The Impact of a Poem's Line Breaks: Enjambment and Gwendolyn Brooks' "We Real Cool"

• Review the lesson plan. Locate and bookmark suggested materials and other useful websites. Download and print out documents you will use and duplicate copies as necessary for student viewing.
• Students can access the poem and some of the activity materials via the EDSITEment LaunchPad.
• If your students are new to or uncomfortable reading poetry, consider teaching the EDSITEment lesson plan "Preparing for Poetry."
• Read the biography of Gwendolyn Brooks from the EDSITEment reviewed Modern American Poetry website.
• Read the online version and listen to the audio clip of Brooks' "We Real Cool," from the EDSITEment-reviewed The Academy of American Poets website.
• Browse the critical essays about "We Real Cool" from EDSITEment-reviewed Modern American Poetry website. Note Brooks' own comments about her widely read poem.
• Read the overview of Brooks' The Bean Eaters, her 1960 volume of poems that included "We Real Cool." From The Academy of American Poets website.
• View the video of a young man (John Ulrich) discussing and reading "We Real Cool" as part of the EDSITEment reviewed Library of Congress Favorite Poems Project. The link takes you to the index page for all the videos; click on the We Real Cool/John Ulrich thumbnail or hyperlink to activate the video.

Activity 1. Listening to Gwendolyn Brooks

Introduce students to Gwendolyn Brooks by providing some details of her life and place in literary history, drawing from the following links available via the EDSITEment-reviewed Academy of American Poetry:

• biography of Gwendolyn Brooks
• overview of Brooks' The Bean Eaters, her 1960 volume of poems that included "We Real Cool."

Emphasize to students that perhaps the most important first step in closely analyzing a poem is to hear and/or read the poem aloud. Ask for three different student volunteers to read "We Real Cool." Then show the video of John Ulrich discussing and reading "We Real Cool" as part of the EDSITEment-reviewed Library of Congress Favorite Poems Project. During these readings, ask students to pay particular attention to how the poem is read - what words are emphasized and how do the readers establish a rhythm for their reading?

If students read this poem at home before class discussion, consider handing out these questions, available in .pdf format, for students to complete at home. If students are encountering the poem in class, ask them to consider the following questions:

• Where does this poem take place?
• Who makes up the "we" in the poem? How would you describe the "we" and what are they doing throughout the poem (consider their age and attitude)?
• How would you describe the voices, or identities, of the "we"? What three adjectives best describe the pool players?
• Was it difficult to pause after each "we" (where the line breaks). Why or why not?
• What was different about your and John Ulrich's reading of the poem?
• What about the poem stood out as you were reading the poem?
• What is the mood or tone of the poem?
• How would you describe the sound of the poem - like a song, a chant, or some other sound?

Next, play the audio clip of Gwendolyn Brooks reading her own poem "We Real Cool," from the EDSITEment-reviewed The Academy of American Poets website. In the video, Brooks offers her own commentary about the poem, and then she reads the poem itself. As students will hear, Brooks prefers to use a soft "we" when she reads the poem aloud. Specifically, she says,

"The 'We'—you're supposed to stop after the 'We' and think about their validity, and of course there's no way for you to tell whether it should be said softly or not, I suppose, but I say it rather softly because I want to represent their basic uncertainty, which they don't bother to question every day, of course."

-From critical essays from the EDSITEment-reviewed Modern American Poetry website.

Ask students the following questions:

• In her commentary, Brooks mentions "the establishment." What does she mean by "the establishment"?
• How are the pool players going against the establishment?
• What does Brooks mean when she suggests that the soft "we" indicates that the pool players have a "basic uncertainty"? About what are they uncertain?
• How would you describe the "we" now (in relation to when you first heard the poem read by students)? How does the soft "we" help to make the pool players seem uncertain? Are they uncertain about themselves?
• Notice how Brooks pauses after each "we"; what effect do these pauses have on the poem as she reads it? How do the pauses affect the poem's pace and rhythm?

