We real Cool, Gwendolyn Brooks.

The reader expects from the title the poem is about someone who thinks he is cool.

The poem is made up of five stanzas, each one has two lines.

The poet describes people who think they are cool. More precisely, it initially refers to the “Pool Players”. Except the first two lines, the other ones describe behaviours of “cool people”.

The first stanza is an introduction. The other ones show the same construction: “we” + verb + adjective/substantive. The poem is based on the iamb. Each stanza ends with “we”, but this doesn’t prevent the reader from hearing the rhyme.

The poem wants to criticize people who do something to appear “cool”. In the poem there are a lot of behaviours that are considered “cool”.

The reader can catch what the poet thinks about it, because the entire poem is charged with irony. The proof is given by the last line, less ironic and funny than the previous ones.