Rating: 0 out of 5 stars
0 ratings
Loading
MM![]()
author
M.e. Miller
In 1996, I was thirty years of age and I didn’t want to live. Pulitzer Prize
winning poet, Gwendolyn Brooks was 79 and didn’t want to die. She wrote me three times
between 1996 and 1998. Her first...view moreIn 1996, I was thirty years of age and I didn’t want to live. Pulitzer Prize
winning poet, Gwendolyn Brooks was 79 and didn’t want to die. She wrote me three times
between 1996 and 1998. Her first two letters were mostly about poetry. But her final letter was
different and more personal. It was not about similes or metaphors. It was not about style or
meter. It was about life and closure. I tried to decipher a three page letter she mailed to me, but I
was too immersed in my own complicated life to realize what she might have been expressing. I
could not effectively read between the lines.
Gwen was saying goodbye to me and to the world. Soon there would be no more letters from
Gwen. Not to me. Not to anyone. A few years later I read she had passed away. I will take to my
grave most of the thoughts she shared. Gwendolyn was trying to pass a baton of legacy to a new
generation of poets. In 2010, I reached out for it and started running. I am still running.view less