Gwendolyn Brooks We Real Cool

In “Introduction to Poetry” Billy Collins, a professor, writes about the impatience of his students when analyzing a poem. He starts off by stating that they should enjoy the poetry and not worry about what the author is saying. By the twelfth line he shifts into describing his student’s frustration and the way they “torture” the poems. His use of metaphor, simile, and enjambment emphasize that one should take the time to really understand what a poem is saying while having fun instead of overanalyzing every single detail.

The poem “We Real Cool” is a very powerful poem, although expressed with very few words. To me, this poem describes the bottom line of the well known “ghetto life”. It describes the desperate and what they need, other than the usual what they want, money. Without actually telling us all about the seven young men, it does tell us about them. The poem tells of the men’s fears, their ambitions, and who they think they are, versus who they really are.

“We Real Cool," by Gwendolyn Brooks is a fervent short poem that tells a story of teenage rebellion. This poem is a formal verse ballad which uses simple sentences that create a steady meter giving the poem a catchy jazz like quality. Although the poem is short, it packs a powerful message about youth. Gwendolyn Brooks centered her works predominately around the African American consciousness. During the 1960’s when the poem was written, many teens especially young African-American men felt misunderstood and like the world was set up for them to fail. On the surface, it appears this poem is a mere description of young adults that are misjudged. The deeper message of this poem addresses the dangers of peer pressure, and its detrimental effects to self-identity because of the disconnect between society and youth of that time.

The use of careful word choice throughout the entirety of the poem; the attentive technique in which the author utilizes to structure her poem; and the intense and emotional scenes that aids the continuous flow throughout Ann Lauinger’s 2005 poem “Marvell Noir” reveal how the author’s usage of diction, imagery, and style present the same basic situation and love theme of capitalizing and taking advantage of time since it is fleeting. The careful articulation is evident throughout the text and it plays a significant role as it reveals the theme of not delaying love due to our short-lived lives. Although the author utilizes informal diction in phrases like, “Aw, can it, sport!” in line 15 and “Than iron ones: stripes ain’t my style.”

Most poets use diction to fit the style of their writing, Brooks manages to incorporate diction to convey style, and add an extra element that allows the reader to personally connect with the problems she displays within her poems. For example in one of her award winning poems called “We real cool” one of the stanzas reads “ we lurk late, we strike straight, we die soon”. She uses certain words to portray the literal and connotative meaning behind the poem. We real cool describes how the life of careless teens lives will end quickly do to their own negligence. The diction is simple and easy just as the meaning of the poem. The teens live life care free and without rules just like her diction. Her diction is also explicit, when she wants to convey something that goes beyond a straightforward comprehension, so she explicitly describes it to an extent that even a teenager will understand. For example in her poem “kitchenette Building”, she manages to talk about the degrading roles women have like making it their job to continuously “satisfy a man”and how men abuse them by holding their freedoms within the walls of a kitchen. Brooks manages to describe the roles of women in a way that many can understand while also conveying the negative context behind their jobs back in that time. Brooks successfully uses diction as an element that lets the reader connect to her poems.

Also, there are references to the YMCA, Bessie Smith, and Bop Music. These allusions show an insight into the elements that affected the student in this piece and their everyday life and culture. The rhyme, rhythm, and allusions shown in this poem allow a reader to follow a more relatable and understanding of the poem.

Gwendolyn Brooks’ “We Real Cool” explores the ethnic identity and its underlying relation to poverty. Although the seven boys’ relationship initiates at the local pool hall, it is their parallel financial status and ethnic background that allows them to understand each other. As a coping mechanism, they act in unison to face the racial discrimination that defines their hometown. They eventually understand, as African American men, their lives hold no value. Consequently, they decide what actions to take because it is the only aspect of their lives that they are able to control. The death of these boys is left unexplained, much like their lifestyle. Throughout the poem, the characters never provide the reader with explanations for their actions; they simply act. In parsing the lines that follow the epigraph, it becomes clear enjambment mimics the suspenseful lifestyle of the pool players while creating a hypercritical which demonstrates the negative manner in which their actions where perceived. Furthermore, enjambment encapsulates the speakers’ struggle to find hope in his situation and the consequent realization that he will not be treated with equality.

