We Real Cool (1960)

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The Pool Players

Seven at the Golden Shovel.

     We real cool. We
     Left school. We

     Lurk late. We
     Strike straight. We

5     Sing sin. We
     Thin gin. We

     Jazz June. We
     Die soon.

Editor´s Comments

Gwendolyn Brooks certainly doesn't waste words. In her poem "We Real Cool" she only uses 24 of them -- and eight of those words, fully one third, are the same word: "we." At the same time, she positively squanders all the various devices for structuring a poem. Take rhyme, for example. The lines all rhyme, and since the lines are so short, the effect of the rhyming is even stronger, because the rhyme words are close together: cool / school, late / straight, sin / gin. These are also very strong rhymes -- no half rhymes, or slant rhymes here. But as if the rhyming weren't enough to tie the poem tightly together, we also find alliteration, that technique where a sound repeats, usually a consonant, and usually at the beginning of a word: lurk late, strike straight, sing sin, Jazz June. Sometimes the rhyming doesn't even stop with the two end words: Sing sin thin gin. And then of course there is that "we" sitting out there at the end of all the lines. It doesn't just rhyme: it's the same word, and its repetition over and over again, ties the poem even more tightly together. But it also doesn't seem quite right to say that "we" is the last word of each line. It is literally, of course, but it also kind of hangs out there, suspended. You have to pause before you say it, and also after. We real cool. We / Left school. We / Lurk late. The result is still another pattern of rhythm that binds the lines together.

So what does all this give us? The poem itself is tightly constrained in every way, but what it quotes is an in-your-face assertion of freedom from any kind of constraint: we're cool, we don't have to go to school, we don't care about your sentimental ideas of June. We asserts itself over and over again. But then in the last line, Brooks answers the voice she's been quoting by simply altering the poem's pattern. There are just two words: "Die soon." In the last line, We isn't there any more.

Text History

Click here to see "Allah Shango," by Jeff Donaldson. This was the frontispiece for Riot, a book of verse which Brooks published in 1969.

Historical Considerations

Brooks discusses the alienation from mainstream American culture of African Americans who live in poverty.

The Poet´s Life and Work

Biography

The Poet's Craft

Gwendolyn Brooks Offers Advice to Young Poets

Critical Essays

Poem

Comments

Text History

Historical Considerations

Life & Work

Essays