We Real Cool

1. Ask three or more willing students to read “We Real Cool” aloud. Next, play the YouTube clip of Gwendolyn Brooks reading it. Discuss differences in the cadences and rhythms between Brooks’s recitation and the students’ recitations. Point out the musical quality in the repetition of the poem’s words and the steady, repeated rhythm. Then, introduce students to Langston Hughes’s “Harlem,” another poem known for its rhythmic qualities. Give students the opportunity to practice an oral reading of this poem. They may find it helpful to record themselves on a recording device. After time for preparation, willing students may either perform their renditions of “Harlem” live or play their recordings.

2. Terrence Hayes’s 2010 poem “The Golden Shovel” pays tribute to Gwendolyn Brooks in that the last word of each line forms the original poem, “We Real Cool” (i.e., Line 1 ends in “we,” Line 2 ends with “real,” etc.). In this activity, each student writes his or her own “Golden Shovel” of a preexisting work that pays tribute to the original in some way (for example, by commenting on the poem’s value or by exploring similar themes). Students may choose as their tribute subject “We Real Cool” or another short poem.