10/15 – Great class.  Had all the regulars.  After doing the eight blocks in two days, it was like having my family back.  Mas who had skipped out on some classes went straight to writing.  So reliable.  Other kids struggled, as if the words have to be dragged out of them.  ‘I can’t write those things’ I tell them.  Their experiences are entirely their own.  They worry about writing poetry.  I tell them, ‘Most poetry is weak, your work is strong.  Don’t think of poetry, just write a line and follow it with another.  There is nothing to it, only directness.’  Some of them write.  A few get stuck.  Poppy, who had busted my chops on 10/12, writes two poems.  I couldn’t believe it when he shuffled up the ramp (Sat night is optional).  Poetry is truly brave.

10/11,12 – Kicked off the 2016 Hugh Sarah Poetry Competition for the entire facility.  There are 63 inmates at the moment, any of them can submit.  There is some complexity as to how people will receive their checks if they win, but the administration is being very accommodating.  We ran the contest rules and some intro poems by all 8 blocks of kids.  4 blocks each in two afternoons.  Each block has an entirely new energy, dynamic, that requires a something different.  But the kids are all great.  I wish I could do individual sessions.  They never believed anybody wanted to listen.

10/1 – Trying to get the kids to focus on rhythm and rhyme.  The poet who planted the seed for this class, twelve years ago, when I was studying painting, critiqued some of the work.  He felt some of the rhymes were too obvious and Hallmark’y, and detracted from the power of the work.  I don’t feel that, but I’m on the inside, watching these kids write with flimsy little pens in their jumpsuits in cinderblock classrooms.  That they articulate themselves with fierceness is enough for me.  Poetry as path to freedom, above all else.  Form is only form.  But I’m a romantic.

So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

We also read Dickinson, Wordsworth and finally Big Daddy Kane

I’m the authentic poet, to get lyrical
For you to beat me, it’s gonna take a miracle

9/25 – Class is cancelled.  I show up, but they are holding cell searches and the guys are on lockdown.  They let me in, but then find out all the jumpers are in the wash, so the guys can’t come up.

9/18 – Quiet day.  The sun is starting to set just before we start, I stand in the parking lot, mostly empty, rays unfolding over shaggy patches of grass west above clouds.  Once in the classroom I tell them about the sunset, taking a moment, ‘That’s all there is.  Presence.  Being aware, noticing what is around you, feeling what is around you.  It’s where your power will come from.’

They listen but energy is low.  Mas doesn’t come up.  #71 will be transferred next week, one of the founding members of PP, to the juvenile prison.  He is scared.  We read Frost’s ‘After Apple-Picking’ –

My long two-pointed ladder’s sticking through a tree
Toward heaven still,
And there’s a barrel that I didn’t fill

I like Frost, he always has the same sentiment, great cadence, then fades to death.  I resist that energy, tell them instead of falling away, poems can fall upwards, can fall forward.
#71 writes a final poem, then rips it so shreds and throws it in the trash on the way out.  Luckily, the can was empty.  I gather the pieces.  It was written in spanish ‘I have four days…’

9/11 – Lost the preacher, he got moved to County, got a quiet new hispanic kid who said he couldn’t think of anything to write, then wrote the sage ‘Not everything stays the same.’  We read the great WWI poet Wilbur Owen – Anthem for a Doomed Youth.

9/1 – Three new kids today.  We read some Welch poets, including Edward Thomas’ ‘The Child on the Cliffs.’ Great rhymes and rhythm.  I tell the new guys this isn’t what a poem should be, that they have their own poems, original songs, but just listen to the words as they come, take them in.  Tre reads the 1st stanza, then a new kid takes over.  He reads with the baritone and conviction of a preacher, belts out the verses, doesn’t stop till the end.
He says, ‘This don’t make NO sense, these Welch poets!’ But we break it down a little, as much as I understand it, then the guys go to work.  Tre writes his first poems in a months.  Mas was there, turned 18 today. He thought he was going home last week, I had said goodbye, I was happy to see him.

8/13 – Had a new kid in class.  They call him Psycho, because of his energy level, but he’s got a sweet demeanor and is well intentioned.  His hair is a bit wild and curly, and he’s little.  Apparently the guys in his unit make him run around the gym during their workout time to burn off his energy so he doesn’t drive them crazy.  They seem to like him.  His first poem was raw and dark – I published it as ‘first poem’ by Nash (Psycho didn’t seem appropriate) – in person he is much lighter and brings bright energy to the room.

8/11 – Squeezed in an extra class to see the girls again.  There was a lot of turnover unlike with the boys who can linger for years.  The court system might process the girls faster, or their charges are lighter.  One of the new members was a almond shaped, blue eyed, very slight girl who listened carefully.  We read some haiku, Run DMC’s ‘My Adidas’, Komunyakaa’s ‘Facing it.’  When they went to write, she wrote and wrote.  It was her story.  She didn’t leave it with me.  A couple of the other girls wrote street raps about being hotties and how the boys want their bodies.  I gave my thoughts on feminine power and what I want for my own daughters.  They became quiet.  I was quite sure they weren’t raised with a strong male figure.  Again, I couldn’t help think, ‘These girls shouldn’t be here’ – that feeling is more starkly apparent with them than the boys.

