“We Real Cool” was written by Gwendolyn Brooks in 1960, and starts with the prefix “The Pool Players. Seven at the Golden Shovel” (Meyer 827). This line sets the stage for me, looking at a group of young kids hanging out at a pool hall. My first impression of this kind of place in this time period, would be a group of kids having a good time not worrying about much outside of looking cool. The poet leads directly to a line that is shared with the title of the poem, “We real cool” (Meyer 827). So my initial thought of theses kind of kids was confirmed, and the poet’s choice of grammar gives us an insight into the next line of the poem, “We left school” (Meyer 827). It is easy to tell that this group of kids who is hanging out at a pool hall, truly decided to be as “cool” as they could be. They are speaking in a…show more content… This makes me think about the time commitment that these boys put into their playing pool. I wonder if they truly are just trying to look cool, or have finally found something that they can be passionate about and have gotten quite good at. As a student studying a difficult field (physics), I am finding myself envious of these kids who found something that they can put their passion into and see results that they are excelling with their effort. These thoughts become slightly diluted when in the final lines the boys sing praises for their degeneracy. “We sing sin. We thin gin” is the last piece of information shared about the boys activities, leading me to believe that they truly are misguided and lost kids making bad decisions (Meyer 827). I wanted the boys to be misunderstood and really better than picture formed at the beginning of the poem. But the final piece of hope that I had is killed with the last line, “We Die Soon” (Meyer 827). The boys in my mind are going down a path that I have been scared of my entire life. I have many members of my family that have dropped out of school, hung around the wrong people, and had problems with
