Book Excerpt - By Heart: Poetry, Prison, and Two Lives

Judith Tannenbaum and Spoon Jackson met at San Quentin State Prison in 1985 while Tannenbaum was teaching writing classes for prisoners. They have corresponded and sometimes collaborated ever since, producing, as this book’s publisher New Village Press puts it, “very different bodies of work resting on the same understanding: that human beings have one foot in darkness, the other in light.” For me, the book puts a finger, tenderly, on the essence of what is so vital about art for social change – the kind of change that happens in the soul. — Linda Frye Burnham, Community Arts Network

A boy with no one to listen becomes a man in prison for life and discovers his mind can be free. A woman enters prison to teach and becomes his first listener. And so begins a 25-year friendship between two gifted writers and poets. The result is “By Heart” — a book that will anger you, give you hope and break your heart. — Gloria Steinem

This excerpt, by Spoon Jackson, is from Chapter Two.

Chapter Two: In Silence

“By Heart: Poetry, Prison, and Two Lives” by Judith Tannenbaum and Spoon Jackson (Oakland, New Village Press, April 2010)

Indian summer at San Quentin and the sweet sun brings back the times I ran the dry river with the greyhound dogs and lay under the heavy black railroad bridge as the trains rumbled across, shaking the soft sands. In those times, I watched the shadows of the railcars dart by, and when night fell on a hot day, played kick-the-can in pure desert darkness. There were no street lights on Crooks Street when I was a boy.

My skin feels warm and alive this San Quentin September, as though I am a lizard sunning on a big rock. Instead I wear prison blues — shirt, pants, coat — plus brown high-top boots and dark shades, the coat and the shades I put on whenever I am outside the cell. I sit in my spot on the winding metal stairs of the San Quentin education building and see Judith bouncing down the steps from the Arts-in-Corrections office. I notice her healthy pale skin, small feet, slightly curly brown hair, long flowered skirt, and tire-track sandals.

Yes, I notice that Judith is a woman and at the same time a human being, struggling with life, death, truth, and imagination just as I am. She has already shown me new doors to step into, even in my silence, so I am able to absorb and appreciate that Judith is a woman in an all male prison, but also the leader and teacher of the poetry class.

This warm September afternoon, Judith is not as much a stranger to me as I am to her, for she has had to put herself out there to be credible. I have watched and listened to her share her truth, views, life, wisdom, and poetry. I know her through the books she suggested, the poetry she read aloud, and the ways she related to the others in the poetry class.

I have been through many summers in prison by this particular September. I arrived in 1978 from a small, desert town and have walked in dark shades and silence most of the time since then. None of the other prisoners, guards, or free staff has had a clue to what I am about or what I am capable of doing. They have had my prison file, a few pages gathered hastily together by the court: a probation officer, a couple of detectives, and a psychologist who, after one or two ten minute sessions, purported to access, reveal, depict, and predict my entire life in one brush stroke. In that file was nothing about how my mom made me Arkansas meatloaf instead of cake for my birthday, a date we celebrated on August 21st instead of August 22nd for the first ten years of my life. Nothing in the file about how I spent time under Blacks Bridge, or how I ran the dry river with semi-wild dogs.

The guards, other prisoners, and prison staff could not place me anywhere, not in any street or prison gang. They did not know that I had learned to despise violence and to love peace, that I looked forward to lockdowns and to all the silence, reading, and studying given by those long stretches of time confined to my cell. When the cell door closed, doors to other places opened up. Prison people did not know that inside me was a desert thirst for knowledge — to know and explore new things.

Pre-prison, my life had never been one of words. I could barely read, and I spoke as my father did to me, in one word sentences, shrugs, or by nodding my head. But during the months I was on trial, I sat stunned by all the words the DA used. I had no idea what these words meant and I told myself then that I would not let unknown words trap me. I started studying the dictionary in the county jail and reading all I could. I began to awaken the sleeping student inside me and took my first steps on my journey.

Once at San Quentin, I checked out all the books I could get from the prison library and education department. In one notebook I wrote down definitions. I used my favorite words in sentences in another notebook. I became enraptured with words and reading. I said certain words aloud many times and pondered a word in the way I thought of the garden in front of the prison chapel, or a sparrow singing in the tree by the captain’s porch. I took all the adult high school education classes offered in the day time. At night, I took all the college classes, self-help, and personal expansion programs offered: Course-in-Miracles, Transcendental Meditation, and Toastmasters. All of these programs stressed taking responsibility for one’s actions, forgiveness, growth, love, and peace.

I learned a few new words each day and each one brought a geyser erupting inside my mind and soul. The more words I read and studied, the clearer life became. I became richer and deeper inside. I could see, taste, feel, and touch the growth taking shape inside me and understood things I had never understood before. It was like I walked down an endless hallway full of dark rooms and each room I passed, a light came on and I learned something new. I had to choose to grow, which meant to get to know myself and find my niche, bliss, and myth in life. I had to till the endless gardens in my mind, heart, and soul.

