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)
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.
Study Questions
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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:
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Reference
Brooks, Gwendolyn. “We Real Cool.” 1959. Selected Poems. New York: Harper and Row, 1963. 73. Print.
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Last updated March 1, 2017