Gwendolyn Brooks

"I am a writer perhaps because I am not a talker."
Gwendolyn Brooks


"A writer should get as much education as possible, but just going to school is not enough; if it were, all owners of doctorates would be inspired writers."
Gwendolyn Brooks


“The Boy Died in My Alley” reminds me of the Elvis song “In the Ghetto” when I read it. They both describe how a boy lives in neighborhood and people see him, but they don’t know his name. I think when they left out the child’s name in the poem and in the song it makes the child seem like just another statistic instead of a real person.
I also feel like the person in the poem talking is not just one person, instead it is the neighborhood who heard the gun shot. The neighborhood “saw him going” and “saw him crossed”, but they “did not take him down”. People who lived in this neighborhood have become desensitized to the murders that happen in the area by saying “I have closed my heart-ears late and early.”
The end of the poem, “my alley is a special speech to me”; I would say the person feels so for the boys who have died there, but will not do anything to help them now or in the future.