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Editorial Review and Critique May 11, 2007
By Travesty
"Sometimes the Truth is a Travesty"
Raw. Caged. Human. These are a few terms I would use to describe my assessment of Escaped Poetry. L. George Hannye, editor, chose to compile the poetry of four Tennessee Department of Correction inmates--Ryan Malone, Craig Nunn, Byron Peete, and Sir Earice Roberts, Jr.--whose formal knowledge of poetic styles is minimal. The majority of the text is written in free verse with a few prose and narrative poems in the collection; however, the conventions of poetry are not as important as the poetic aptitude of these four individuals. Initially, I expected bitter complaints about how "the system let them down," or sorrowful pleas for exoneration from past crimes, but what I received was a glimpse at lives, much different than my own in physical location, but very similar in human emotion and desire.
There are only a few published books in the "inmate poetry" genre, and like others of its kind, Escaped Poetry's purpose, though not obvious, is to show human compassion and acknowledgment of past mistakes through use of the first amendment freedom of self expression--one of the only limited freedoms that these men enjoy. Escaped Poetry achieves this goal--not flawlessly because perfection is not a human trait--by allowing readers an attempt at acquiring a better understanding, like that of Maya Angelou, as to "why the caged bird sings."
If I had to briefly summarize this collection of poems, which were written by four separate individuals with different backgrounds, I would say that there are several common threads among these authors. The first thread would be that prison is no longer a place of rehabilitation, it has become a place where humans who make mistakes are sentenced to metaphorical silence and are forgotten while also forgetting what it is like to be loved and to be free.
These accounts of prison allow the reader to experience prison through the eyes of a prisoner. We may believe that inmates deserve their punishment, or we make believe the opposite--that a jail cell is inhumane. Regardless of what position we take, these poems help us understand that human beings are at the center of both sides of the issue.
The second thread would be the acknowledgment of pain each inmate has caused others due to his own mistakes. In Escaped Poetry, Malone, Nunn, Peete, and Roberts all acknowledge the pain they have caused family. Although I don't perceive "debt to society" to be a central issue that concerns these poets, Malone writes two interesting free verse poems that recognize an inmate's confrontation of past wrongs. In "Blame Everyone but Yourself," Malone challenges inmates to look beyond external forces and, as adults, begin to take responsibility for one's own actions. In "Let Me be the Example," Malone implores kids not to conduct experiments with their lives and to examine his life as an example of the outcome of experimental mistakes.
The third thread (not to imply that there are not more threads) is that the desire for love--whether physical or mental--grows stronger as each day passes. Love is the strongest thread amongst these four inmates because it is what, according to their poetry, they feel they lack most. These men realize that the preciousness of love cannot be merely contained in a feeling; it is also identified through actions.
In general, I liked the poems in this collection. Each poem was heartfelt, and each poet's lack of formal education in poetry makes the works more "pure" even through its mistakes. Raw poetry usually has the most feeling and says exactly what the poet intends. After some editors and publishers get a hold of the work, it turns into something unlike what it was intended to be. Although I do feel some of the pieces need minor editing, it is good to hear the actual voices of these men. Neither Malone's, Nunn's, Peete's, nor Roberts' lives have been based on smooth, "grammatically" correct paths, and for this reason Escaped Poetry is metaphorically symbolic of each inmate's individual journey.
One poem in this collection, which really captured my attention and reminded me that these words are of an incarcerated man, was Roberts' poem "Soul and Ice." The poet writes about the effects on the psyche with regard to the lack of expectation associated with being an inmate and how this is connected to the destiny of the released inmate who, while being socially rejected, returns to his/her old way of life, thus returning to the prison system. This poem is definitely a good read for a first hand account of the hopelessness inmates experience due to past mistakes and also an answer to the free person's question: `Why haven't they learned from their mistakes?' Maybe the answer is, as this poem suggests, that inmates, released or incarcerated, don't learn because as a society we won't let them forget and move on.
The words in Escaped Poetry are the most important aspect of this collection's affect on the reader. Escaped Poetry must be approached with an open mind and with all loftiness set aside. Some of the poetry in Escaped Poetry is one or two dimensional, but is also augmented by moments of brilliance. There is also hope in the fact that although these poets believe the correctional system to be inhumane, at least their voices have become some of the first to seep through the cracks, thus being freed by their escaped poetry.
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