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Preface

Judith

IN THE 1980S, when Spoon was my student at San Quentin and discovering himself as a poet, he told me that he imagined the two of us giving a reading in Berkeley, working with children on their poems, or creating a poetry performance together. He told me that one day, we would. This prediction made me happy. However when I received a letter from Spoon in 2006 proposing that we write a two-person memoir, I set myself to say no.

For one thing, I’d already written a memoir about my years teaching at San Quentin, and there was no point in retelling the same story I’d told in Disguised as a Poem. For another, with Spoon still locked up, the tools we’d have for working together would make the process a big challenge. The letters between us would be read by staff and might take weeks to get through the mailroom. The timed collect telephone calls Spoon could place to me would be broken into by a recorded, robotic, message full of mechanical beeps and pronouncements. Besides, the last time Spoon had asked me to edit a long prose project he’d begun, we ended up furious with each other. So, as I say, I read Spoon’s letter thinking no.

Still, I found myself nodding at his description of the dramatically different life paths that had brought each of us to poetry. For we share no demographic—not race, class, birth year, education, religion, or family history. Yet, as Spoon pointed out, our paths crossed and that crossing has led to a nearly twenty-five year conversation about poems, education, beauty, possibility, and what it means to be human.

Spoon ended his letter: “You believed in me even when you didn’t know me.” I looked up when I read those words. The gift of Spoon’s statement sparked a dozen thoughts about what I feel is essential to good teaching, and I realized how much I wanted to write about these subjects—teaching, coming to poetry, believing in others. So instead of that no, I sat down at my desk and wrote yes to Spoon Jackson.

We worked like this: Spoon sent me the chapters he had written longhand in his two-person cell. I typed up what he’d written, along with suggestions. He re-worked these chapters, mailed them back to me, and I added his changes to the typed script. This went on for a few rounds.

I sent my typed chapters to Spoon, too, as I wrote them. I wanted detailed response such as I was giving to him, but for a while he said only that what I’d written was fine, real, cool, and that he couldn’t tell me how to write my own story. I complained and Spoon finally reminded me that he’d never before written an entire prose book; I had.

Memoir is a tricky genre, which Spoon and I have discussed as we’ve written this one. The form is non-fiction, so we’re telling the truth. Spoon has argued more for truth’s spirit and I’ve been more of a stickler, but we’ve agreed that memoir isn’t journalism. For one thing, we have no documented records. Neither of us taped conversations or transcribed them word-for-word in our journals and so every event we report is mediated through memory. We gave ourselves permission—not to make things up, not to write a novel and say that what we invented is what happened—but to recreate dialog and scene from what we remember.

Memory isn’t a recording device, but works as poetry does, through image. The nature of image is to conflate, to thin at the edges, to resemble, merge, represent. Most adults have had the experience of speaking to a parent or sibling of a strong childhood memory, only to find out that the person with whom you shared the experience remembers the event as occurring at your grandmother’s house and not at your aunt’s as you recall. Your sister remembers you wearing a red shirt, your brother says it was plaid, your father insists harsh words were spoken, your mother remembers only laughter, and your cousin is sure the whole thing never happened. So Spoon and I, too, haven’t always remembered what we shared in exactly the same way.

We two would never have met if not for Arts-in-Corrections, a program that places a professional artist as artist facilitator—a civil service position—in every California state prison. For the first two decades of the program’s existence, the artist facilitator’s job was to develop a cadre of paid practicing artists to offer fine arts instruction to prisoners. The program was slashed a number of years ago and it seemes Arts-in-Corrections and almost all programming will be eliminated from California prisons in 2010. As I write these words, though, Arts-in-Corrections still exists, and good artist facilitators continue to provide arts opportunities to men and women inside. Jim Carlson is more than good. Jim was a great artist facilitator at San Quentin where he worked when Spoon and I met and he’s a great artist facilitator now at California State Prison-Sacramento—New Folsom—where Spoon is currently housed.

Back at San Quentin Spoon used to tell me, only partially in jest, that in introducing him to poetry I had saved his life. Therefore, he loved to remind me, I was forever responsible for the life I had saved. I don’t feel responsible for Spoon, but I do feel responsible tohim and to all my San Quentin students. We shared a lot in our four years together and in the twenty years since then. I have learned so much from these men, almost all of them still inside after three decades.

Spoon and I both feel responsible to young people coming up, as well as to men and women in prison. Spoon wants youth to know it’s not cool to be caged; it is lonely, unnatural, painful, and a trap for the poor and people of color, a trap one may never be able to shake or get out of.

Spoon encourages everyone in prison to find the gift that frees his or her spirit and heart. He writes: “We must each do our part, despite the fact that our lives on the streets are only memories and dreams that may perish with us. Brothers and sisters—my people behind walls, no matter where you are around the world—walls cannot harness or stop our hearts, souls, and minds. Let your words, songs, and music flow. Keep it real and pass the realness on to others.”