I went into the cell on Friday afternoon and read and studied until Monday morning. I feasted on knowledge and wisdom. I dived into philosophy, religion, psychology, sociology, ecology, and any “ology” I could get my mind into. I debunked and peeled off layers of false history and propaganda that clogged my vision, my dreams, and my heart and soul — those misguided histories I had been force-fed like a motherless lamb.

For over eight years I had stayed to myself at San Quentin, learning who I was and what I was about. I avoided crowds. Although my heart, mind, and soul burned with thoughts, vibes, and feelings, I let none surface and stepped over wounded, dying, or dead bodies as everyone else did. Smiles only appeared when I was alone in the cell, writing or reading a letter. My teacher had become silence, and through the wisdom silence brought, I had grown to feel happy and free inside.

But my journey was about to change and my life about to have a voice. On a whim, I signed up for two poetry classes. I had never read any poetry before, nor did I think I would like it. I had mistakenly thought that poetry was beyond me and only for women, squares, nerds, weirdoes, professors, and high-brows: people caught up in some unreal academic world. Being incarcerated, I looked on poetry as a weakness, as was the expression of any feeling. I thought nothing true could come of it.

I would come to see that it took more heart to be a poet in prison than to be a gangster. When writing from a real place, even the appearance of poetry as soft became a strength and wielded power.

Judith taught one of the poetry classes and she suggested I jot down my thoughts and feelings, however those thoughts and feelings wanted to come out. She pronounced no “shoulds” or “should nots.” I did the exercises, but kept the writing to myself. I sat in the back of the class with empty chairs surrounding me. Judith allowed me to absorb what I needed in silence, which made it possible to listen in the ways I needed to listen and to slowly transform inside. It was like setting a plant in a saucer of water to soak in what it needs for that moment. I do not know how she knew to leave me in silence but still somehow include me in the class. It might be her innate skills as an artist teacher to gauge and engage within each student their own inner voice. She knew what books to turn each student on to, the exact book that would enlighten. I learned that the universal truths able to touch souls and hearts are personal. With each class I felt something freeing up inside me. Some emotion, some heart. Some wild unbreakable stallions that had been trapped in stalls were freed to roam the earth once again.

Having the doors of poetry opened to me by a woman was, I think, very important. As men in prison, we were caught up in a macho, masks-always-on, non-feeling world. In this setting, deep in one of the basement classrooms at San Quentin, having a woman artist teach me poetry was, at times, surreal. It allowed a full integration and expression of self through art.

My prison journey and my studies had taught me to observe the changes, the vibes, the sounds, and pitches that buzzed around me. I focused in on, or felt, everyone’s gestures, voices, or moves. Silence gave me amazing focus and depth. I had heard Judith speak from the heart, nearly in tears, as some of the fellows in the group drilled her about her motives and reasons for coming inside San Quentin to teach. For me, either I trust somebody or I don’t. I trusted Judith instantly and trusted what she had to offer and impart. I had no need to test, insult, or belittle her. What people are usually speaks like the sky.

Judith’s words, and my fellow students’ words, revealed a map to their minds, hearts, and souls. They were not nearly as much strangers to me as I was to them in my shades, chairs, and silence. This silence made many folks, including some prisoners and staff, wonder why I kept coming back after each Monday night class. The conversations, the lessons, as well as the observations I made, stretched my mind and deepened my heart. I felt more in tune with my own inner thoughts and world. When I went back to the cell after class, I read and wrote sometimes all night.

At first in my prison journey, I had just wanted to know what a word meant and how words were constructed into sentences so that high society and political folks like lawyers, doctors, and professors would not be able to say just anything and leave me not understanding. Now, in Judith’s class, I began to embrace words in a new way and to allow words to embrace me. Words swarmed inside me like hives of honeybees and took me places — imaginary and true — from the past, present, and future.

Almost everything I encountered in the poetry class was new, raw, inspiring, and fodder for my mind and heart to chew on. My journey had led me here, my whole life had become words — reading words, listening to words. Words slowly opened me up as I began to string them together, like swallows building their nests in spring. I had not learned yet how to stand out of the way and allow the muses to bring their gifts, but the gates of poetry had opened. There were so many images and visions inside me waiting for a way to come out, images and visions that must have lived within me — unrecognized — for decades.

For as a youngster, like a lot of young people in the free world, I lived on the edge of society, with no forum, form, or way to express what was on the inside. I had felt out of place in school, unheard and unseen. Though when I was about two-and-a-half tumbleweeds high, I looked out of my parents’ bedroom window and watched some of my brothers and their friends prance across the field, stopping every so often, battling to establish leadership, playing follow-the-leader up into the sky over the railroad tracks. I knew the bridge they walked on led somewhere, maybe not over any rainbow, but to a place called school where all the kids older than I went. They seemed happy to go and they stayed all day long. I thought the fun must be endless.

I was five years old when I finally made it across the field and over the bridge. Kindergarten was fun. I liked the finger painting, the naps, the snacks, and playing at recess. I even loved my kindergarten teacher, Ms. Tereese. I liked her name, which sounded like Ms. Treat. I liked how I was able to walk right into her smile when she said “Hello, good morning.” Her voice made me think of the cooing of our pigeons.

