An analysis of Brooks' first fight. Then Fiddle "First fight. Then Fiddle" by Gwendolyn Brooks. initially appears to argue for the need for brutal war in order to create space for the pursuit of beautiful art. The poem is more complex, however, because it also implies both that war cannot protect art and that art must not justify war. Yet if Brooks seems, paradoxically, to oppose the art in the work of art, she does so in order to create a work of art that, through its simple recognition of the costs of art, would justify itself. Brooks initially appears to argue for the necessity of war in order to create a safe space for artistic creation. She suggests this idea forcefully in the short sentences that open the poem: “Fight first. Then play the 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 the expression goes, “playing the violin while Rome burns.” Second, waging war first would prepare a safe and prosperous place where one could reasonably pursue the pleasures of music. We must “civilize a space / Where to play the violin with grace”. It should further be noted that although Brooks writes about getting a "civilized" place to play the violin, she clearly seems to be using this playing as an image of art in general, as do her broader references to the "beauty" or "harmony" However, most of Brooks' writings on the need to fight before playing the violin indicate that she does not support this idea, at least not entirely. For example, Brooks describes creating beautiful music as being “removed / a moment” from “wickedness and murder.” In addition to the negative way Brooks describes the war in this line, ...... middle of paper ...... cultural prestige of violin playing. Indeed, as an emblem of Western civility (we think of the sonnets of the Renaissance), the sonnet could 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, especially the sonnet, if it also condemns him. I would argue that by critically evaluating the costs of creating sonnets, Brooks brings a self-awareness to his poetry that might justify it after all. She creates poetry which, like the violin playing she invokes, rings with “wounded love”. This “wounded love” reminds us of those who may have been hurt in the name of the love of poetry. But in recognizing this wound, it also fulfills a promise of poetry: to be more than a superficial social "grace", to teach us something we did not see or did not want to see at first..