We Real Cool

Deshay Perry

Ms. Verner

4/24/15

English 103B

We Real Cool

Have you ever seen adolescents doing something at a place while they were supposed to be at school? Well in “We Real Cool”, the speaker “distills” feelings of some pool players she sees in a pool room near her house during school hours in this poem. The poem’s theme is the Rhythm and Rhyming the speaker is using. There are many other themes in this poem, such as Identity, Pride, and Mortality. The reason why rhythm and rhyming is the best theme in We Real Cool is because the poem is upbeat and full of music.
The speaker talks about being really cool and also leaving school which are the first two stanzas. The speaker is trying to show the reader that these pool players have an unruly attitude and is happy about being delinquents and trying to be cool. Throughout most of the poem, the speaker says “We”, when she says this, she is referring to the pool players as “We” because they want to be defined by their disobedient acts. When the speaker says in line 2 “We left school,” she is saying that these young men are dropouts or they are at the pool room when they are supposed to be at school.
In the second stanza, the speaker says, “Lurk late.” She says this because the pool players are out late at night when they are supposed to be at home doing homework, chores, or supposed to be asleep. In line 4, it says, “We Strike straight.” What she is saying when she says this is that the pool players can “strike” the pool ball “straight” into the pocket in the pool table. The pool players must have practiced playing pool a lot to “strike” the pool ball “straight” into the pocket.

In stanza three, the speaker says, “We sing sin,” when she says this in the poem, she is talking about how the young men celebrate sin or as she said “Sing” sin. In line 6, she says “We thin gin.” She is trying to tell the