Housman and Gwendolyn Brooks: comparative literary analysis

Gwendolyn Brooks & Houseman

Gwendolyn Brooks' poem "We Real Cool" at first seems like a potent example of how a poet's awareness of how to use 'voice' can change the emotional texture of a poem over its unfolding staccato stanzas. Brooks' speakers in the poem on the surface seem brash, proud of the fact that they "left school," for example. However, with the wisdom of age, the poet Brooks makes a fitting coda to the poem that these proud and defiant individuals will 'die soon,' because of their decision to forgo an education and to choose the pleasures of the moment, sipping gin and listening to jazz all nights in clubs. The skill of Brooks' poem is that she carefully selects elements of the lifestyle of the speakers that make their choices seem attractive and seductive, more so than, for example, grinding away at books in study. Her knowledge and wisdom that they die soon makes the rest of the poem seem tragic, rather than joyful.

The language of Brooks' poem is also significant in that she takes on the language of young, African-American individuals living on the margins of society. This adds an extra resonance to her commentary, as the reader assumes that one of the reasons that these students are not 'turned on' by school is not their own laziness, but that society has given up on them, and their schools are of poor quality. No wonder the world of the street seems so much more alive and meaningful to them.

But the social context of Brooks' speakers causes the reader to raise another question: do the young people "lurking late" in gin and jazz houses know that an early death is their fate, already? Perhaps they are not innocent, blithe and blind to the dangers of skipping school. Instead, they think they will die young, no matter what they do, because of the conditions under which they live. The only choice they have is to steel themselves to their fate, to seem cool, and to try to eke out a little happiness, in what ever way life offers. Read as such, the poem is not about innocent and foolish young people, as related by the experienced voice of a poet -- instead it is about the experience and hard-bitten wisdom of the speakers. The poet is merely recording their voices, observing the tragedies that happen, every day in the inner cities to students who leave school because their lives seem like dead ends. The tragic poetry of the streets is elevated, but contains a terrible warning not so much to the short-lived young people, who have little choice in their fate, but to the reader about his or her moral responsibility in relation to the speakers.

Thus only innocence in Brooks' poem is in relation to the likely readers. The innocent person is the naive reader, who might hope that things could be different for the students, or who thinks that the students' lives of petty criminality and sensual pleasures seem attractive, in contrast to a middle-class existence. This is not the case, advises Brooks, stressing her theme of thwarted and ignored promise with spare yet haunting poetic brushstrokes. To fully understand the meaning of the poem, and the voices of both the poet's foresight and why the speakers sound so falsely proud of their lifestyle, the reader must appreciate the social context from which Brooks is 'coming from.'

A.E. Houseman's poem is written in a far more formal style, along the lines of a traditional English lyric. The British poet takes on the voice of a young man, who was told not to give his heart away at the age of twenty-one, and who disregarded this advice, even though it came from a wiser individual. Now, the speaker is twenty-two, and unlucky in love, regrets not taking the earlier advice. Houseman's use of irony or tension between the surface, explicitly articulated meaning and the implied meaning the poet is far more acute than in Brooks. Houseman the poet knows, presumably that twenty-two is not old and wise, but the twenty-two-year-old, after his first failed relationship feels that he is much more experienced and wise in the ways of love and the world than he was at age twenty-one. A year seems like a long time to a young person, suggests Houseman.