Is anyone familiar with those breathtakingly gorgeous "Womanhood" sonnets from Gwendolyn Brooks' Pulitzer-Prize winning Annie Allen--namely "[What shall I give my children who are poor?}?" It's just so lovely that I must need quote the whole sonnet,
What shall I give my children? who are poor,
Who are adjudged the leastwise of the land,
Who are my sweetest lepers, who demand
No velvet and no velvety velour;
But who have begged me for a brisk contour,
Crying that they are quasi, contraband
Because unfinished, graven by a hand
Less than angelic, admirable or sure.
My hand is stuffed with mode, design, device.
But I lack access to my proper stone.
And plenitude of plan shall not suffice
Nor grief nor love shall be enough alone
To ratify my little halves who bear
Across an autumn freezing everywhere.
Oddly enough, I hold the notion that there are not great poems, only poems that move me greatly. This sonnet moves me greatly, and the last two lines make for a magnificent ending. Am I waxing too much over these lines?
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