Poetry Analysis

Poetry has many effects on the human mind, it entertains, experiments, and educates. Poetry is truly a personal art form, and exceptional artists fully immerse themselves within the process. Gang members live in desperate worlds, treated as outcasts of society, and viewed as a cancer or plague. Poetry taps into the rebellious experimental side of American gangs. Gang members battle depression, incarceration, and hopefully finding an escape. All the above poets were incarcerated some for serious crimes, and they witnessed the harsh and cruel side of society, throughout the United States. Modern gang reform seems to focus primarily on tactical police raids and expanding an overflowing prison system, full of gangs. Convicts continually ebb and flow from U.S prisons with few programs to prevent relapse back into gang life. Can the U.S employ poetry and the arts as a gang deterrent? Combating gangs in United States is difficult task involving countless variables, and persists as a urgent social issue. Desperate communities lack proper resources, education, and role models, to assist large generations of lost youth. It would be globally unifying, if poetry could serve as the catalyst against gang epidemics. Art as an escape has been demonstrated thoroughly, and throughout time extraordinary artists endured great hardships which ultimately forge their creativity and ability as artists. Observing poverty, living in broken families, and being marginalized by society become powerful messages in their art, which serve to educate the world. All poets struggle, as a gang members or as a artists, they yearn to develop a concept that can be regarded universally, neither concrete nor abstract it becomes the platform for communicating the artist’s message. The power of writing continues to influence gang culture today in such mediums as, graffiti, poetry, and rap lyrics form the foundation for a plethora of gang artwork. The art produced by gangs outline the true story behind the American gang.