An analysis of Brooks' first fight. Then violin "First fight. Then violin" by Gwendolyn Brooks. he initially seems to argue for the need for brutal war to create a space for the pursuit of fine art. The poem, however, is more complex because it also implies that war cannot protect art and that art should not justify war. However, if Brooks seems, paradoxically, to argue against art within a work of art, he does so to create a work of art that would justify itself through the very recognition of the costs of art. Brooks initially appears to argue for the necessity of war to create a safe space for artistic creation. He suggests this idea very forcefully in the short paired sentences that open the poem: "First fight. Then violin." You have to fight before you tinker for two reasons. First, playing the violin would be a senseless distraction if an enemy threatened our safety; it would be, as they say, "fiddling while Rome burns." Second, fighting the war first would have prepared a safe and prosperous place where the pleasures of music could reasonably be pursued. We must "civilize a space / In which to play the violin with grace." It should also be noted that while Brooks writes about securing a "civilized" place to play the violin, he clearly seems to use this way of playing as an image for art in general, as do his more extensive references to "beauty" or "harmony". suggest. However, much of what Brooks writes about the need to fight before fiddling indicates that she does not support this idea, at least not completely. For example, Brooks describes making beautiful music as being “away / for a while” from “malice and murder.” In addition to the negative way Brooks describes war in this sentence, ... middle of paper ... cultural prestige of the violinist. Indeed, as an emblem of Western civilization (think of Renaissance sonnets), the sonnet may be involved in the very justification of the destruction of other, less "civilized" peoples that the poem condemns. One might wonder why Brooks produces poetry, particularly the sonnet, if she also condemns it. I would suggest that by critically evaluating the costs of creating a sonnet, Brooks brings a self-awareness to his poetry that may justify it after all. He creates a poem that, like the violin he invokes, plays with “painful love.” This “painful love” reminds us of those who may have been hurt in the name of the love of poetry. But in acknowledging that pain, it also fulfills a poetic promise: to be more than a superficial social “grace,” to teach us something we didn't see before, or didn't want to see...