We Real Cool

Blogging the Literary Life - Period 5/6 - AP College EnglishThis blog is a place to discuss literature and life. Our inspirations are the novels, plays, poetry, films and other texts we read and watch.October 27, 2006

We Real Cool

This poem by Gwendolyn Brooks is short although very powerful. It is about seven pool players she observed at a pool hall and writes the poem in sort of a mocking way from their point of view. The poem reads:

The Pool Players.

Seven at the Golden Shovel.

We real cool. We

Left school. We

Lurk late. We

Strike straight. We

Sing sin. We

Thin gin. We

Jazz June. We

Die soon.

As Brooks writes, the first think that we see is the language. The phrase "We real cool" shows that the drop out students cannot even speak correctly, most likely being attributed to their lack of schooling. Another very striking think about the poem is that it is not written in a normal way. The "We" is not at the start of each line, it is at the end. I think that was done to make the reader stress the "We" every time. Stressing the "We" could really help grasp the image of this group of students. Then the most obvious striking line is the last one, "We die soon." I feel that this was not a literal reference to dying, but more of an idea that if these kids do not go to school, they will crumble without the knowledge they could receive

at school. This lack of knowledge would hurt them in the long run, effectively killing

...