Introduction“We Real Cool,” perhaps Brooks' best-known poem, subjects an equally representative experience to an intricate technical and thematic examination, at once loving and critical. The poem is only twenty-four words long, including eight repetitions of the word “we.” It is suggestive that the subtitle of “We Real Cool” specifies the presence of only seven billiard players at the “Pala d'Oro”. The eighth “we” suggests that poet and reader share, on some level, the desperation of the collective voice conveyed by Brooks. The final line, “We/will die soon,” reiterates the carpe diem motif in the vernacular of Chicago's South Side. Analysis This poem has a touch of youthful freshness mixed with carelessness and rebellious zeal. It's a little couplet with great use of rhyme. On the one hand, “We Real Cool” seems to simply catalog the experiences of a group of dropouts who are content to “sing about sin” in whatever forms are available. A surprising ambiguity enters the poem, however, revolving around the question of how to accentuate the word "we" that ends every line except the last, p....