Friday, February 16, 2007

A Little Poetry for You: Brooks

It's Poetry Friday!

Here's a poem I mentioned several weeks ago. It's short, and there's not much to it at first glance. But when you hear the poet talk about it, and hear her read it, it takes on a bigger life.
The Pool Players
Seven at the Golden Shovel
by Gwendolyn Brooks

We real cool. We
Left school. We

Lurk late. We
Strike straight. We...

Go here for the audio and the rest of the poem. It's a wonderful audio.

Did you know this poem was banned for the use of the word "jazz?" Click the link above to hear all about it.

As an extra note, "The Bean Eaters" is worth a read too, while you're browsing through the Brooks poems.

3 comments:

Mary Lee said...

Thanks for the audio of Brooks reading this. That adds SO much! Like hearing Eloise Greenfield reading "Honey I Love."

Elaine Magliaro said...

Nancy,

Great poem selection!

In 2001, I had the privilege of being one of fifty educators selected to participate in the first Summer Poetry Institute for Teachers at Boston University. The institute was a collaboration between Robert Pinsky's Favorite Poem Project and the BU School of Education. For five days we talked about poetry with award-winning poets and viewed some of the videos produced by the Favorite Poem Project. One of my favorite video clips was of John Ulrich, a young man from South Boston, Massachusetts, reciting "We Real Cool" and talking about how the poem touched his life.

Here is a link to that video clip at the Favorite Poem Project website:

http://www.favoritepoem.org/
thevideos/ulrich.html

Nancy said...

Elaine, thanks for that link.