The Poetry of Gwendolyn Brooks has been praised for deepening the significance of personal and social experiences so that these experiences become universal in their implication. She has also been praised for her "sense of form, which is basic and remarkable." Many of her poems are concerned with a Black community named Bronzeville, on the south side of Chicago. Her literary skill makes Bronzeville more than just a place on a map. This community, like all important literary places (Robinson s Tibury Town and Masters Spoon River, for example), becomes a testing ground of personality, a place where the raw material of experience is shaped by imagination and where the joys and trials of being human are both sung and judged. The qualities for which Brooks s poetry is led are (as one critic has pointed out) "boldness, invention, a daring to experiment, and a naturalness that does not scorn literature but absorbs it."
Her love for poetry began early. At the age of seven. she "began to put rhymes together," and when she was thirteen, one of her poems was published in a children s magazine. During her teens she contributed more than seventy-five poems to a Chicago newspaper. In 1941 she began to attend a class in writing poetry at the South Side Community Art Center, and several years later, her poems began to appear in Poetry and other magazines. He first collection of poems, A Street in Bronzeville, was published in 1945. Four years later, Annie Allen, her second collection of poems, appeared. In 1950 Annie Allen was awarded a Pulitzer prize for poetry. A novel, Maud Martha, about a young black girl growing up in Chicago, published in 1953, was praised for its warmth and insights. In 1963 her 0selected Poems appeared.
11. The main subject of the passage is Gwendolyn Brooks s _____. [A] personal background [B] hometown [C] literary achievements [D] childhood
12. Why does the author mention Tibury Town and Spoon River? [A] To give credit to tow great writers. [B] To provide examples of important literary places. [C] To suggest similarities between Brooks s style and that of other writers. [D] To encourage the reader to read Robinson and Masters.
13. The author uses quotations in the first paragraph primarily to _____. [A] help emphasize the significance of Brooks s poetry [B] introduce biographical information about Brooks [C] present opposing points of view about Brooks s work [D] state little-known facts about Brooks s novel
14. According to the passage, Brooks s poetry was first published when she was _____. [A] seven years old [B] attending a class in writing [C] in her teens [D] an established novelist
15. Her novel was praised because _____. [A] she wrote something about the Black people [B] she had a good personality [C] her works were shaped by imagination [D] she had promoted social and personal experiences