Department of English

Faculty of Arts, Chulalongkorn University

 

We Real Cool

(1959)

 

Gwendolyn Brooks

(June 7, 1917 – December 3, 2000)


 

Notes

"We Real Cool" was first published in the September 1959 issue of Poetry.


1  cool:


3  lurk:

 

 


We Real Cool (1966)


"We Real Cool" (1966)

 




Introduction


       Thank you. I guess I’d better offer you “We Real Cool.” Most young people know me only by that poem. I don’t mean that I dislike it, but I would prefer it if the textbook compilers and the anthologists would assume that I’d written a few other poems.
I wrote it because I was passing by a pool hall in my community one afternoon during school time. And I saw, therein, a little bunch of boys, I say in this poem, seven. And they were shooting pool. But instead of asking myself why aren’t they in school, I asked myself I wonder how they feel about themselves, and just perhaps, they might have considered themselves contemptuous of the establishment or at least they wanted to feel that they were contemptuous of the establishment, might want to thumb their noses at the establishment. And I represented the establishment with the month of June which is a nice, gentle, noncontroversial, enjoyable, pleasant, fragrant month that everybody loves.
Ah, this poem has been banned here and there because of the word jazz, which some people have considered a sexual reference. That was not my intention though I have no objection if it helps anybody. But I was thinking of music.




The Pool Players

Q. How about the seven pool players in the poem "We Real Cool"?

A. They have no pretensions to any glamor. They are supposedly dropouts, or at least they're in the poolroom when they should possibly be in school, since they're probably young enough, or at least those I saw were when I looked in a poolroom, and they. . . . First of all, let me tell you how that's supposed to be said, because there's a reason why I set it out as I did. These are people who are essentially saying, "Kilroy is here. We are." But they're a little uncertain of the strength of their identity. [Reads:]

We real cool. We
Left school. We

Lurk late. We
Strike straight. We

Sing sin. We
Thin gin. We

Jazz June. We
Die soon.

The "We"—you're supposed to stop after the "We" and think about their validity, and of course there's no way for you to tell whether it should be said softly or not, I suppose, but I say it rather softly because I want to represent their basic uncertainty, which they don't bother to question every day, of course.

Q. Are you saying that the form of this poem, then, was determined by the colloquial rhythm you were trying to catch?

A. No, determined by my feeling about these boys, these young men.

Q. These short lines, then, are your own invention at this point? You don't have any literary model in mind; you're not thinking of Eliot or Pound or anybody in particular . . . ?

A. My gosh, no! I don't even admire Pound, but I do like, for instance, Eliot's "Prufrock" and The Waste Land, "Portrait of a Lady," and some others of those earlier poems. But nothing of the sort ever entered my mind. When I start writing a poem, I don't think about models or about what anybody else in the world has done.

—George Stavros, "An Interview with Gwendolyn Brooks," 1969, Contemporary Literature 11.1 (1970).



 

Study Questions

  • Compare Brooks' reading of the poem with yours.

            

 

 

Vocabulary 

diction; denotation, connotation

meter

rhyme scheme

rhyme

repetition

imagery

symbol

enjambment

oxymoron

irony

persona

tone

jazz 

 


Sample Student Responses to Gwendolyn Brooks' "We Real Cool" 


   

Response 1:

Study Question:

 

 

 

 

 

Student Name

2202234 Introduction to the Study of English Literature

Acharn Puckpan Tipayamontri

June 12, 2010

Reading Response 1

  

Title

 

Text.

 

 

 

 

 


 

 

Reference


Brooks, Gwendolyn. “We Real Cool.” 1959. Selected Poems. New York: Harper and Row, 1963. 73. Print.





 

 

Links
  • Gwendolyn Brooks, "We Real Cool," The Bean Eaters (1960; with audio of Brooks introducing and reading the poem)
  • "On 'We Real Cool,'" Modern American Poetry

 


Media
  • Gwendolyn Brooks, "We Real Cool," Poetry Reading Live (2:18 min.; Brooks introducing and reading the poem)

  • Alan Jabbour, "A Conversation with Gwendolyn Brooks," Library of Congress (1986; 28:24 min.)

  • "Gwendolyn Brooks Interview," Lincoln Academy (1997; 42:11 min.)



Gwendolyn Brooks
Interviews

 

 

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Last updated March 1, 2017