Joel Foley Journal #2

We real cool. This poem starts off with these three simple words that set the tone for the rest of the poem. Their poor grammar suggests that the people saying the lines or the people the author is talking about are uneducated or ignorant. When I first heard the title I assumed that the poem was going to be about an inner city gang of some sorts. I thought it would be written from either the gangs prospective or the author’s. It turned out to be the latter; she seemed to be criticizing the boys in the gang by the way she read the poem in the audio recording.

The opening lines reveal the characters to be a group of seven pool players. Pool was always played in somewhat of a bar setting so this led me to believe that “The Golden Shovel” was a bar. I confirmed this guess when Gwendolyn Brooks said she was driving past the bar when she saw the teenagers playing pool at the bar. Pool halls also have a reputation for gambling, cheating and drinking. This makes the line “We Left School” sink in because it shows that the boys playing are indeed young. They stay out late and “Strike straight” which could be taken as shooting a pool ball or possibly getting into a fight and striking someone.

“Singing Sin” I took as relishing in sin, or maybe even recounting sinful deeds to their peers and “thin gin” could possibly mean watered down or diluted alcohol. The dilution of the alcohol could either mean that they are too poor to have a lot of it, or they are too young to handle the strong stuff. Ms. Brooks said that Jazz June referred to the jazz music they were listening to, which fits the time period considering this was written sometime in the late 50’s early 60’s. The final line, “We Die soon” obviously means that the young hooligans are going to live very brief lives. But I also took it to mean that all of us will die soon and maybe these boys were just living life how they chose to. I thought it was kind of like a small redeeming quality thrown in by the author at the end of a fairly critical poem.