Cool. Real Cool.

Here's something I read in grade school. It didn't "turn me on to poetry" or spark any big reading binge of Gwendolyn Brooks. But it has stuck with me for a long time. It's still one of the only poems I can say from memory, since I learned it by heart way back when.


And I think it was one of the poems that laid the groundwork for the mystery and oblique approaches that is one of the hallmarks of what I value in poetry. It wasn't quite like anything else I'd read.


And it is a well-observed depiction, a closely-drawn portrait of these figures. There's a lot of ambiguity and reading between the lines, but the details are there and they are enough. It's sort of like a tiger prowling, but seen through the chinks in a white picket fence.

We Real Cool

Gwendolyn Brooks

 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.




And you've got to hear Gwendolyn herself reading it.