"WE Real Cool" Review

"WE Real Cool" by Gwendolyn Brooks 

Born June 7, 1917, Gwendolyn Elizabeth Brooks was an African-American poet who won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1950. She was appointed Poet Laureate of Illinois in 1968 and Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress in 1985. She died January 3 of 2000. 

WE Real Cool

     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. 


"We Real Cool" is written from the perspective of seven young men who spend their day at the bar as opposed to attending class. It is meant to symbolize the youth of America in the post-war era of the 1950's. Although the poem is about the youth and is written from their perspective, the audience is not given the idea that the seven young men are actually talking, or that they are eben the speakers. Instead, they are lead to believe that the speaker is an onlooker of the scene, someone who is silently watching and possibly judging the youth. The poem itself is the speaker is trying to imagine the thoughts of the young men. The audience is given the idea that the speaker is another person in the bar, someone who has most likely been in the young men's position before, and knows the outcome of their current activities. The speaker knows the harms that come from these activities and he criticizes the youth for thinking this way. Without having to wait, the speaker already knows the young men's future. They skip school, they engage in fights, they celebrate sinful acts, and they drink alcoholic beverages while they are underage. All of these acts are characteristics of the forming of a street gang, and with gangs, comes gang violence. The boys will "Die soon" because of some gang related crime. The boys lose their lives because they want to seem "real cool".