We Real Cool is a poem about the identity of a group of teenagers, black males, playing pool in the Golden Shovel. They are said to be black, like the poet Gwendolyn Brooks, but the poem could be about any group of rebellious youngsters anywhere, be they white or female.

Literary devices used in Gwendolyn Brooks’s poem “We Real Cool” include monosyllabic lexis, enjambment, internal rhyme, and parallel syntax.

“Thin gin” refers to drinking gin with a mixer such as ginger ale or tonic water, the point simply being that these pool players drink hard liquor. “Sing” and “sin” alliterate but “Thin” and “gin” rhyme.

To maintain the syntactic pattern, the last line ends on the predicate, “Die soon,” omitting the final “We.” The predominant rhythm of the poem–two strong beats, one weak beat–resolves (satisfyingly) on the two strong beats in the last line.

We / Lurk late,” indicate that the speakers are probably high school or college dropouts whose principal hours are late in the evening (01-03).

Rebellion, Youth, and Mortality. “We Real Cool” is a poem about rebellion—and its costs. The poem is spoken by a group of seven teenagers hanging out outside a pool hall. These teens present themselves as rebels who skip school, stay out late, and party hard.

Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass was so controversial in the mid-nineteenth century due to Whitman’s departures from well-established poetic traditions of the mid-nineteenth century and due to the overt sexual content of many of the poems in the book.

In 1882, Oliver Stevens, the district attorney of Boston, banned the 1881 edition—an edition that Whitman constructed to resemble a bible—because the sexually charged poems violated “the Public Statutes concerning obscene literature.” But even his critics could not dismiss Leaves of Grass entirely.

Whitman is among the most influential poets in the American canon, often called the father of free verse. His work was controversial in its time, particularly his poetry collection Leaves of Grass, which was described as obscene for its overt sensuality. His poetry often focused on both loss and healing.

culm: central axis of the mature grass shoot, comprised of nodes and internodes; each node bearing a leaf. leaf blade: part of the leaf above the sheath, also known as the lamina. leaf sheath: lower section of a grass, enclosing its associated culm internode.

“Song of Myself” is a poem by Walt Whitman (1819–1892) that is included in his work Leaves of Grass. It has been credited as “representing the core of Whitman’s poetic vision.”

There are three important themes: the idea of the self, the identification of the self with other selves, and the poet’s relationship with the elements of nature and the universe. Houses and rooms represent civilization; perfumes signify individual selves; and the atmosphere symbolizes the universal self.

“Song of Myself” is an American classic, but we encourage you to exercise your own “self-reliance” by being open in your own reading of it. The poem means so many things to so many different people, and its diversity and openness are its greatest strength.

“Song of Myself” by Walt Whitman celebrates the theme of democracy and the oneness of mankind, specifically the American people. As well, it represents Transcendentalist thought concerning mankind’s common soul. The poem also focuses on the theme that life is a journey to uncover one’s self, one’s identity.

Song of Myself Themes

• Identity. The word “identity” occurs only a couple of times in “Song of Myself,” but it is easily the central theme of this vast epic.
• Visions of America. America was not just a place to Whitman, it was also an idea and a goal to shoot for.
• Friendship.
• Spirituality.
• Sex.

The major symbols, used here are ‘I’, ‘the grass’, ‘the journey’, ‘body’, ‘soul’, ‘plants’, ‘animals’, ‘heavenly bodies’, etc. The ‘I’ or self is perhaps the single most important symbol in ‘Song of Myself’. The ‘I’ does not stand for the poet alone.

In “Song of Myself,” Walt Whitman celebrates the self. In this 52-part poem, Whitman celebrates the human body and its ability to become one with the self and with nature. The speaker shows that the union of the self and the body allows for a truly transcendent experience.

Grass, a central the themes of death and immortality, for grass is symbolic of the ongoing cycle of life present in nature, which assures each man of his immortality. Nature is an emblem of God, for God’s eternal presence in it is evident everywhere.

The dominant themes that are more pervasive in Whitman’s poetry are democracy, life/death cycles, individualism, and nature.

Walt Whitman’s Song of Myself is a poem which attempts to liberate both the poet and reader from the restraints of convention by thoroughly exploring and emphasizing transcendentalist beliefs of a common soul or spiritual state, known only in an individual’s intuition, which encompasses and goes beyond the …

Hover for more information. In part 6 of “Song of Myself ,” Whitman portrays death as just another step on the journey of our lives; it is a continuation rather than an end. He asks what we think has become of the people who have gone before us, the young and the old.

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He uses simile and metaphor, paradox, rhythm, and free verse style, to convey his struggle between the relation of the body and soul, the physical and the spiritual being. He continues to disobey all social restrictions of the romantic time period.

The tone of the story is appreciative. At first, Whitman seems indifferent, but at the end, he talks about the pleasing sounds and the joy of the people. The mood of the poem is proud. This poem is a prime example of what it is supposed to feel like to be an American.

The speaker of the poem is someone who celebrates the human self as an all-encompassing spirit. He believes in the unity of self and nature. For him, the self can be simultaneously one and part of everything in the universe.

Whitman is about to end his poem with the image of his own future death: “I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love”. The author’s carelessness about himself is what makes him truly great: in fact, he donates himself to Earth, giving back to life the fullness of his existence.

The reader or listener must do more than just hear the voice of the poem to identify the speaker. It is important to examine the other elements of the poem, such as the situation, structure, descriptive details, figurative language and rhythms to help determine the speaker’s identity.