PDFBRO | 1 Poem | “We Real Cool” is a poem by Gwendolyn Brooks, first published in her 1960 collection The Bean Eaters. The poem describes a group of teenagers hanging out outside of a pool hall. It imagines these teenagers as rebels who proudly defy convention and authority—and who will likely pay for their behavior with their lives. “We Real Cool” directly links the pool players' delinquent behavior to the likelihood of their dying young. Hence, the poem's troubling final sentence: “We / Die soon” (lines 7–8). By contributing to the early deaths of the pool players, the pool hall reveals the deeper significance of its name. “We Real Cool” directly links the pool players' delinquent behavior to the likelihood of their dying young. Hence, the poem's troubling final sentence: “We / Die soon” (lines 7–8). By contributing to the early deaths of the pool players, the pool hall reveals the deeper significance of its name. | Selected Poems is the classic volume by the distinguished and celebrated poet Gwendolyn Brooks, winner of the 1950 Pulitzer Prize, and recipient of the National Book Foundation Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters. This compelling collection showcases Brooks's technical mastery, her warm humanity, and her compassionate and illuminating response to a complex world. This edition also includes a special PS section with insights, interviews, and more—including a short piece by Nikki Giovanni entitled "Remembering Gwen."

By 1963 the civil rights movement was in full swing across the United States, and more and more African American writers were increasingly outspoken in attacking American racism and insisting on full political, economic, and social equality for all. In that memorable year of the March on Washington, Harper & Row released Brooks’s Selected Poems, which incorporated poems from her first three collections, as well as a selection of new poems.

This edition of Selected Poems includes A Street in Bronzeville, Brooks's first published volume of poetry for which she became nationally known and which led to successive Guggenheim fellowships; Annie Allen, published one year before she became the first African American author to win the Pulitzer Prize in any category; and The Bean Eaters, her fifth publication which expanded her focus from studies of the lives of mainly poor urban black Americans to the heroism of early civil rights workers and events of particular outrage—including the 1955 Emmett Till lynching and the 1957 school desegregation crisis in Little Rock, Arkansas. |

The first African-American to win the Pulitzer Prize (1950).

Poems of war, black community, and life.

We real cool. We
Left school. We

Lurk late. We
Strike straight. We

Sing sin. We
Thin gin. We

Jazz June. We
Die soon. ( )

An excellent selection of poems. As one makes one's way, slowly, through these poems, a feeling of trust envelops the reader; this feeling is a credit to the poet and her masterful use of her tools. Tools like the unity of an idea as found, for example, in 'In Emanuel's Nightmare: Another Coming of Christ' where a surrealist dream depicts humanity's apparent obsession with war - and consequently its rejection of peace. Tools like complex meter and rhyming schemes as found in 'The Anniad' - a delightfully obscure poem that beguiles the heart while it chews up the mind. Shifting perspectives and the roiling emotions of anger, love, madness, and sadness fill these pages, but one is never left in a bad place because the poet's humerous and ironic nature is too skilled and too good to take us there. ( )

Gwendolyn Brooks should have been our Inaugural poet, if Clinton valued literature more, politics less. There's little comparison between her poetry and her sophomoric colleagues'. "We real cool. We" alone stands as a prosodic and vocal breakthrough in American letters, the voice of the street in spondees, with the line-end punctuating the street pause. Wonderful, and enlightening. Nobody knew you could capture the
street in a brief lyric until she did. Rappers would do well to master Brooks' spondees here.
But that's just the beginning of her accomplishment, as this selection shows.
As for inaugural poets, no politician since JFK had the political smarts to appoint an opponent--a lifelong Republican--to the post, perhaps because Frost's fame did not deter from the Office of President. Now no one poet dominates like that, though Billy Collins is close. And Gwendolyn Brooks made up in skill what she lacked in fame. ( )

I didn't particularly enjoy this collection. I've been teaching "We Real Cool" for years, and I never get tired of it, so I looked forward to a larger sampling of Brooks' work, but I don't really think there is anything here I'll come back to. Undeniably, Brooks knows words and sound, but this honestly came down to feeling like a poet's playtime to me. It seemed heavy on experimentation with sound and very quick scenes, and light on meaning. For someone who is just starting to play with the sound of poetry and explore it's uses, away from the traditional and expected rhymes and rhythms, I could recommend this, but for me---well, I was often bored, and rarely satisfied or drawn into the poems themselves. ( )