8/6 – They guys were a bit off.  My top producing poets have been writing less.  Maybe it’s summer, maybe they emptied themselves out in our first months.  XB, a quiet boy who had been coming to class for months, but rarely spoken a word, handed me a sheet of paper with a poem on each side.  Beautiful handwriting, paced, and two poems that could have come out of the 19th century romantics, via 21st century lockup.  Dumbfounding.  I put one up, ‘Wheel.’  Saving the second.  He just gave me his bio – XB.

7/30 – first class with the girls unit.  There were ten of them, various ages, stature, color, race, plus an officer.  They came up the long ramp to the classrooms, notebooks clutched in their hands, perky and confident.  The boys usually shuffle in wary and indifferent.  ‘Tonight you’re getting the girls,’ the officer said.  Something had happened in the boys unit, I didn’t know what.  I started in on my ‘intro’ talk on poetry –  the various forms it can take, how to find freedom in it, not be intimidated, always the key to be honest – and was showing them a few examples when someone cut me off, ‘are we gonna write some poetry?!’  They all went to work.

Over the hour were many  laughs, brightness, some tears, snaps and claps.  Even the officer wrote a poem.  As I watched the girls, not so very different than my daughters, I kept thinking, ‘what are they doing here?’

[summer to come]

April 30, 2016 – finally got the ‘A’ team together.  Mas, Tre, 6’10, #71, SELF, and one new quiet kid.  I can breathe.  We begin talking about the website, putting the work out there, coming up with names – the kids are excited.  They have no internet, so I have to pre-load pages on my laptop for them to see in the coming weeks.  ‘Poetic Prodigies,’ it rolls of the tongue of 6’10 effortlessly.  Tre thinks its corny.  It is, a little, but the fact that they agreed on it already says something of who these young men are or want to be.  The more time I spend with them, the more absurd if seems they are passing years here.  This is not the best solution our society can come up with, just the simplest.

April, 2016 – after missing a few weeks, I talk to the JDC about holding an optional class.  they are very accommodating.  I share that the few rowdy kids are keeping the group from going anywhere, so the admin is working on schedules – the boys are in different blocks, to keep some of them separated – mostly gang or race problems.  I’m inspired by the poetry, by the kids who keep writing.  They are not so much more talented, they’re just honest.  Even the most erudite and sophisticated people don’t do any better job of that.  I’m proud of the kids.

Last weeks of March, 2016 – The clowns are bringing me down, always the same guys, absorbing all the room’s energy.  I do battle, trying to bring the group together, I can win if given enough time, but it’s tiring.  I tell them clowning is just a front, and jockey with what I know is inside them.  I bring Bukowski’s ‘Bluebird’

there’s a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I’m too tough for him,
I say, stay in there, I’m not going
to let anybody see
you.

They sit with that, this tough old man beaten by his dad.  I tell them, ‘This man is speaking the truth.’  But by then class is over.  Wasted days.  The few dedicated kids keep writing, but I don’t have time to focus on them.  Losing ground.  They are getting frustrated, as am I.

March 12, 2016 – The group gets split into two – too many kids in honors.  I do each group for an hour.  I have brought in a bunch of Haiku, Basho and the Indiana inmate from the 60s Etheridge Knight.  Trying to give windows to the kids who think poetry is only one way.  Don’t know why it comes so easily to a few of the others.  Fearlessness?  It takes bravery and vulnerability to let it rip.  I see that more..  One group does better than the others.  There is so much potential in the room, it’s only a matter of removing blocks.  Life teaches us all to put up fronts, for some kids they need more than others.

March 5, 2016 – 6’10 continues to write prolifically.  As does Mas, Tre.  #71, quick and finely educated, watches from the back, holds back.  I start to spend a lot of time battling a few Honors kids who clown around.  They take a lot of energy.  I try to encourage others who are quiet to write.  The novelty of the first class has worn off.

Feb 28, 2016 – First class.  It took a few months to get through the security process, background checks, rules of the center, and get a date on the schedule.  They gave me the Honors unit, essentially the boys who hadn’t been in trouble for 20 days or so.  Apparently the serious offenders who had been there for some time, but didn’t mind following rules.  I brought in Whitman, Run DMC, Langston Hughes, Frost.  There were 14 kids.  They sat in silence while I spoke, gave my theories on the total irrelevance of poetry and yet the complete essentialness of it.  Some sprawled in the back against the wall, some heads down on the long tables, others listened.  They were more interested in reading the poems than I thought they’d be.  They read aloud, going around the room, each taking a few lines or stanza or whatever anyone felt like.   When it came to writing about half started scribbling.  We use soft pen fillers, like the inside of Bics, carefully numbered to collect them at the end of each class.  6’10 wrote fast, quickly handing me the brilliant ‘Why.’  I read it aloud, all laughed.  I thought ‘perhaps I’m done?’  Then he knocked out two pages more of great verse.  Tre, Mas, #71, all wrote.  Poetic Prodigies is born.