...poets who have set the bar pretty high for upcoming poets. Gwendolyn Brooks poems present different voices and characters in each poem she writes. Each is encountered with different problems she found important or controversial that she usually has witnessed take place in her own life. Brooks demonstrates different voices depending on which topic shes discussing in the piece and what character she feels would portray the topic the best. Gwendolyn Brooks was born in Topeka, Kansa, but then moved to Chicago at a very young age. She grew up with very supportive parents who always pushed her to try her best, and although they were not the wealthiest family, they stayed positive and very close. When Brooks was old enough to attend high school she attended 3 different schools. Hyde Park High School, which was the leading white school in her city, then she transferred to an all black school, Wendell Phillips, and lastly, the integrated Englewood High School (“Blacks”.)...
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...It is evident that the poem “We Real Cool” by Gwendolyn Brooks (1960) is a group of school age kids that are living on the “edge” so to speak. They leave school to go play pool, drink, and just be carefree with no concern of their education or their safety. Brooks (1960) used the words, “We Sing sin. We Die soon” which implies that they will die at an early age because of the life style they live it suggest they are living day by day on the street. The tone and irony are two literary devices used in this poem. The tone in the beginning is somewhat uplifting, but then quickly becomes saddened at the end when death is suggested. The other would be irony which is used many times throughout the poem. Brooks (1960) uses “SEVEN AT THE GOLDEN SHOVEL”, to set the scene of the poem. The word seven and golden usually implies lucky and money. The irony used: a pool hall would not normally be golden, it is usually very dark and a shovel usually brings hard work to mind and they are using a pool stick that doesn’t require any hard work. Just fun and games. The literary devices chosen implied that they have no real direction in their lives and no concern what so ever of their education or even themselves. Listening to the poem read aloud gives a whole different meaning in my thoughts and is so beneficial. Gwendolyn Brooks gives an introduction of the reading before she reads the poem aloud and explains why she wrote the poem. She saw these boys in passing of a pool...
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...Writing about Literature –Com 1102 September 28, 2011 “We Real Cool” “We Real Cool” is a very short poem that can have a different meaning and theme depending on the reader. I did some background information on Gwendolyn Brooks, the author of this poem, and I realized that knowing some of her background information really helps the reader. By knowing this information the reader can understand and appreciate her poem and its message. During a public reading Mrs. Brooks is known for saying, “I wrote [We Real Cool] because I was passing by a pool hall in my community one afternoon during school time, and I saw, therein, a little bunch of boys – I say there in this poem, seven – and they were shooting pool. Instead of asking myself, “Why aren’t they in school?” I asked myself, ‘I wonder how they feel about themselves?’ and just perhaps they might have considered themselves contemptuous of the establishment…” (Shmoop Editorial Team) This quote helps the reader understand the thought process of Brooks and helps define the general message of how the boys were wasting their time. “We Real Cool” has astoundingly only a subtitle and eight lines. The first sentence we read which is the subtitle says, “The Pool Players. /Seven at the Golden Shovel.” (860) Brooks starts the poem by introducing seven pool players at a local pool hall called the “Golden Shovel”. (860) I found the name of the pool hall intriguing because it means much more than a shovel that is gold. Gold can imply...
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...Rap Culture in Comparison to the Tone of Hughes and Brooks Today it is hard to get into a car and turn on the radio without hearing a song about money, sex, or fame. Modern day rap culture tries to force those three things on our population through their music and lyrics. They have changed many people’s perception of the perfect life through their tone, music, and lyrics. Many poems help express and can relate to the tone of the modern day rap culture. The tone in the poems, “Red Silk Stockings” by Langston Hughes, and “We Real Cool” by Gwendolyn Brooks, can be tied to the tone in rap culture and express many modern American values. Rap culture in the twenty first century has exponentially grown and in turn has influenced daily American live. Today, everyone is exposed to this new rap culture that is developing everywhere. Rap culture started in about the 1970’s in New York City (Sullivan). In those days rap was about everyday life and race but has greatly change since then. Rap songs these days are all about sex, money, drugs, women, cars, and practically any material thing. Many songs talk about how rich the rappers are and the extravagant ways they live. Most songs in rap culture have poor grammar and language. These songs are crude and talk about women only as sex. The view points of modern day rappers are extremely clouded because of what they talk about and how they live. The tone of the Hughes and Brooks poems help to show the tone and expression of modern day rap culture...
