作品情報

監獄という制度の中で詩を武器に尊厳を回復しようとする語り手を通し、自由と抑圧を問い直す詩集。

監獄という制度の中で詩を武器に尊厳を回復しようとする語り手を通し、自由と抑圧を問い直す詩集。

書籍情報

出版社

The University Press of Kentucky

発売日

2020-09-08

ページ数

104ページ

言語

英語

サイズ

13.97 x 0.66 x 21.59 cm

ISBN-13

9780813179889

ISBN-10

0813179882

価格

3497 JPY

カテゴリ

洋書/Literature & Fiction/Poetry/American

"Forgive state poet #289-128 / for not scribbling illusions / of trickery as if timeless hell / could be captured by stanzas / alliteration or slant rhyme," remarks the speaker, Maryland Department of Corrections prisoner {#289-128}, early in this haunting collection. Three sections—{#289-128} Property of the State, {#289-128} Poet-in-Residence (Cell 23), and {#289-128} Poet in New York—frame the countless ways in which the narrator's body and life are socially and legally rendered by the state even as the act of poetry helps him reclaim an identity during imprisonment. These poems address the prison industrial complex, the carceral state, the criminal justice system, racism, violence, love, resilience, hope, and despair while exploring the idea of freedom in a cell. In the tradition of Dennis Brutus's Letters to Martha, Wole Soyinka's A Shuttle in the Crypt, and Etheridge Knight's The Essential Etheridge Knight, {#289-128} challenges the language of incarceration—especially the ways in which it reinforces stigmas and stereotypes. Though {#289-128} refuses to be defined as a felon, this collection viscerally details the dehumanizing effects of prison, which linger long after release. It also illuminates the ways in which we all are relegated to cells or boundaries, whether we want to acknowledge it or not.

Randall Horton 's past honors include the Bea Gonzalez Poetry Award, a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in Literature, and most recently a GLCA New Writers Award for Creative Nonfiction for Hook: A Memoir . The author of numerous books, he is a member of the experimental performance group Heroes Are Gang Leaders, which received the 2018 American Book Award in Oral Literature. He is associate professor of English at the University of New Haven and lives in Bloomfield, New Jersey.

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