We Real Cool

We learn a lot about the pool players of “We Real Cool,” as Brooks’s spare but precisely chosen words leave a remarkably clear impression. Rebellious and carefree, the pool players bristle with youthful bravado in their collective chant. Skipping school to go to the pool hall, the young men have escaped the confines of the mundane for the sake of fun. In a chorus, they proclaim that they hang out on their own as long as they can, joking around, competing at pool, and causing mischief. 

The phrase “Strike straight” (Line 6) seems, at first, to refer to the boys’ skills with a pool cue. However, Brooks might also include this powerful verb, strike, to indicate aggressive behavior, either within the group or with others. A quintessential phrase about youthful rebellion is “Sing sin” (Line 7). Like many teenagers, the boys indulge in whatever vices they can when removed from teachers, administrators, and parents: drinking gin (which they water down) and listening to jazz. 

The title of the poem, and the line to which it refers, clinches the boys’ elevated sense of self: “We real cool,” (Line 3), they brag, invoking the teenage anthem of expanding boundaries and the limits of freedom.