Blog 11: Quote-Response

I really like Gwendolyn Brooks's "We Real Cool" (579). The poem has four two-line stanzas, and what's interesting about the poem for me is that every syllable is stressed. That's pretty hard to do in English, as most words are comprised of a set of stressed and unstressed syllables. Brooks uses all single-syllable words divided into three-syllable sentences. Each line has four syllables and ends in "We" without punctuation (enjambment) except for the last line, which has two syllables "Die soon." I think the rhythm punctuates the short lives of these people. The syllables are all stressed, which indicates they are using every hard moment of their lives. The use of a plural first-person protagonist indicates that the characters, including the narrator or persona, act as a group, so there may be some peer pressure to participate in this lifestyle. The last line being short a syllable, ending with a period (end-stopped), and including the words "Die soon" emphasizes exactly that: because these people (I think of them as young men) live hard, they won't live long.