Respond to a Reading: Gwendolyn Brooks, “We Real Cool”

Read the poem “We Real Cool” below and respond to the questions in the margin. When you are done, submit your response.

Gwendolyn Brooks

(1917–2000)

Though born in Topeka, Kansas, Gwendolyn Brooks is most closely associated with Chicago, particularly with the city’s South Side, where her family moved shortly after her birth and where she lived until her death. She was educated at Wilson Junior College and taught at Columbia College (Chicago), Northeastern Illinois University, Columbia University, and the University of Wisconsin, among other institutions. Early in her writing career, she met Langston Hughes, who encouraged her to read the poetry of T. S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, and E. E. Cummings—all of whom had some impact on her development. Her work in the 1960s took a turning point, influenced by the politically and socially radical black arts movement. Her poetry has been distinguished by its variety of voices and styles—traditional and experimental—and Brooks’s consummate command of technique. She authored more than twenty books of poetry, beginning with A Street in Bronzeville (1945) and following with Annie Allen (1949), for which she won a Pulitzer Prize, the first black poet to do so. Her Selected Poems book first appeared in 1982. In 1986, she was named poetry consultant to the Library of Congress, and she succeeded Carl Sandburg in 1968 as poet laureate of Illinois. Her other books include a novel, an autobiography, and critical prose.