As well all know, connections are not easy to come by. Connections are made for resembling one thing to another. In addition to the resemblance, the poem, “We Real Cool”, has a strong connection that is shown by the author that help illustrate the meaning of the poem. In the poem of, “We Real Cool”, by Gwendolyn Brooks, there is a satisfyingly strong connection involving the poem, title, and author.

After reading the two assigned readings and comparing it to the idea of conformity in full I have come a definite decision in my mind about the comparison and contrast of the two ideas given off in the first taste of the readings. I have seen that in “We Real Cool” by Gwendolyn Brooks tells the tale of being not loose and free and having as little conformity as possible. Whereas, on the other hand, Junot Diaz’s idea of conformity in the excerpt we were assigned to read shows that the family’s ideas of conformity are very expected and it shows in their morals and they try to enforce it. Even though that’s not the case for Lola.

Poetry has a role in society, not only to serve as part of the aesthetics or of the arts. It also gives us a view of what the society is in the context of when it was written and what the author is trying to express through words. The words as a tool in poetry may seem ordinary when used in ordinary circumstance. Yet, these words can hold more emotion and thought, however brief it was presented.

Gwendolyn Brooks’s “We Real Cool” commonly typifies her work and exists, for many readers, as the most visible of her poems. High school and college students who have encountered her writing have likely read little more than this single poem. The reason for both the ubiquitous nature of this work and the universality of its appeal, especially among younger audiences, is manifest in both the structure and subject matter of the poem. Richard Flynn writes that “Brooks’s work has used the image and voice of the child to negotiate a complex poetic strategy that explores ‘childhood’ as a position from which to critique prevailing constructs of class and race” (484). This is certainly true of “We Real Cool,” which calls attention to the youth of the

In the poem “We Real Cool” by Gwendolyn Brooks we are introduced to a short but provocative poem. We are thrown into a world that moves fast and is seemingly very cool. In this poem Gwendolyn Brooks describes a world she saw full of pool players, heavy drinking, and sinful music. While reading this poem every word is positioned in a way that makes the poem move with a rhythmic musical beat. I believe the author Gwendolyn Brooks builds on her theme of a dark and cool world that often leads partakers to an early grave by using anaphora, alliteration, and metaphor with a rhythmic play on words. I believe her use of these literary tools enables her to convey a poem that is mystifying, provocative, but also teaches a life lesson. The author in my opinion has a deeper meaning than simply describing a pool hall; it’s about the life these young men lead and the potential fatal consequences of living a fast life.

He describes summer as cool, gentle waters, something he likes and he’s now used to. As he describes high school and not gentle waters, like a pressure cooker of competition, something that’s always changing and that he is not ready for. He tells how the first day of school is always the worst because everything from the year before has changed, you don’t know who your friends are yet, and it’s hard to pick up everything where you left off from the previous year. He wants to be himself, and he expresses that is the reason he quit football, he didn’t know why he was playing, or who he was playing for. He says school is full of things that take away freedom and keep you from being who you really are. And that being yourself isn’t easy. At the end of the poem, you see a resolution of his thoughts. He realizes that he might learn something about himself, and a new school year means a brand new start, and he comes to terms with his first day back to high school. Lawhead doesn’t use sound very much throughout his poem. Although, he does use rhythm. He uses repeating and similar words and phrases to create emphasis. The beginning is slower and drags out to give a sense of anxiety, and starts to pick up near the end to give a sense of optimism. Lawhead’s structure contains forty

(19-22). Comparing the two sisters in this poem is also a unique quality this poem has, because the speaker clearly contrasts the life of a person who lived as others dictated to someone who lived more unconventionally. The narrators of the two poems also differ a great deal, for in "We Real Cool," the tone of the pool players is one of attitude

They are telling what their lives are like. After all of the sentences in the poem, it ends with the young adults saying they will die soon. The universal theme present in Brooks’ “We Real Cool” is that staying in school is necessary to having a good life. This poem’s second sentence presents the fact that the people Brooks is talking about in this poem left school. The people Brooks is talking about in the poem then begin to spiral into a life of doing unintelligent and unhealthy things such as lurking through the night and drinking gin.