A Study Guide for Gwendolyn Brooks's "Strong Men Riding Horses"

By Gale and Cengage

A Study Guide for Gwendolyn Brooks's "Strong Men Riding Horses," excerpted from Gale's acclaimed Poetry for Students. This concise study guide includes plot summary; character analysis; author biography; study questions; historical context; suggestions for further reading; and much more. For any literature project, trust Poetry for Students for all of your research needs.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Cengage Learning - Gale
• Release date: Aug 19, 2016
• ISBN: 9781535834261

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Strong Men, Riding Horses

Gwendolyn Brooks

1960

Introduction

While Gwendolyn Brooks has more than established her place in the world of poetry, she did not do so without receiving criticism. During her early years, other African-American writers argued not against the presence of her talent, but that she did not use her poetic gifts to speak directly to the experience of blacks in America. The key to this seems to be the word directly; one could argue that she did indeed write of her experiences of oppression and hardship, but did so indirectly. Much of her early work not only was written in traditional forms, but was also written about mythological figures in the European language of the time. Strong Men, Riding Horses provides an excellent example of how Brooks might have gone about writing of personal, timely issues by using a mythological veil. It is a poem predominantly about the mythic figure of the Westerner: the strong, male, frontiersman who headed west to explore or confront whatever challenge presented itself. She uses this to set up the contrast of the weakness and fear the speaker of the poem feels, as the second and third stanzas state, with a first person I, the feelings of inadequacy. The turn is made with this short, two-line stanza that follows the first. If one were to read just these two lines, and even the final stanza that follows, they would be hard pressed to locate this in the myth of the West. They might instead think it to be the words of someone trapped and unhappy