Gwendolyn Brooks

Gwendolyn Brook’s “A Song in the Front Yard” is a poem in which danger is the central theme. “The front yard” is symbolic of a place of safety, while “the back yard” refers to a life of danger. The narrator states that she has always lived in the front yard and appears to have grown bored with the front yard and wishes to visit the back yard.

                                “I’ve stayed in the front yard all my life

                                  I want to peek at the back

                                  Where it’s rough and untended and hungry and weed grows.

                                  A girl gets sick of a rose.” (Lines 1-4)

The narrator even disregards her mother’s sneers at the “back yard” and the “wonderful things” (line 10) that take place there. The narrator seems to hold the mentality that the grass is greener in the back yard.  “Sadie and Maud” is another work of Brooks, and I found this poem quite amusing. The primary theme contained in this poem is that wealth and education is  always the key to success. Muad attends college; Sadie does not, thus “scrapping” by life: “Sadie scraped life/ With a fine toothed comb./ She didn’t leave a tangle in/ Her comb found every strand.” (2-4). Sadie appears to have a hard life. Everything that could go wrong seems to happen in her life, but Sadie doesn’t let it get her down. She still lives her life, and all the while smiling. Sadie then has two children out of wedlock, and the reader can conclude that the father was not in the picture: “Sadie bore two babies/ Under her maiden name” (10-11). Her parents were ashamed of the circumstances which their grandchildren were born under, but it not matter to Sadie; she was happy.  And when Sadie passed away, her children were with her and although she had nothing to pass down except her fine-toothed comb (which could also be interpreted as her good nature), she was fortunate enough to be surrounded by loved ones. Maud, who went to college and was well-educated, is all alone.