We Real Cool by Gwendolyn Brooks

     Gwendolyn Brooks was born June 7th, 1917 in Topeka, Kansas and she later died of cancer at the age of 83 on December 3rd, 2000 in Chicago. She was buried in Lincoln Cemetery in Blue Island, Illinois. She originally attended high school at the all white school named Hyde Park High School. She later transferred to Wendell Phillips an all black school and then to an integrated Englewood High School. She then graduated from Wilson Junior College. She was first published in a magazine at the age of 13 for her poetry. In 1939 she married Henry Lowington Blakely Jr. they went on to have two kids Henry Lowington Blakely III (1940) and Nora Blakely (1951).

                   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.

     In this poem we see the prevalent use of "SPEAKER" in a simple eight line poem. AS we can see the narrator is speaking form the third person, because of the frequent use of the word "we". From this we can deduce that the speaker of the poem is speaking about other, people but her point of view is that of an adolescent that is "cool" and due to this sense of popularity this leads to the ultimate downfall of the adolescent which results in the death of the young death of those involved. This speaker is speaking in a light and short tone in which they describe these events simply and how they all lead to the ultimate ending, death. The speaker is also omniscient, because they know what will eventually happen to these people in this poem, the narrator foreshadows the quick and costly downfall of these young kids, we can also deduce that they are kids, because the author mentions them leaving school. There are two narrators in this story. The first is the boy or girl who is involved in these events, and the next is a author who waked into this group of dropouts. So we are told the narrative of both these young drop outs and the viewpoint of the author and her stance on what is going to happen to them. It is through these two speakers and the description of the seven pools players in the beginning that sets the narrators perspectives of both personal and distanced and guessed upon that we learn the authors viewpoint of these young dropouts. We learn as reader's through the author's narrative voice that she finds these young men or women will fail due to their lack of care about their schooling. We can see from her perspective that schooling has played a big role in her life and that she holds it at a high value and it makes her angry that these boys or girls are taking advantage of none of the opportunities presented to them. This may also speak volumes to the race issues that Brooks grew up with, due to this she feels angry at the fact that she struggled for hers and they laugh theirs off and do not take it to be important.