Transcript We Real Cool ” - Mr. Furman's Web Pages

A b o u t The A u t h o r:
Gwendolyn Brooks (1917–2000) grew up and lived her
life in Chicago. While still in her teens, she published
poems in an African American newspaper in Chicago.
It wasn’t long before her poetry became recognized
nationally, and she won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in
1950, the first African American to win a Pulitzer. Poetry
was the focus of Brooks’s life, and she continued to be a
prolific writer as well as a teacher and advocate of
poetry.
She taught creative writing at a number of colleges and
universities. Her publications and awards were
numerous, including an appointment as Consultant in
Poetry to the Library of Congress in 1985.
We Real Cool
Make a prediction on your TPCAST Sheet about what you think
the title and poem are about before we read and analyze
“We Real Cool”.
We Real Cool
• Prose: The Pool Players. Seven at the Golden
Shovel. We real cool. We Left school. We Lurk
late. We Strike straight. We Sing sin. We Thin
gin. We Jazz June. We Die soon.
• As you read “We Real Cool,” pay attention to
its poetic structure.
“We Real Cool”
We real cool. We
Left school. We
Lurk late. We
Strike straight. We
Sing sin. We
Thin gin. We
Jazz June. We
Die soon.
“We Real Cool” Mark-up
“We Real Cool” is a poem about some guys at a pool hall (“The Golden Shovel”)
Read the poem and mark it up—follow these step-by-step instructions, making at least two
notes per instruction:
1.
Underline all words you don’t know or that seem weird or unclear to you.
2.
Mark any repetition you see in the poem.
3.
Look at structure: what is interesting about the way the poem is organized.
4.
Look at line breaks—when do they leave you hanging and when do they stop at the
end of a thought?
5.
Mark interesting sound effects: rhyme, repeated vowel sounds or consonant sounds.
6.
Mark what you notice about how long and complex the sentences are.
7.
Mark sensory images—what senses are used in the poem?
8. Anything else you see?
1.
2.
3.
4.
"We Real Cool"
Paraphrasing
Analysis (1) Connotation: Speakers’
identity? Why “cool”?
Analysis (2) Poetic Language: Their
tone? How do the stress and sound
Pattern help convey the meaning?
Symbol-- Golden Shovel?
Analysis (3) What is “cool” for you?
Does developing a group identity
matter for you?
The Pool Players.
Seven at the Golden Shovel.
We real cool. We
Left school. We
Lurk late. We
Strike straight. We
Sing sin. We
Thin gin. We
Jazz June. We
Die soon.
alliteration
internal rhymes
Strike straight:
1) attacking others;
2) play billiard balls
Jazz:
1) empty talk to or sex with
a woman named June;
2) going here and there in
June
Audio Clip of Gwendolyn Brooks’ Comments
and Reading of on the Poem
We Real Cool
Video
Gwendolyn Brooks' poem "We Real Cool" is
short, but it delivers a powerful message about
dropping out of school. Through portraying the
carefree lives and eventual tragic fates of seven
dropouts, Brooks argues that dropping out of
school and roaming the streets is not "cool," but
rather it is a dead-end street. The idea for the
poem came when she passed a pool hall, saw
seven boys playing, and wondered how they
thought of themselves.