Gwendolyn Brooks holds a unique position in American letters. Not only has she combined a strong commitment to racial identity and equality with a mastery of poetic techniques, but she also has managed to bridge the gap between the academic poets of her generation in the 1940s and the young black militant writers of the 1960s. She generally is recognized as one of the most distinguished American poets of the twentieth century. For almost three decades now Brooks also has been a teacher, both in formal classroom situations and in more informal settings. As early as 1963 she was asked to conduct a poetry workshop at Columbia College in Chicago, and she would teach there intermittently until June of 1969. During this period she also taught at Elmhurst College in Elmhurst, Illinois, and at Northeastern Illinois State College. She was also Rennebohm Professor of English at the University of Wisconsin...