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Sound Devices in "We Real Cool" 



                   THE POOL PLAYERS. 
                   SEVEN AT THE GOLDEN SHOVEL.



We real cool. We
Left school. We

Lurk late. We
Strike straight. We

Sing sin. We
Thin gin. We

Jazz June. We
Die soon.
We Real Cool" is a great piece of literature. It doesn't take more than fifteen seconds to read, and yet I found it to be one of the most interesting poems I have come across, not only for its surprisingly deep meaning, but also for it's enjoyable and catchy use of sound devices.


Some uses of sound devices in the poem are obvious. For example, the two sentences in each stanza (not counting the use of enjambment with the word "we", which, by the way, is an interesting visual choice) produce a couplet, as they rhyme. However, looking deeper into the poem, we start to see more hidden devices, such as the consecutive rhyme "we thin gin" and the fact that on the first and second lines of the second and and the first line of the fourth stanza, alliteration is used. Pretty impressive for such a decievingly puny poem! In this case, less is more.





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