A b o u t The A u t h o r: Gwendolyn Brooks (1917–2000) grew up and lived her life in Chicago. While still in her teens, she published poems in an African American newspaper in Chicago. It wasn’t long before her poetry became recognized nationally, and she won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1950, the first African American to win a Pulitzer. Poetry was the focus of Brooks’s life, and she continued to be a prolific writer as well as a teacher and advocate of poetry. She taught creative writing at a number of colleges and universities. Her publications and awards were numerous, including an appointment as Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress in 1985.

We Real Cool Make a prediction on your TPCAST Sheet about what you think the title and poem are about before we read and analyze “We Real Cool”.

We Real Cool Prose: 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. As you read “We Real Cool,” pay attention to its poetic structure.

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”

“We Real Cool” Mark-up “We Real Cool” is a poem about some guys at a pool hall (“The Golden Shovel”) Read the poem and mark it up—follow these step-by-step instructions, making at least two notes per instruction: 1.Underline all words you don’t know or that seem weird or unclear to you. 2.Mark any repetition you see in the poem. 3.Look at structure: what is interesting about the way the poem is organized. 4.Look at line breaks—when do they leave you hanging and when do they stop at the end of a thought? 5.Mark interesting sound effects: rhyme, repeated vowel sounds or consonant sounds. 6.Mark what you notice about how long and complex the sentences are. 7.Mark sensory images—what senses are used in the poem? 8.Anything else you see?

"We Real Cool" 1.Paraphrasing 2.Analysis (1) Connotation: Speakers’ identity? Why “cool”? 3.Analysis (2) Poetic Language: Their tone? How do the stress and sound Pattern help convey the meaning? Symbol-- Golden Shovel? 4.Analysis (3) What is “cool” for you? Does developing a group identity matter for you?

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. alliteration internal rhymes Strike straight: 1) attacking others; 2) play billiard balls Jazz: 1) empty talk to or sex with a woman named June; 2) going here and there in June Audio Clip of Gwendolyn Brooks’ Comments and Reading of on the Poem

Gwendolyn Brooks' poem "We Real Cool" is short, but it delivers a powerful message about dropping out of school. Through portraying the carefree lives and eventual tragic fates of seven dropouts, Brooks argues that dropping out of school and roaming the streets is not "cool," but rather it is a dead-end street. The idea for the poem came when she passed a pool hall, saw seven boys playing, and wondered how they thought of themselves. We Real Cool Video