War & Peace Quote by Gwendolyn Brooks

Urgency, compressed into three words, with a sting in the ordering. "First fight. Then fiddle" works because it refuses the comforting fantasy that art can substitute for struggle. Brooks sets up a stark sequence: survival and resistance aren’t aesthetic choices, they’re prerequisites. The clipped sentences read like commands, almost like a parent’s rule or a streetwise mantra. That tone matters. It’s not a lofty manifesto about Art with a capital A; it’s a practical ethic delivered in the language of pressure.

Brooks, writing out of Black urban life and its constant negotiations with danger, poverty, and power, understands how culture gets policed. The subtext: you don’t get to "fiddle" - to make beauty, to luxuriate in refinement, to be seen as merely "creative" - until you’ve confronted the forces that deny you time, safety, and legitimacy. Art comes second not because it’s trivial, but because the world has rigged the order.

There’s also a quieter irony: "fiddle" evokes frivolity, even fiddling while Rome burns. Brooks flips that cliché. Rome is already burning for some people; the demand to perform calm, tasteful artistry in the middle of crisis becomes its own kind of cruelty. The line challenges audiences too, especially comfortable ones who want poetry as decoration or escape. Brooks makes art answerable to stakes. The fiddle can sing, but only after the fight names what’s at risk.