A poem doesn’t do everything for you.
You are supposed to go on with your thinking.
You are supposed to enrich
the other person’s poem with your extensions,
your uniquely personal understandings,
thus making the poem serve you.

Gwendolyn Brooks (1917-), “Song of Winnie”

[Gregg LeFevre Signature]

The Library Walk, is a venture launched in 1996 by the New York Public Library, Grand Central Partnership and New Yorker Magazine, in which are embedded in bronze plaques quotes from well-known books, or those dealing with books and literature. The panels designed by artist Gregg LeFevre were laid in 1998 from the New York Public Library building along 41st Street.

The plaque shows a poem by the American poet Gwendolyn Brooks, the first African-American poet to win the Pulitzer Prize. The poet died in 2000, after the year the sign was placed.

In the plaque appears the word "poetry", which is of course related to the content of the song.