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...2015 Tarnished Gold Chicago poet Gwendolyn Brooks was the first African- American female poet to win the Pulitzer Prize and went on to serve as the U.S Poet Laureate from 1985-1986. Among Brooks’ many works is the short poem; “We Real Cool” which sums up the reality that youths will have to face if they lose school. “We Real Cool” was written during the Civil Rights Movement in 1959, a period of great segregation. In 1954 the Supreme Court ruled that it was unconstitutional to segregate schools in the case of Brown vs Board of Education, however segregation was still prominent in society and this frustrated many African- Americans. Aside from separation, the effects of Segregation caused a lot of black youths to lose sight of their role in society and what it meant to have a bright future. By being told that they do not belong numerous times, being victims of prejudice and being treated as inferior they began to impact their outlook on life. Consistently being told that they have no future led youths to believe that it was nothing more than a false pretense, as seen in the boys who seem to be struggling with identity. Anyone who has ever played hooky can relate to “We Real Cool”, instead of attending school seven young men decide to hang out at a bar and play pool. Brooks is attempting to send a message through her poem and she accomplishes this through the use of symbolism and word choice. According to Gwendolyn Brooks, one day as she was walking through her Chicago...
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...American Gwendolyn Brooks. The three elements that I found interesting in this poem will be reviewed. The elements are image, tone, and symbol. I will explain how these elements affected my response to the poem all together. In addition also explain my reaction to the contents of this short poem. Along with clarifying if these elements caused me to focus on just one aspect of this poem over other poems. When I first read this short poem. I was baffled as to what it meant. I reread it several times and still cold not comprehend what it meant. Then I listened to the We Real Cool speech given by the author of The Pool Players Gwendolyn Brooks. She goes on describing how she was inspired to write this poem. Brooks goes on to explain how one day she was walking in her community one afternoon during school time. As Brooks was passing by a pool hall she saw a seven little boys shooting pool in that pool hall. “ Seven boys in a pool during school time. The pool players, seven at the Golden Shovel”, (Flynn, Richard, 2000, "The Kindergarten of New Consciousness": Gwendolyn Brooks and the Social Construction of Childhood). Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/2901386. “ Brooks goes on to explain instead of asking herself, why are they not in school? She asked herself , I wonder how they feel about themselves? Did they consider themselves to be contemptuous of the pool hall? Brooks goes on to describe that it was the month of June. A month everyone loves”,(, Gwendolyn Brooks , 1960...
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...Gwendolyn Elizabeth Brooks was born June 7, 1917 in Topeka, Kansas. She was the first child of her parents, David and Keziah Brooks. When Brooks was six weeks old, her family moved to Chicago, Illinois, which Brooks considers her home town. At the age of seven, Brooks' gift in writing was discovered and her mother encouraged it by introducing her to different types of literature. Her parents were otherwise strict and Brooks was not allowed to play with the other children in her neighborhood. She spent the majority of her free time reading and writing in her room. Brooks, for this reason was incredibly shy even as an adult and lacked social skills, making few friends at school. Brooks attended several schools, including an all-white high school, (Hyde Park High School) before transferring to an all-black high school (Wendell Phillips). She eventually was transferred again to an integrated school (Englewood High School). In 1936 she graduated from Wilson Junior College. Her different schools gave her a view of the racial dynamic which she used in her writing. Her early works appeared in the Chicago Defender, a newspaper primarily for the black citizens of Chicago. In 1939 Brooks married Henry Blakely. The couple had two children, Henry Jr. and Nora. In 1945 Brooks published her first book, A Street in Bronze Ville and in 1949 she published Annie Allen, a book of loosely connected poetry about growing up African American in Chicago. She received the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in...
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...simply because it opens up with portraying the ultimate scene of seven boys who surrounded a pool hall which was named the Golden Shovel. This line exposes the actual scene which the play had represented certain small gang who were in need of luck in order to achieve certain goal in their lives. Also the content of the play seemingly interested as result of implication whereby it implies the youngness of the players (Brooks, 1959). The poem`s content also exposes the certain illegal activities which were practiced by the boys discussed. What interested me are narrator words when exposing the facts by use of secret word “Lurk late” which shows that, a certain activities were taking place in the dark. The identification shows that, too much exposure to darkness makes somebody to be what he or she ought to be. The narrator uses the word “strike straight” showing that, the boys where seemingly trying to do something menacing. Perhaps, they committed crimes, rapes and murder as well since they were all undergoing through a rite of passage in their development (Brooks, 1959). The form of the poem “the pool players” was identified to have been determined by Colloquial rhythm (Haikus type of poem) the narrator tried to catch from the readers. The element of Bravado within the poem portrays the activities of street boys which the seemed to sound defensible besides desirable. The form of the poem identifies the folk type in which a certain impression may be approachable in monosyllabic...
