From Youth to Youth(Edit 1)

[Weeded]

This is a gangster poem without the verve, the depth, or the anxiety of the usual, and with a lot of carelessness with regards to punctuation (really, why only use periods in those last three stanzas? Why so many run-ons? And "life's no fairy tale"!) and the use of imagery (so the first stanza is a sort of prologue -- would be effective if the whole ditch angle wasn't clarified on second stanza after it, or if the ditch itself was what was central to the tadpole metaphor [not even a description of, what, the ghetto?] -- also, where the hell did that fairy tale thing come from?). Plus, the character gets to think about his childhood, then he thinks about joining the gang (tying it very, very poorly to a very, very shaky metaphor), then, what, he's free? And all we get on those instigating moments of violence are hints (and terribly, terribly vague ones -- what if our character was blood stained because, what, he shot himself or something? And is the killer next to him even related?)? No sense of movement, and nothing real to pull us in. Again, no verve, no depth, no anxiety -- big failure. Also, "hands collide" -- so he clapped? so he washed his hands?

RN,

Thank you for the viable critique. I've been mulling over your thoughts the past couple days with a bit of frustration. This was not meant to be a gangster poem, despite the content. The fact is I've failed to provide my message clearly, and everytime I try a rewrite I get nowhere. The lack of punctuation was due to my idea of delivery, I saw myself reciting this almost as a rap in that I wouldn't pause much through lines. I thought I might be able to get away with the run-ons but I have not it seems. And I had a last minute idea of connecting 'frog' with the old fables of the princess kissing the frog, I could say in hindsight the 'hands collide'bit was very last-minute as well. And the character in the poem did not once contemplate(nor did he) joining a gang, I'm curious how you interpreted that bit.. I was also trying to approach the violence as very normal, a pedestrian act to the character. I was not trying to center around the violence itself but the connection between the characters childhood joys with tadpoles in a ditch and the characters new joys in violence with other 'tadpoles' in his new 'ditch'(which was not to symbolize a gang, but jail..). Its like Erthona said, if a poem must be explained its failed. I hate to explain myself but ive honestly been trying to rewrite this these past couple days with no success whatsoever. So if you could take what Im saying and perhaps provide some insight, maybe a different approach or something, it'd be greatly appreciated because it seems what I'm trying is not working so far aha. Thanks again for the critique, its been extremely helpful,
mike