This semester I will be teaching a course, cross-listed with the Department of Women's and Gender Studies, entitled "Women Poets, Visual Art, and Activism." Last year, I taught a course in Poetry and Visual Art. In honor of Martin Luther King Day, we began with Robert Hayden's poem "Monet's Waterlilies." This year, we begin with Gwendolyn Brooks' "The Bean Eaters," the title poem of her third collection of poems (The Bean Eaters, 1960). The poem is based on Vincent Van Gogh's "The Potato Eaters."

The Potato Eaters, Vincent van Gogh, April 1885, Oil on Canvas
[Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

The Bean Eaters

They eat beans mostly, this old yellow pair.

Dinner is a casual affair.

Plain chipware on a plain and creaking wood,

Tin flatware.

Two who are Mostly Good.

Two who have lived their day,

But keep on putting on their clothes

And putting things away.

And remembering ...

Remembering, with twinklings and twinges,

As they lean over the beans in their rented back room that is full of beads and receipts and dolls and cloths, tobacco crumbs, vases and fringes.