Great night in prison!
The creative writing workshop in the prison tonight was exceptional. John, who co-facilitates the workshop with me, had left us last week with a reading by Mumia and the assignment to write about violence. For the first time in a year or so, John wasn’t able to come to the workshop because he’s in Cape Cod for a meeting (poor thing), so he missed his harvest tonight. We had a short story, a couple of essays, a piece that defies genre, a series of ten Haiku, a rant (from me), and two poems. I think I’m about to share some of that bounty in this blog. The guys in the workshop are preparing to launch a new literary magazine to showcase the work of people in Texas prisons. They’ll be the editors. It’s called The Midnight Special, for the Hudie Ledbetter song, for the way Odetta sings it, and for the legend: we’re in Sugar Land, Texas, right near the railroad line that runs alongside Highway 90. Every night we all can hear the echoing harmonium of the train whistle as we lie in our beds. Since the turn of the twentieth century, there have been prisons here, and the legend was that if the light from the Midnight Special should strike a man in the eyes as he lay in his cell, he’d be going home soon.
We can all hear the train, but the men in the unit where we run the workshop is set far enough away from the tracks that there’s no possibility the light will reach them. Still, they like the title. They’ll be the editors. We’ll solicit work from everyone who can hear The Prison Show ; I’ll receive the submissions in a post office box; and I’ll deliver the submissions to the guys in the workshop. They’ll sort what they get into three piles: Publishable, Needs Work, and Nope. They’ll make their own decisions about what to say to the authors of the work in the middle pile. The Thoreau Unitarian Universalist Congregation will pay for the publication, which will start very modestly and simply, like a newsletter.
All of that said, I have to share a few bits and pieces. The work is too wonderful not to. I’ll use their first names, which is what I’ve been doing most of the time with people I mention in the blog. This is one of my favorite bits, by Kevin:
So we swim up stream
With a fucked up dream & a coupon
Make it snow in Tucson, so they see me
Mad cause Junior wanna be me, but he can’t
Cause I ain’t got enough black paint
To cover up the lies & cries, bullshit & flies
So I learn to dog-paddle & backstroke
For red, white, & black folk
With 3 dollars & 6 dimes
To pay for my fees on the shores of inspiration.
As we discussed the poem, Gene asked Kevin if the 3 dollars and 6 dimes came from the song, 360 Degrees–and Kevin said yes. It’s about turning yourself around completely: 360 degrees. I would never have caught that allusion. I’m just dumbstruck by the power of it. “With a fucked up dream & a coupon.” Yes. Abiola also wrote a poem, but he says it’s not finished yet, so I don’t have a copy to look at. He always stuns me with his rhythms, his internal rhymes, his unpredictable choices. All I can remember of his poem is my feeling as I listened–every word rolled out like a carefully-polished stone, every word the right word in the right place, every word a surprise.
And then this Haiku from Doc:
I Taste Cinders on My Tongue
Tempers spring aflame
Sweat drips across taut sinews
Reason burned to ash.
Violence is something he knows intimately. And here’s this observation by Woody:
“Where is the logic in giving a young man life in prison for gunning down a rival gang member who he considers his sworn enemy, but rewarding that same young man if he guns down a sworn enemy of the state? Our state executioner would, under other circumstances, be considered a serial killer, subject to the same punishment he dispenses along with his accomplice, the governor.”
And this great line from a short story by Gene: “Time froze for me at that moment. Villa said something to me, but I couldn’t hear him over the ringing in my ears.”
Kent couldn’t do the assignment. He said it made him think of the violence he’s been involved in, and it hurt too much. But he was brave enough to admit that it hurt too much.
I ‘m stunned by the courage it takes for us to tell the truth, to look the truth in the face, to remember, to face it. Henry and I both wrote about the “metallic taste” of rage. When he heard me read my line that was so like his, he did a little dance in his chair, his arms raised like a football player who’d just made a touchdown. At the end of class I gave them Jimmy Santiago Baca’s sensual poem called “Green Chile.” The second stanza starts,
But grandmother loves green chile.
When I visit her,
she holds the green chile pepper
in her wrinkled hands.
Ah, voluptuous, masculine,
an air of authority and youth simmers
from its swan-neck stem, tapering to a flowery collar,
fermenting resinous spice.
Riding on the power of that poem, the assignment for next Thursday is for us to write about something we love. Thursday night is my favorite night of the week. I drove home in the rain tonight, tasting again the words they’d put on the table during the two and a half hours we spent together. Delicious.
Tags: Prisons and Prisoners
Kendall
Jimmy Santiago Baca, will have the fight of his life to get out of the mess his words have gotten him into!
I see that you have an entire web site devoted to discrediting Jimmy Santiago Baca. Maybe what you say is true; I don’t know. I can’t help being suspicious of YOUR motives. Why are you obsessed with Baca? Why is it so important to you to discredit him? If he exaggerates his importance in the world, if he glamorizes his story, if he stretches the truth here and there to make himself look good, is that so reprehensible? Don’t most celebrities do that? Is self-glorification worse than setting out to assassinate the reputation of another person? Whatever else is true, his stories are moving. His poetry is beautiful. He is incredibly productive–I’ve read five of his books, and there are more I haven’t read. He inspires people–especially prisoners and those of us who encourage prisoners to hope for a better life, to read and write, and to tell their stories as a way to know themselves. Are you doing something equally powerful in the world? Why spend your precious time on this earth tearing someone else down?