Matt Williams Journal 2

     For this assignment we were to try and guess what the poem “We Real Cool” before we heard anything, after the title was read to us, and as each line was read to us. I initially guessed that the poem was going to be about a tree. This was a random guess since I had never heard of the writer or any of her works. After hearing the title, I thought poem was going to be about winter. Again I didn’t know that the author typically writes about people. Then after the first two lines, I thought that it was about cool people at a bar. I thought this was because Brooks wrote about pool players at an establishment called The Golden Shovel. I thought The Golden Shovel was a bar, so I thought the people she was talking about were older than 21. Then after leaving school and being out late were mentioned, I guessed that the people were actually kids skipping school who thought they were cool, but really weren’t. Then as the poem went on, I started to figure out what else they were doing. They were drinking, having sex, and sinning. It turns out that Brooks didn’t mean for “Jazz June” to be sexual, but she does not deny that that could have can be one meaning.

            I find it interesting that Brooks decided to write a poem about how the kids thought about themselves, instead of why they were not in school. Maybe it was because she also skipped school from time to time in her youth and understood how good it felt to be out, and she wanted to think about something new to write about. I do understand why she wants to be remembered by another poem. This one shows what is wrong with the educational system. Brooks probably has written about more interesting and abstract things that are probably better poems.