Disguised As A Poem: My Years Teaching Poetry at San Quentin - Softcover

Tannenbaum, Judith

Softcover

ISBN 10: 155553452X ISBN 13: 9781555534523

Publisher: Northeastern University Press, 2000

Synopsis

When Judith Tannenbaum last met with her poetry writing class at San Quentin prison, one of the students commented, ""Now I'm going to give you an assignment: write about these past four years from your point of view; tell your story; let us know what you learned."" This beautifully crafted memoir is the fulfillment of that assignment. In stirring and intimate prose, Tannenbaum details the challenges, rewards, and paradoxes of teaching poetry to maximum-security inmates convicted of capital crimes. Recounting how she and her students shared profound and complicated lessons about humanity and life both inside and outside San Quentin's walls, Tannenbaum tells provocative stories of obsession, racism, betrayal, despair, courage, and beauty. Contrary to the growing public perception of prisoners as demons, the men in this poetry class-Angel, Coties, Elmo, Glenn, Richard, Spoon-emerge not as beasts or heroes but as human beings with expressive voices, thoughts, and feelings strikingly similar to the free. Tannenbaum provides revealing views of conditions in the cellblocks and shows how the realities of prison life often paralleled her own life experiences. She also relates such events as visits to her group by prominent poets (including Nobel Prize-winner Czeslaw Milosz); a prison production of Waiting for Godot sponsored by Samuel Beckett himself; and the presentation of her students' work to a class of sixth and eighth graders, who connected to the prisoners' words by writing their own poems to the inmates.

About this title

Product Description:

Unusual book

Review:

"Tannenbaum reminds readers not only that men and women behind bars are human, and therefore deserving of our respect and compassion, but that they have much to tell us about our propensity for both barbarism and beauty."--Booklist

"Not only the story of an emphatic and courageous woman but an engaging testament of the power of poetry." --Teaching Artist Journal

About this edition

• Publisher: Northeastern University Press
• Publication date: 2000
• ISBN 10: 155553452X
• ISBN 13: 9781555534523
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 224