Sing sin (Friday's Sunday's Poem/Hot Actress 65)

THE POOL PLAYERS.
SEVEN AT THE GOLDEN SHOVEL.
by Gwendolyn Brooks.


We real cool. We
Left school. We

Lurk late. We
Strike straight. We

Sing sin. We
Thin gin. We

Jazz June. We
Die soon.

__________________

About the poem: I liked that it kind of rhymed, and that it seemed like real poetry. More and more poems these days eschew (I'm not afraid to use a word that sounds like a sneeze) poetic structure and sensibility for a more prose-like style; the modern trend of free verse without rhythm or rhyme is turning many poems into short-short stories. Poems, though, should do more than just tell a story: they should create an image and do it by subverting, modernizing, abruptly changing, or emphasizing structure, rhythm, contrast, and the like.

All of which is so much psychobabble -- along the lines of the NPR caller I heard today who was going to describe the structure of a joke, rather than tell the joke. Poetry should be like poems, and this one is.

About the Hot Actress: I asked Sweetie if Goldie Hawn had ever had plastic surgery, and she said she didn't think so beyond maybe Botox, which is dumb but not plastic surgery. Then she asked me why I wanted to know and I said that I'd seen her on CNN yesterday and thought I'd put her up here for my Hot Actress, and Sweetie said "Really?" in a way that questioned the validity of my choice, so I'd just like to point out that Goldie Hawn is pretty (but not as pretty as Sweetie), and that she scored a "79" in sexiness on AskMen.com. I don't know how high the rating go there, but 79 seems pretty good. (Sweetie would be a 3,234.1, at least.)(The 0.1 is because she makes really good egg salad.)


Listen to the poet talking about why she wrote it, and reading the poem, by clicking here.