An Analysis of Brooks First Fight.Then Fiddle Essay -- First Fight.Th

An Analysis of suffer First Fight. so Fiddle Gwendolyn Brooks First fight. Then Fiddle. initially seems to make out for the sine qua non of brutal war in separate to create a space for the pursuit of beautiful art. The poem is more(prenominal) complex, however, because it also implies both that war can non protect art and that art should not justify war. Yet if Brooks seems, paradoxically, to argue against art within a work of art, she does so in order create an artwork that by its very recognition of arts costs would justify itself. Brooks initially seems to argue for the necessity of war in order to create a honorable space for artistic creation. She suggests this idea quite forcefully in the opposite short sentences that open the poem First fight. Then fiddle. One must(prenominal) fight before fiddling for two reasons. First, play the violin would be a foolish distraction if an enemy were threatening ones safety it would be, as the phrase goes, fiddling while Rome burn s. Second, fighting the war prototypal would prepare a safe and prosperous place where one could fairly pursue the pleasures of music. One has to civilize a space / Wherein to play your violin with grace. It should be noted further that while Brooks writes about securing a civilized place to play the violin, she seems clearly to be using this playing as an image for art in general, as her more noble-minded references to beauty or harmony suggest. Nonethe little, much that Brooks writes about the necessity to fight before fiddling indicates the she does not support this idea, at least(prenominal) not fully. For example, Brooks describes making beautiful music as world remote / A while from malice and murdering. In addition to the contradict way Brooks describes war in this line, ... ...ultural prestige of violin playing. Indeed, as an emblem of Western civility (one thinks of Renaissance sonnets), the sonnet might be involved in the very justification of the destruction of ot her less civilized peoples that the poem condemns. One might wonder why Brooks produces poetry, especially the sonnet, if she also condemns it. I would suggest that by critically numbering the costs of sonnet-making Brooks brings to her poetry a self-awareness that might justify it aft(prenominal) all. She creates a poetry that, like the violin playing she invokes, sounds with pain love. This hurting love reminds us of those who may have been hurt in the earn of the love for poetry. But in giving recognition to that hurt, it also fulfills a promise of poetry to be more than a superficial genial grace, to teach us something we first did not, or did not wish to, see.