Inside Rikers by Jennifer Wynn

Author:Jennifer Wynn
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: St. Martin's Publishing Group
Published: 2011-10-24T00:00:00+00:00

4

CONVICTED AT BIRTH

The crime and disorder which flow from hopeless poverty, unloved children, and drug abuse can’t be solved merely by bottomless prisons, mandatory sentencing minimums, or more police.

—FBI director Louis J. Freeh

Anyone who’s been to prison or who has taught writing behind bars knows the ugly truth about prison poetry: It tends to be as bad as it is abundant. The “beauty lies in the eye of the beholder” theory might apply in the realm of love, but it doesn’t work with prison poetry. Believe me, I tried.

When the editor of Prison Life magazine asked if I’d “make the first cut” on the nearly 1,000 submissions we received for our annual poetry contest, I jumped at the chance. I was certain I’d find gems of pathos and profundity in the three U.S. Postal Service bags he dragged into my office.

No need for another cup of coffee, I thought. I’m going deep into the belly of the beast, where angst and demons live.

I resisted the urge to open the first envelope I pulled from one of the bags. Instead, I made three large piles on the floor, and from each pile I extracted the envelopes that bore the return addresses of the worst prisons I knew: Marion Federal Prison in Illinois, home of John Gotti; Florence ADX, the “Alcatraz of the Rockies” where prisoners describe being “buried alive” in supermax cells underground; Angola; Attica; even one from death row in California.

Now these, I mused, are the prisons that only poets can survive.

After reading for about an hour, I started to think I’d read the same poem twice. Not only were they sounding similar, they were putting me to sleep. Was it me or were stanzas such as “Here I sit/in my cell/life in prison/is living hell” excruciatingly dull? Maybe sixty poems out of the entire batch departed from the wretched singsong rhyming scheme that only skilled poets can pull off without sounding like amateurs.

I was determined not to let this fate befall my aspiring poets on the Rock.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.