WE REAL COOL

By Gwendolyn Brooks

*One of my favourite poems - it encompasses all there is to say about dead ends and being young 

We real cool. We 

Left school. We 

Lurk late. We
Strike straight. We 

Sing sin. We
Thin gin. We 

Jazz June. We 

Die soon.

                                           

  Written in 1959, still resonate

                                                           "Her attitude toward the players remains ambivalent

                                        To be sure, she dramatizes the tragic pathos in their lives,

                                                                                    but she also stresses their existential freedom in the poem's . . . meter,

                                                                                 the epigraph that frames the poem,

                                                     and the players' self-conscious word play. . . ."

                                                                                             - Gary Smith on Brooks in Explicator (1985)