Apart from its subtitle ("THE POOL PLAYERS/SEVEN AT THE GOLDEN
SHOVEL"), "We Real Cool" has four stanzas, each of which is a
two-line couplet. Every word in the poem has only one syllable.
While many traditional couplets in poetry have a rhyme at the
end of the line, this poem takes rhyming to a new level: the
couplets rhyme in the middle. Thus, "cool/school" in the first
stanza, and "late/straight" in the second. But the pause after
each rhyme word effectively makes it sound like the end of the
line. It's almost as if each line ends on a rhyme word, and "We"
is tacked on as a grace note. (In musical terminology, a grace
note is a short note that gets squeezed in before a beat.) The
poem has a regular meter, with three beats and a pause, but
these three beats can be pronounced in different ways. You could
say, "We real cool," or "We real cool," or "We real cool," or,
even, "We real cool." In the recording we listened to (hear it
on Poets.org), Brooks lay the most emphasis on the second two
beats: "We strike s