Summary Of The Poem We Real Cool

We Real Cool The poem “We Real Cool” is written by Gwendolyn Brooks the poem is about seven young men at a pool hall trying to convince themselves and others that they are truly cool. They are trying to do all of the things that people that they deem as “cool” do. The poem is comprised of five, two-line, stanzas and is written from the perspective of seven young men. The rhythm of the entire poem resembles the basic rhythm of a jazz tune. This emphasizes the fact that these seven young men are trying to be jazzy, which, at the time, was extraordinarily rebellious during this time period, which happened to be the 1960’s. The first stanza describes the setting of the poem which happens to be a pool hall named the “Golden Shovel”. This pool hall seems to be a grungy place frequently visited by expert pool players and possible gamblers. We can infer that this place is indeed grungy since a shovel is used to typically dig dirt or sometimes poop, and since the shovel is golden, the gold on it would quickly tarnish.

The first line, however, introduces their thought process and emphasizes that looking cool is important to them. It also emphasizes that everything they are doing is for the sake of attempting to appear cool. The third and fourth stanza makes it clear that these boys are desperate to seem cool, so much so, that they stay up late, have practiced their pool playing abilities extensively, drink alcohol, and sing songs that their parents probably wouldn’t approve of, specifically jazz. The fourth stanza emphasizes the fact that they are naïve due to their age since they think the “Live fast, Die Young” ideology is “cool” since they think they will “Die