Gwendolyn Brooks—“We Real Cool”
Who is the speaker of the poem? Is the speaker judging the young men?
Where is the setting of “We Real Cool”? Who is the “We” in the poem?
How is alliteration used in the poem? Give at least one example.
In “We Real Cool,” each stanza is a two-line couplet. Uniquely, Brooks’s couplets rhyme in the middle of the line, rather than at the end. It is an embedded rhyming couplet. How does this device affect the reading and understanding of the poem?
What is the speaker’s attitude toward the young men in the pool hall? In the Contemporary Literature interview, Brooks states that the “We” in the poem should be soft to indicate that the young men have a “basic uncertainty”? What do you think they are uncertain about?
“We Real Cool” opens by naming the players in the poem and their location: the young men are at the Golden Shovel, a pool hall. How does their location set the tone of the poem? And how does the name of the pool hall reflect the boys’ present and future?