But one day, while standing in line to return to class from recess, another little boy punched me. Being a natural little boy, I punched him back. Games among little boys often start from punching and both our punches would have soon been forgotten, leaving no scars. But when I punched the other boy back, Ms. Tereese slapped me. With all her 20/20 vision, apparently she hadn’t seen the first punch and that I had only defended myself. The slap was not that bad, but the pain in my heart hurt a great deal and served as an awakening. I didn’t understand why I had a swollen face and not the other boy, too.

In first grade, Miss Rude slapped my hands a few times with a ruler and introduced my behind to the pine. From then on in school, I knew there was no justice, or if there was, it was selective. My second grade teacher, the white Mr. Williams, confirmed this. At times it seemed like every day I was getting paddled. I often wondered was it the way I looked, walked, or didn’t talk? Or was there a neon sign on my butt which read, “Swat me if you are bored or have energy to expend”? Did all the teachers go off to lunch each day and decide who would guide the pine?

I still tried to learn, dabbling with printing and cursive writing. But the abuse picked up. After the paddlings in second grade from the white Mr. Williams, I went on to more of the same from the black Mr. Williams in third grade. It was equal opportunity paddling on me back in those days of the Civil Rights Movement. From then on, learning something proper and real was out of the question.

Paddling parties are what school meant to me, so when Judith announced that she had been given permission to meet individually with students, and that the first consultation would be with me, I was jazzed and also anxious. What would it be to meet alone with a teacher without negativity, hostility, or abuse? With no slapping, paddling, hitting, or put downs?

Judith and I have never talked one-on-one, never shared a real conversation. She has not seen any of my writing except for one or two tiny jottings, nor have I asked any questions in class. I don’t know what to expect; Judith and I might end up watching walls for an hour or so. Still, I look forward to this meeting as a fat honey bee looks forward to spring.

Judith is surprised when, after she complains about the heat, I say, “Ninety degrees hotter, I’d be warm.” She asks where I grew up. I have no idea where this question-and-answer time will lead. But I feel open and without any blocks. Judith must be shocked, as words flow freely from me.

We walk into the education building and pass the small guard station with the huge window that overlooks the prison’s lower yard. We descend to the bottom floor, the one called the dungeon floor because at the end of the hall is a banned, barred door that leads to very old red brick chambers. One can look through the door and see the clasps and shackles that once chained prisoners to the walls, as Jesus and the two thieves had been chained to their crosses.

When we make it to the classroom, I note that Judith jots down all I tell her about the heart of the high desert, Crooks Street, the heat, the red clay mountains that appeared to be my whole world, and the desert wildflowers after a rainfall. I think: Wow! Who is this educator, this poet, writing down something I say? She isn’t writing a bad report. She isn’t being an authority figure trying to put me down.

I brought with me bits and pieces, thoughts and feelings, that I’d written during the poetry classes. These jottings were inspired by class discussions, model poems, visiting guest artists, and fellow students, as well as by some book I had read while I sat out in front of the prison chapels overlooking the garden plaza, the only place in San Quentin where trees, flowers, and grasses grew and where butterflies, sparrows, and other small creatures hung out. The class enabled me to bring together and understand the subjects, philosophies, and wise sayings I had been studying for nearly ten years, gave me a way, even in my silence, to link and express ideas, vibes, thoughts, and feelings in my own way.

Sitting in the dungeon room, I see the interested smile on Judith’s face and the curious flow of her voice that seem to welcome the words I have to say and the bits and pieces of writing I show her. There is a lot going on inside me, like the underground waters in the dry Mohave River that no one could see.

During all of my years in school and on the streets, I never went inside myself. Even now, in this classroom with Judith — my first positive exchange with a teacher — I do not believe my writing is poetry, or even complete sentences. On this hot September afternoon, I still do not believe that anything written by me is worthy, or that anything inside me is beautiful.

Judith Tannenbaum is a nationally known educator, speaker and author. Among her books are the memoir, “Disguised as a Poem: My Years Teaching Poetry at San Quentin”; two books for teachers — “Teeth, Wiggly as Earthquakes: Writing Poetry in the Primary Grades” and (with Valerie Chow Bush) “Jump Write In! Creative Writing Exercises for Diverse Communities, Grades 6-12”; and six poetry collections. She currently serves as training coordinator with WritersCorps in San Francisco. http://judithtannenbaum.com

Born into a family of 15 boys in Barstow, California, Spoon Jackson was sentenced to Life Without Possibility of Parole when he was 20 years old. He discovered himself as a writer at San Quentin and has written, published, and received awards for plays, poetry, novels, fairy tales, short stories, essays and memoir during the more than 30 years he has been behind bars. His work has won four awards from PEN's Prison Writing Program. His poems are collected in “Longer Ago” (2010). Jackson is currently housed at California State Prison, Sacramento (New Folsom), where he teaches two creative writing classes. Letters may be sent to: Spoon Jackson B-92377, CSP–Sac C8–125, Box 290066, Represa, Calif. 95671-0066. (Photo by Albin Biblom)

Original CAN/API publication: March 2010