Poetry is created through the use of various rhetorical devices that have no inherent meaning within themselves, but when used within a poem, create meaning through the feelings and emotions which they convey to the reader. Thus, an examination of a couple of these rhetorical devices within two well-known poems will offer insight into that which stirs these particular emotions within the audience. This paper will look at two poems commonly used as insight into the civil rights movement: Gwendolyn Brooks' "We real cool", and Langston Hughes' "Negro," and explore how these rhetorical devicesùspecifically dialect and first person narrationùcreate the feelings that they have within the African American community, and within the American community as a whole.
Langston Hughes' "Negro" is written in first person narration, automatically implying to the audience the air of personal experience. This is important to Hughes' as a writer of the Harlem Renaissance, because the movement was made up entirely of first person accounts of experiences and feelings. Furthermore, it is common knowledge that an individual's personal story is more applicable to the lives of others than are sweeping generalizations. Thus, the choice to use the first person narration is a good one.
Gwendolyn Brooks also uses first person narration in her poem, "We Real Cool", though it apparently feels much different. For starters, the voice is a collective. She tells the audience that the poem is spoken by the collective voice of "The pool players. / Seven at the Golden Shovel," (Brooks, 19). It seems just as likely that this could be the collective voice of African American Youth, as Brooks sees it, or perhaps, even the collective voice of rebellious youth in general with no division in regard to race, as youth seems to be the same feeling across all cultures. In any case, the microcosm of the seven pool players seems to reflect a
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