We Real Cool

Gwendolyn Brooks

(1917-2000)

In 1960 Gwendolyn Brooks published a book of poems called Bean Eaters. This short poem first appeared there. Yeats complained that the Lake Isle of Innisfree was the only work of his that people seemed to know about. Gwendolyn Brooks felt the same way about We Real Cool. Because poetry is not widely popular, perhaps poets will always have to deal with the fact that their best-known work may be their only known work. Popular music has its “one-hit wonders”—artists who are forever called upon to perform their only hit song over and over. It must drive them a little crazy, except on those days when the royalty check arrives. The same might apply to poets, but without the arrival of a royalty check.

We Real Cool is a lament, one that parents, teachers, police, and social workers in every place and time have shared: What will become of those boys? One night in Chicago Gwendolyn Brooks walked by a pool hall and saw the casually disaffected young men and she wondered about them. She was probably worried, but she put herself in their shoes and asked how they might see themselves.

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.

There is an audio clip of the poet reciting We Real Cool and it explains why she leaves “We,” the first word of a line, dangling at the end of the previous line. It is not a visual gimmick. The soft-spoken poet changes her manner when she recites. She punches the “We,” giving the poem a surprising rhythm.

“We thin gin” refers to the practice of diluting gin with water, presumably to extend the supply. Using “We jazz June” the poet wished to juxtapose jazz, an underground music, and the sunny month of June, to contrast the dangers of the pool hall life the boys had chosen, and their youth. Some thought her use of the word “jazz” had a sexual meaning. Ms. Brooks said that was not her intention. However, the word “jazz”, which now universally refers to a type of music, did carry that meaning once. A fun book, Daniel Cassidy’s How the Irish Invented Slang, traces the word back to an Irish word “Teas” which was pronounced “chas” or “j’ass” and meant passion or sexual excitement. It morphed into “jazz” near the turn of the 20th century.

The poem’s popularity is probably due to its direct meaning and the tragedy it reflects, especially since the observation is made by a woman who saw life so clearly. The last line of the poem is sobering.

We die soon.

I am sad to say that this poem would be as apropos in 2010 as it was a full half century ago.

The poem is more powerful than the academic reports on life in the “inner city” that were common during the 1960s and 1970s. Besides, too often there was a, “What is wrong with those people?” undertone to those commentaries, which oversimplified the effects of cross-generational poverty. It is one thing to read the statistics or to read about a shooting in the paper and quite another when an artist of Gwendolyn Brooks’ stature says it in poetry.

Here is another recitation, this time by Morgan Freeman.