Poetry Analysis

1. What do you notice about the line breaks in this poem? What effect do they have on you as you read the poem?

“We Real Cool” is a poem I think of as being eminently familiar, like a photograph I have seen many times and believe I know well. When looking at the familiar, however, there may be a moment when a previously unseen detail becomes unexpectedly apparent, turning the whole thing on its head and giving new depth and meaning. Such was my experience in listening to Gwendolyn Brooks recite the poem in her jazzy cadence, with her unique accent on the line breaks.

Reading the poem, the separation of the pronoun “we” from its sentence is a surprise on the printed page, an unexpected break in flow. What became new for me was the way “we” was read aloud. Brooks gives a sharp intake of breath, pronouncing the word in such a way that it almost loses meaning and instead becomes a percussive instrument. In my mind’s ear, I have always read this poem by stressing the pause alone, nearly skipping over the drum-like prominence of the word “we.” My version of the poem interpreted the repeating word and line breaks in a melodramatic tone, perhaps having more to do with my upper-middle-class-whiteness than with the true provenance of the piece.

Brooks’ reading opens up the poem for me, accentuating the egocentric stance of the seven boys. Their swaggering self-importance is palatable in her spoken emphasis and in the line breaks. As compared to my previous readings, Brooks gives the boys arrogance and bravado instead of the simple, one-dimensional tragedy I had read into the poem before.

2. Who is the speaker, do you think? Who is the "we"?

I understand the “speaker” to be the boys as a collective, rather than an i...

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...s weight. Both of these types of music have roots in the collision of African and European cultures, perhaps also reflective of the subjects of the poem.

I would argue, however, that the sound, structure, and content of “We Real Cool” is more closely akin to early 1960’s minimalist music, and in particular to Terry Riley’s In C, written in 1964. Brooks’ poem, written in 1959, shares a stark, repetitive sensibility with Riley’s piece, which becomes almost hypnotic in the repeated phrasing and temporal construction. Like Riley’s music, however, the deeper one goes into the work, the more complex and beautiful to the ear this poem becomes.

Works Cited

Grayson, Randall. “At-Risk Youth and Resilience Factors.”

Visionrealization. Web. 10 July 2010.

http://www.visionrealization.com/Resources/Camper_Devel/At-risk_youth_presentation.pdf

Ibid.