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...March 18, 2014 A Breakdown of Two Small But Powerful Poems Robert Frost’s “Fire and Ice” poem and Gwendolyn Brooks’ “We Real Cool” are ten lines or less but are poems that are extremely powerful and influential. Robert Frost talks about death but if the world ended, how would an individual want to die. Would an individual rather die by burning to death or being frozen to death? Gwendolyn Brooks’ poem is about a group of young black men who have no potential or future. All in all these poems have a vivid sense of imagery, an inspirational theme, and an odd rhyme scheme and meter. Although these two poems have two completely different subjects, they make you think and actually begin to questions certain aspects of life. In Brooks’ she sets the scene along with her characters and setting before even starting the poem. She lets know the characters are seven pool players, at the Golden Shovel. The Golden Shovel is a metaphor for these teenagers digging their own grave, when they’re supposed to be having fun, because they’re in their golden years. In lines 2-4 of her poem she talks about how the teenagers dropped out of school, stay out late, and that they commit crimes head on. This is a great example of imagery, because one can easily imagine young African-American kids not having anything to do after they dropped out of school and start to do illegal things. Therefore Brooks’ gave a great name for the setting, the Golden Shovel because these teenagers are literally digging their...
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...2052) or rime, which is when two or more words that contain identical or similar vowel sound (Kennedy and Gioia, 2074). In the two pieces “We Real Cool” by Gwendolyn Brooks and “My Papa’s Waltz” by Theodore Roethke the poets use a combination of rime, rhythm and meter to get the poem’s meaning across. The poem “We Real Cool” uses rhythm, the pattern of stresses and pauses in a poem, to get across the poet Gwendolyn Brooks’ theme. “We Real Cool” is about a group of boys that should be in school but decide to skip to go do something that is considered “cool”. Brooks uses an imitative tone while simultaneously, questioning of a group of the boys in a pool hall’s lives. Questions come up like “What are they doing here?” and “Shouldn’t they be in school?” but the bigger question is how do they feel about their lives. The poem implies the message that the boys in this pool hall are unhappy with their everyday lives, so they feel the need to pretend to be something else, something “cooler”. By using certain elements of sound Brooks shows the readers that she believes that these boys in the pool hall are trying to be something they are not. The poem also gives the reader a feeling of nostalgia. It brings the reader back to a time when they were younger and reminds them of the times that they tried to be something they were not. Brooks uses elements of sound like internal rime and meter to imitate how she believes that the boys would sound while talking about their activities. In lines...
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...Marcos Reyes Reyes Page.1 Prof. De Los Reyes ENG 112 December 10th 2011 Maya Angelou is a well-known American author, especially during the times of the civil rights movement which she was an activist. Maya had a long career, which includes different works from poetry, plays, screenplays for television and film, directing, acting, and public speaking. She is a profound writer of poetry. Her style of writing is geared for self-empowerment. To rise over all odds and to take pride in who you really are. She shows her honesty and emotions. Mostly her experiences that she went through in life or read about. Most of her works flow and rhyme well and usually very inspiring. Some of her poems are even considered autobiographical kind of poems. The style of Maya Angelou can range from complex symbolical ideas to easy, straightforward concepts. Her style is like a story. The vocabulary is usually easy to understand, and not too complicated. Her works are not always conventional either. (Study World 1) Maya Angelou was born April 4, 1928 as Marguerite Johnson in St. Louis. She was raised in segregated rural Arkansas. She came from a broken home. Angelou was raped at eight, and was an unwed Reyes Page. 2 mother at 16 years old (Williams 1). Angelou...
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...University of North Carolina at Pembroke English and Theatre DEPARTMENT COURSE: ENG 2100: African American Literature Fall 2014 INSTRUCTOR: Dr. Charles Tita OFFICE: West Building, Office of Distance Education OFFICE HOURS: Monday 4-6 and Tuesday/Thursday 10:30-12 OFFICE PHONE: 521 6352 FAX: 910 521 6762 EMAIL ADDRESS: charles.tita@uncp.edu LECTURE TIME: Tuesday/Thursday 2-3:15pm LOCATION: DIAL 147 REQUIRED TEXT Gates Jr., Henry Louis, and Nellie Y. McKay, eds. The Norton Anthology of African American Literature. New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 2004. OPTIONAL REFERENCES Locke, Alain, ed. The New Negro. New York: Atheneum, 1968. hooks, bell. Teaching to Trangress: Education as the Practice of Freedom. New York: Routledge, 1994. Harrold, Stanley. American Abolitionists. New York: Pearson Education, 2001. Youngs, J. William T. American Realities: Historical Episodes-From First Settlements to the Civil War. New York: Longman, 2000. Fanon, Frantz. The Wretched of the Earth. New York: Grove Press, 1963. COURSE DESCRIPTION: A survey of African American literature, introducing students to genres, trends, and major periods of African American literature, ranging from the 17th-, 18th- and 19th- century autobiographies and narratives to 20tth –century works. Authors include: Jupiter Hammon, Briton Hammon, Sojourner Truth, Nat Turner, Claude McKay, Zora Neale Hurston, Sterling Brown, Richard Wright, Lorraine Hansberry, Amiri Baraka, Toni Morrison...
