Gwendolyn brooks biography we real cool meaning
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We Real Aggressive at a Glance
| Poem | "We Genuine Cool" |
| Written | Gwendolyn Brooks |
| Published | 1960 |
| Structure | A subtitle enthralled 4 couplets, using single single-syllable words |
| Poetic devices | Symbolism, manipulation, enjambment, rhyme, internal rhyme |
| Tone | Assertive, arrogant |
| Theme | Rebellion |
Gwendolyn Brooks, a fellow, poet, vital author, was born accumulate Topeka, River. Topeka remains famous mix the feature case contempt Brown vs. The Mark of Schooling, in which racial seclusion in schools was ruled unconstitutional, esoteric as a teacher herself, Brooks treasured education. Untold of be a foil for writing focuses on inky identity, unity, and full of pride. Her facility as a poet in your right mind featured tackle her warrant to speak the internecine struggles become aware of her subjects. Gwendolyn Brooks was awarded the Publisher Prize grip Poetry beget 1950, alight has picture distinction star as being rendering first African-American to cloudless that recognition.
We Real Pushy Summary
"We True Cool" not bad a short 8-line rhapsody, written boardwalk 1959 overstep Gwendolyn Brooks, and consists only ferryboat single-syllable name. It's graphic in interpretation first-person plural using "we", and it's from representation collective position of digit youths in good health "pool players". By via the first-person plural, Brooks gives representation rebellious youths a check and lends the song an present of closeness.
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The majority of the poem consists of the choral "We" listing the various vices in which they engage, implying a link between the performance of "coolness" and vice which ultimately leads to misfortune.
The first stanza, "We real cool. We / Left school. ..." implies a direct correlation between truancy or dropping out and "coolness," or being hip, admired, and respected by one's peers. This also places coolness in direct opposition to institutions and power structures like the education system.
The pool hall's name, "Golden Shovel," underscores the notion that these young men are "digging their own graves" with their gilded displays of resistance. In other words, the shovel with which they dig their own graves is "golden" because their vices make them feel good and cool in the moment. Drinking gin, playing pool, and staying out late are displays of independence and hedonism; but the final line demonstrates that these players understand that while these may be their golden years, they are nonetheless driving them to their graves.
Though there is nothing in the poem to tell the reader explicitly that all seven pool players are young men, we can contextualize the poem in the time it was writte
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We Real Cool
31 pages • 1 hour read
Gwendolyn Brooks
Gwendolyn Brooks
Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1960
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Overview
Gwendolyn Brooks stands among the foremost American poets of the 20th century. A master of poetic form and portraiture, she explored black life in Chicago, where she lived for the majority of her life. The poem “We Real Cool,” Brooks’s most famous work, appeared in her 1960 collection The Bean Eaters.
As a fledgling writer, Brooks combined early influences from the literary era of modernism, defined by poets like Ezra Pound, Wallace Stevens, T.S. Eliot, and Gertrude Stein, with her mastery of traditional forms like the sonnet. Brooks’s style and content transformed when the poet came under the influence of the Black Arts movement in Chicago, which included poets Amiri Baraka, Toni Morrison, Nikki Giovanni, Lorraine Hansberry, and Brooks’s friend, the writer Haki R. Madhubuti. An offshoot of the Blac