"a song in the front yard" Gwendolyn Brooks poem (1963) analysis = rebellious, playful, independent

Details

Description

a song in the front yard

I’ve stayed in the front yard all my life.
I want a peek at the back
Where it’s rough and untended and hungry weed grows.
A girl gets sick of a rose.

I want to go in the back yard now
And maybe down the alley,
To where the charity children play.
I want a good time today.

They do some wonderful things.
They have some wonderful fun.
My mother sneers, but I say it’s fine
How they don’t have to go in at quarter to nine.
My mother, she tells me that Johnnie Mae
Will grow up to be a bad woman.
That George’ll be taken to Jail soon or late
(On account of last winter he sold our back gate).

But I say it’s fine. Honest, I do.
And I’d like to be a bad woman, too,
And wear the brave stockings of night-black lace
And strut down the streets with paint on my face.


The poet created a nameless character who, desiring a wider range of experiences, yearns to explore a back yard despite--or because of--that back yard being "rough.”

The speaker almost implies that she is privileged and pampered. She suggests a seedy part of town will bring variety to her world. But her words may be misleading. She does not live in a rich neighborhood. Her home lacks a back gate due to George stealing it, so we need not accept her suggestion that a rich life bores her. She may not be even middle class. In a middle class neighborhood, one may enjoy a tidy front yard as well as a fine back yard, but here the back yard is “untended” and weeds grow (the third line has “weed,” which is unusual, but “weed” is needed so “grows” can be used, creating a rhyme with “rose”).

The speaker is a "naive narrator" in that readers understand more than the speaker. A child is speaking. The word “song” in the title may mean the speaker sings her words loudly so the mother can hear--something a child would do. The title lacks capitalization, which is how a kid might give the title. Leave it to a child to destroy the pattern of 4-lined stanzas--the third stanza has eight lines. One charm of this poem is the illusion that it is the work of a child though she may be at least 10 since “strut” and “night-black lace” are used (maybe these are words used by the mom).

The mom may be right to worry about dangers. After all, some property was stolen, and it’s possible prostitutes walk the streets. The speaker may live in a rough area without understanding that. Readers can't be sure how rough since the speaker is not reliable in what she communicates. If the “charity children” are orphans and abandoned kids, they may have less “fun” than the speaker thinks.

She states, "A girl gets tired of a rose" ("girl gets" is alliteration). She is fed up with proper behavior--the reward is only a rose? Or maybe the child looks at a rosebush in her front yard. The fourth line about a rose getting tiresome has a comic effect. A “girl" might be given toys, but few girls are showered with so many roses that they are "sick" of roses. Roses might come later in life when young men are wooing (do today's young men give flowers to females?). Maybe she repeats a line from a movie. The rose may not be literal.

It’s unclear if the speaker is surrounded by “bad” women in general or if the only “bad” woman will be Johnnie Mae in the future. Anyway, the speaker yearns to be "bad," viewing naughty as fun. Is she naive, or is this normal? Arianna Ross claims all girls want to be bad once in a while, which may be true for the poem's speaker (I can name students who are too angelic to have such thoughts). Getting out of the front yard might have actual benefits though the speaker identifies only one benefit, repeating “fun.”

The poem's central conflict is that a girl wants freedom from boundaries imposed by a parent eager to protect the girl. The mother sees dangers where the girl sees that the grass is greener. I would say the mother is overprotective if I thought this daughter has reached her teen years and is in a safe neighborhood, but if this is a child of 10 in a front yard in a bad area, the mother is too permissive.

We don't know the age. We don't know the area. If this is a very rough neighborhood, the mother is too lenient and permissive to allow a daughter of any age to be in either yard. A hunger for freedom, a distaste for rules--these ideas are present, but clear language about age and setting is not. Is the girl stubborn? Must she learn the hard way that mom was correct to warn of dangers? The opening line ("I’ve stayed in the front yard all my life") establishes that the girl has been obedient so far. Will she remain obedient? “I want a good time today” means the speaker doesn’t think she’ll have a good time unless she breaks out of the front yard’s prison.

The speaker is rebellious, playful, independent, envious, adventurous, and naughty. Anger is missing.

She opens by saying she wants a peek at the back yard but is also able to describe the back yard. That means she had peeked!