Gwendolyn Brooks was an American writer who lived from June 7th, 1917, to December 3rd, 2000. She attended three different high schools and one college during her educational career, a leading white high school, an all-black school, an integrated high school, and a junior college. Each Chicago school gave Brooks a perspective on racial dynamics of the city, which was a big influence on her work. Both parents encouraged her enthusiasm for reading and writing; her father provided bookshelves and a desk, and her mother once took her to meet the poets Langston Hughes and James Weldon Johnson. Brooks’ first poem was published in a children’s magazine when she was thirteen, and by sixteen, she had a portfolio of around seventy-five published poems. Her first poetry book was published in 1945, and her second, published in 1950, won her the Pulitzer Prize for poetry, the first given to an African American. She continued on to become a creative writing teacher, as well as to win a variety of different awards, recognitions, and achievements, including becoming the Poet Laureate to the Library of Congress, and being inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame.
Brooks’ The Pool Players./Seven At The Golden Shovel was published in her 1960 book The Bean Eaters. It is a simple, eight line poem. Each line, besides the last, ends with the word “we,” beginning the next sentence. I think she did this to provide unity among the statements about the speaker’s habits. Additionally, each line is comprised of no more than four syllables. None of the words in the entire poem consist of more than one syllable. The monosyllabic, short structure of the poem leads me to the conclusion that the speaker is someone who is not fully educated and whose mind is less than intricate. This conclusion is enhanced by the contents of the piece, including the lines “We real cool./We left school.” The speaker sounds immature and full of himself.
I like this poem a lot. The simplicity is unlike any other poem I have ever read. I feel like the subject encompasses teenage rebellion, even though it is only eight sentences. My reading of this poem was only enhanced when I Googled it and came across a reading of it by Brooks. The audio clip is from 1983, and before reciting the poem, Brooks explains where her inspiration came from. She talks about the boys she say on a school day during school hours hanging out at a pool hall, and how rather than thinking, “Oh, they should be in school,” she imagined what those boys felt like. Hearing the poem read how the author intended it to sound, and read by the other nonetheless, increased my enjoyment of the piece. I was able to hear the inflections of her tone and the rhythm with which she delivered the poem. I have not heard many poems spoken aloud, even though that is one of the main purposes of poetry, but discovering this reading of Brooks’ poem has encouraged me to try and find readings of other poetry I come across.
Also -- here is the link for the recording of Brooks' reading of the poem: http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15433
