We Real Cool, We Left School Poem

The first line of the poem is “We Real cool, We Left school.” This shows that the narration of this poem is from the point of view of a group of young people who decided not to go to school anymore, and they think they’re really cool. It’s also written in a seemingly “street kid” dialect, and the grammar is incorrect on purpose, to try to emulate a certain group of people.

The next lines are “We Lurk late. We Strike straight.” This shows that the behaviors these kids are partaking in are primarily negative, because there is really nothing positive I can think of that “lurks” and stays out late. Striking straight is talking about being good at aiming and striking with pool cues, because they are pool players. However, another connotation that

comes with the word “strike” is violence, whether it’s crime in the present, or foreshadowing violence in their futures, it makes me think that maybe these kids could even be dangerous. Also, notice that these are the first lines of the poem where the author incorporates alliteration; “lurk” and “late” both start with “L”, and “strike” and “straight” both start with “S”.

The lines after that are “We Sing sin. We Thin gin” We sing sin basically means that these guys are celebrating the fact that they sin. They don’t have any moral obligations, and sinning is just fine by them. I wish the poem had specified what exactly “singing sin” is referring to though, because there are many possibilities. It could mean casual sex, outright violence, or even just drinking and gambling, because, back when this poem was written, drinking and gambling were also seen as fairly sinful. “We thin gin” just means that these kids who are supposed to be in school are diluting alcohol before drinking it. This shows that they do basically whatever they please, and they probably aren’t receiving proper guidance.

The second to last line is “We Jazz June”. This can be interpreted many different ways. It can mean that these pool players live their lives as if every day is summer, like in June, complete with all the fun of the Jazz Age. Or, if you interpret it with the original meaning of “jazz”, it could mean that the boys make love to the summertime, because they act like all year is summer