1 post tagged “poetry”

You Hear Me?: Poems and Writing by Teenage Boys (Betsy Franco Yas)

You Hear Me? Poems and Writing by Teenage Boys
Betsy Franco, ed.
Candlewick Press, Cambridge, MA, 2000
107 pp., $6.99
ISBN: 0-7636-1159-x

Annotation: An anthology of poems and short essays written by teen boys, ages 11 through 19, written between 1998 and 2000.

Review: This short collection teems with emotion. Here the urgency, the passion and the complexity of adolescence are in full force through the original voices of teen boys becoming men. These are thoughtful young men, using sophisticated poetic forms and evocative imagery - and just as often, plain spoken free verse - to express their observations and emotions with remarkable candor.

Indeed, the emotions and thoughts expressed here may be too much for adults to handle, as if peeling away an old scab. Young readers of either sex, but especially boys, will have a finer appreciation of the raw, painful, sometimes funny truths their talented peers have set to print. These young men are angry, they are confused, they feel injustice acutely. Race, sexuality and class complicate their lives. Politics and religion tax their patience. They resist the pigeon holes of modern marketing, openly distrusting the prefabricated identities, preferring to sort out who they are on their own terms. Meanwhile, there is music, there is sex to be had, and there are drugs to take.

Or to avoid. I had to set the book aside for a moment to recover from learning that one brilliant voice in this collection had been silenced by overdose. Librarians and educators seeking to inculcate youth with a love of poetry should consider setting aside the Frost and the Longfellow. This collection has much to say to young readers in a voice - several voices - they will listen to and learn from.