillusionment, and her deft mastery of emotion. The poem’s speaker desires their beloved and offers unrelenting devotion. The speaker, however, is also fearful that disillusionment awaits them should they reveal the depths of their devotion to the beloved.