This woman has lost something, yes, but by losing has affirmed that society, not she, is wanting. This rather dismissive and totalizing account of Kathleen Eileen does not jibe with the voice I hear in this poem. Kent, as a woman who 'seems to be a complete loser whose former lover, husband and children afford no rich memories' (Kent 140). , nestled between 'The Lovers of the Poor' and 'A Man of the Middle Class,' the poem speaks from the voice of a woman with two first names: Kathleen Eileen, described by Brooks's unofficial biographer, George E. I read Brooks, I teach Brooks, and yet, it was not until I reached my mid fifties that I seemed to awaken to the power of 'A Sunset of the City.' Included in her 1960 collection The Bean Eaters And yet, I would not call Brooks a very 'personal' poet-she doesn't confess, she doesn't rework old terrors she reports, she observes, she testifies.
I have tried many times to understand Gwendolyn Brooks's power over me-no matter how dark, how dry, how forbidding her landscape, I seem to feel her encouraging hand pulling me in, insisting, nodding, what? To persevere, to keep reading, to be with her in this song.
