I admit, this is the only poem I know by Gwendolyn Brooks (for shame! for shame!). No particular reason why - I’ve just never thought to pick up one of her books. Probably because I have the attention span of a gnat when it comes to selecting a poetry book, so I tend to go for anthologies of poems rather than a particular poem. Of course, the fact that I’ve just spent the last hour reading about Ms. Brooks leads me to believe that I’ll  be delving into her career a bit more.

I’ve been thinking about it all morning, and I think that I can say with some certainty that this is the first poem I actually liked enough to make a lasting impression on me. I’m sure I had learned other poems in the past for school, but until I came across We Real Cool in my 6th grade literature book they were retained in my memory just long enough for the quiz, test, or recitation to be checked off. This one was a poem to read and savor, a poem to make you think.

This is yet another poem in the “more is less category”, where you read it over and over again and each time come away amazed at how the author is able to cram so much emotion - so much conflicting emotion - into 24 little words. There is the punctuation that forces you into a halting lyrical style that accents the terminal “we” at the end of each line, which focuses your attention on the pool players. Finally, you have the final line which gives the lie to all the boasts made in the poem to that point.

This is one of those rare pieces of literature that hits me the exact same way today as it did a quarter of a century ago.

**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.