Activity 2. Analyzing Line Breaks

The beauty, strength, and power of this poem are rooted in the poem's effective use of line breaks and enjambment. Review with students the definition of enjambment at LitWeb.

                The Pool Players.
        Seven at the Golden Shovel.

        We real cool. We   

        Left school. We

        Lurk late. We

        Strike straight. We

        Sing sin. We   

        Thin gin. We

        Jazz June. We   

        Die soon.

Perhaps the best way for students to understand the impact of the poem's line breaks is to reconfigure the poem and disrupt the use of enjambment. Ask students to rewrite the poem as in prose form, placing all "we" sentences on the same line. They should not use any stanzas but should instead write the poem in one "block" piece of prose, such as:

"We real cool. We left school. We lurk late (etc.)"

Note: these activities can be accomplished in a variety of ways, depending on class size and configuration. One student can transcribe the poem on the blackboard and the class can engage in one large conversation, or you might consider breaking students into groups for this activity. Likewise, if more than one computer is available, consider asking students to copy and paste the poem into a word processing program and using it to rearrange the stanzas and line breaks.

Ask for two student volunteers to read the new prose poem, and then ask students to discuss the following questions:

• How does the sound of the poem change?
• How do the pace and rhythm of the poem change?
• How does the tone of the poem change?
• How would you describe the pool players now?
• Are any elements of the poem lost when the lines are presented in "natural" sounding sentences (e.g., "We left school")?
• Is the prose poem as powerful as Brooks' version? Why or why not?

Now ask students to rewrite (retype, or rearrange) the poem on the board with each "we" sentence in its own line:

"We real cool.

"We left school … (etc.)"

Read this version, and then ask students to analyze this rendition of the poem:

• How does the sound of the poem change?
• How do the pace and rhythm of the poem change?
• How does the tone of the poem change?

Finally, replay the audio clip of Brooks reading the poem. Discuss with students how Brooks' selected line breaks affect the poem's sound, pace, and meaning. Also call attention to the fact that Brooks uses 2-line stanzas. Wrap up this activity with the following questions:

• Why do you think Brooks chose to break each line after "We"?
• How do the 2-line stanzas affect the poem's rhythm and pace? Do they slow down the poem, quicken the poem, create a song-like rhythm, etc.?

• Have each student write a two- to three-page analysis of the impact of line breaks—and how it affects tone, rhythm, and theme—in one of the following poems:
  • Linda Pastan
    • "Erosion"
  • Jean Toomer:
    • "Reapers," from The Academy of American Poets website
    • "Harvest Song," from Modern American Poetry website
  • Langston Hughes:
    • "Merry-Go-Round," from the Library of Congress Favorite Poems Project

Another way for students to understand the power and poetic effect of line breaks is to have them turn their own prose poems into poems that rely heavily of line breaks to convey meaning and move an audience. Divide the class into 4-5 small groups. Have each group work together to write a prose poem about a group of people that they associate with, such as members of an academic or athletic club, band members, and so on (students should write about themselves to hopefully avoid any tone of mocking another group of people).

After each group has "perfected" its prose poem, have each group turn the poem into a poem with 5, 2-3 line stanzas. Point out that students can rearrange the word order and change a word or two if necessary to create their final poem.

Have each student write a brief analysis of the difference between their group's prose poem and revised, 5-stanza poem. In the analysis, students should answer the following question: "How does your group's choice of line breaks affect the tone, pace, rhythm, and thematic impact of the poem?"

Selected EDSITEment Websites

• The Academy of American Poets
  • "We Real Cool"
  • Overview of Brooks' The Bean Eaters
  • Definition of enjambment at LitWeb
• The Library of Congress American Memory
  • "We Real Cool" Favorite Poems Project
• Modern American Poetry
  • Biography of Gwendolyn Brooks
  • Critical essays for "We Real Cool"