To Be in Love

“when you have forgotten Sunday: the love story” by Gwendolyn Brooks (1945)

This poem appeared in Brooks’s first collection, A Street in Bronzeville. In this poem, the speaker goes through the little details of their existence with their partner, who seems to have said they have forgotten their love. If the partner can remember these details, which include Sunday or “the bright bedclothes on a Wednesday and a Saturday” (Line 1), then they remember the speaker. This poem is more imagistic than “To Be in Love,” but the idea of the comingled experience and the threat of loss is the same.

“A Lovely Love” by Gwendolyn Brooks (1960)

Poet Amaud Jamaul Johnson discusses the poem and provides a handwritten version of “A Lovely Love” by Gwendolyn Brooks for Poetry Daily, a poem that first appeared in The Bean Eaters (1960). As Johnson points out, this poem is a hybrid sonnet that uses Blues rhythms. Like the free-verse “To Be In Love,” the subject examines the pains and pleasures of love. The speaker here has felt that “you have thrown me, scraped me with your kiss / Have honed me, have released me after this” (Lines 6-7), which bears similarities to the passion and parting of the couple in “To Be in Love.