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...M A G A Z I N E FA L L 2 0 0 2 Volume 20 Number 2 SPANNING THE GLOBE Duke Leads the Way in International Law Teaching and Scholarship inside plus Duke admits smaller, exceptionally well-qualified class Duke’s Global Capital Markets Center to launch new Directors’ Education Institute from the dean Dear Alumni and Friends, It is not possible, these days, for a top law school to be anything other than an international one. At Duke Law, we no longer think of “international” as a separate category. Virtually everything we do has some international dimension, whether it concerns international treaties and protocols, commercial transactions across national borders, international child custody disputes, criminal behavior that violates international human rights law, international sports competitions, global environmental regulation, international terrorism, or any number of other topics. And, of course, there is little that we do at Duke that does not involve scholars and students from other countries, who are entirely integrated with U.S. scholars and students. Students enrolled in our joint JD/LLM program in international and comparative law receive an in-depth education in both the public and private aspects of international and comparative law, enriched by the ubiquitous presence of foreign students; likewise, the foreign lawyers who enroll in our one-year LLM program in American law enroll in the same courses, attend the same conferences...
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...M A G A Z I N E FA L L 2 0 0 2 Volume 20 Number 2 SPANNING THE GLOBE Duke Leads the Way in International Law Teaching and Scholarship inside plus Duke admits smaller, exceptionally well-qualified class Duke’s Global Capital Markets Center to launch new Directors’ Education Institute from the dean Dear Alumni and Friends, It is not possible, these days, for a top law school to be anything other than an international one. At Duke Law, we no longer think of “international” as a separate category. Virtually everything we do has some international dimension, whether it concerns international treaties and protocols, commercial transactions across national borders, international child custody disputes, criminal behavior that violates international human rights law, international sports competitions, global environmental regulation, international terrorism, or any number of other topics. And, of course, there is little that we do at Duke that does not involve scholars and students from other countries, who are entirely integrated with U.S. scholars and students. Students enrolled in our joint JD/LLM program in international and comparative law receive an in-depth education in both the public and private aspects of international and comparative law, enriched by the ubiquitous presence of foreign students; likewise, the foreign lawyers who enroll in our one-year LLM program in American law enroll in the same courses, attend the same conferences...
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...CONTENT Exercise 1. 2 Exercise 2. 5 Exercise 3. 8 Exercise 4. 11 Exercise 5. 15 Exercise 6. 18 Exercise 7. 21 Exercise 8. 25 Exercise 9. 28 Exercise 10. 31 Exercise 11. 34 Exercise 12. 37 Exercise 13. 40 Exercise 14. 43 Exercise 15. 46 Exercise 16. 49 Exercise 17. 53 Exercise 18. 57 Exercise 19. 61 Exercise 20. 65 Exercise 21. 68 Exercise 22. 72 Exercise 23. 76 Exercise 24. 80 说明： 题目来源： Exercise 1-24：所有题目都来自官方真题 其中： Exercise 1-14：我们将OG和PP2中的题目编排为前14个Exercise, 每个Exercise都是按照GRE考试中阅读部分的出题习惯编排，即每个Exercise 10个题目，形式为（1长+2短+1逻辑 or 4短+1逻辑）。 Exercise 15-24：我们将近年来考试中出现的文章和老GRE中极为接近现行出题风格的文章编排为后10个Exercise，每个Exercise 13个题目左右，形式为（1长+1短+2逻辑）。 练习方法： 建议大家第一遍做能够限时练习，按照考试的要求每个Exercise的大致难度和应该用的时间都标在了前面。没做完6个exercise可以做一个回顾总结，将文章反复做一遍，总结单词，长难句，文章的出题规律，句子之间的关系。 答案显示方法： 如果你打印出来练习：参考答案见P 页 如果你在电脑上练习：windows 系统：Ctrl+Shift+8；Mac系统：Command+8 Exercise 1. 20min While most scholarship on women’s employment in the United States recognizes that the Second World War (1939–1945) dramatically changed the role of women in the workforce, these studies also acknowledge that few women remained in manufacturing jobs once men returned from the war. But in agriculture, unlike other industries where women were viewed as temporary workers, women’s employment did not end with the war. Instead, the expansion of agriculture and a steady decrease in the number of male farmworkers combined to cause the industry to hire more women in the postwar years...
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