Quote #54315
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.
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.
Gwendolyn Brooks
About This Quote
This quote needs no introduction—at least for now. We're working on adding more context soon.
Interpretation
The lines evoke a cramped, materially cluttered domestic space—“rented back room”—and linger on the tactile inventory of ordinary objects (“beads and receipts and dolls and cloths”). Brooks’s characteristic cataloging turns household miscellany into social evidence: poverty, transience, and the emotional weight of keeping and counting. “Remembering… remembering” suggests memory as both refuge and ache, intensified by “twinklings and twinges,” a pairing that mixes brief pleasure with pain. The image of people “lean[ing] over the beans” implies repetitive, survival labor (sorting, cooking, stretching food), while the surrounding detritus hints at lives compressed by circumstance yet still textured by small beauty and personal history.




