We Real Cool, with controversy

National Poetry Month continues.  Today: Gwendolyn Brooks’s We real cool, probably known to anyone of my generation who went to high school (lycée) in the United States.

What has always impressed me about this poem: it has you thinking in seconds flat.  (This expression explained in the English notes below.)  You know what it’s about, you know that it’s telling a very short story, you know that it’s not a happy story–and yet: you couldn’t really say what most of this poem actually means.  (I say that as a native speaker of the language in which the poem is written–and one with a literature degree, too.)  The lines

           We
Jazz June.

…have been particularly controversial, allegedly leading it to have been banned by some districts (I haven’t been able to verify that, sorry)–to jazz can be interpreted as to fuck.  

I suppose he expects the police to turn up in seconds flat whilst he deliberately stirs hatred and baits any extremists that might be reading his ‘journalism’ on purpose and in the most provocative manner he can get away with.

— CarlyJRamsgate #LoveNHS (@mt_cj_rams) April 8, 2018

Might fuck around and try rock climbing.
Knowing myself, I’d fall to my death in seconds flat. 🤣

— αииα (@AnnaGoesMissing) April 8, 2018

lol oh yeah, how could you possibly enjoy freedom without being armed to the teeth with weapons of mass murder that anyone around you can pick up and annihilate crowds of people in seconds flat.

— Matt Kirby (@kirbycar47) April 6, 2018

and let me speak the truth rn: being harsh on films gets you nowhere in this biz. nobody cares how much shit you talked on suicide squad. and if david ayer offered me a gig, i’d take it in seconds flat. work is work. it’s not always good work but it’s always good exposure

— slaybrams (@hansoleaux) April 7, 2018

OF COURSE IT’S NOT “WITHIN THE SCOPE”. The amendment was written in the time of fucking muskets. How could they have possibly conceived of military grade semi-auto machine guns that could massacre rooms full of people in seconds flat? As if civilians need these for “safety”

— Matt Kirby (@kirbycar47) April 6, 2018

From up there to down here – The Derwent River at Rowlands Gill. Achieved on bum and back in seconds flat to the amusement of startled deer! Isn’t mud slippery? My clothes are now in the washing machine. pic.twitter.com/WnFrf2Wqr2

— John McCarthy (@Danford2013) April 6, 2018

How I used it in the post: What has always impressed me about this poem: it has you thinking in seconds flat.