Personally

So you spoke to me in silence
in the ice man’s choir
and | dangled all the while

You said (in silence)
live each day
spittin”on Fifth Avenue
fox-trottin”in hell . . .

Soweain'thome —
we’re together

Smile:
| take it personally

They were on fire. | told them about Mandel-
stam, Dostoyevsky, the long tradition of writers
in prison. | read them poems. Another woman,
Elizabeth Powell, came to class with a poem
about homosexuality which was explicit, hon-
est, and skillfully done. The class praised it—
Elizabeth left the class that night, made a sheaf
of copies by hand, and passed it “on the vine.”

The next time | arrived at the prison, | was
called into the warden’s office. A member of my
.class, the warden said, had written a poem
about her “unique perversion” and had implied,
she said, that there were also correction offi-
cers who were homosexual, one in particular.
She spoke of libel, telling me that | should have
confiscated the poem immediately, or at least
made sure that it didn’t go beyond the class.
(Though homosexuality was indeed common—
the “only game” in the prison, the warden
steadfastly refused to admit that she had any
more than-a few “deviants” on her hands, whom
she described as hard-core —in other words, gay
even on the outside. Actually, as is the case in
most women’s prisons, homosexual relation-
ships were standard even for straights, for the
simple reason that human beings need physical
intimacy and affection when they are confined
to correctional institutions and cut off from
relationships available to them outside the walls.

Definitions of personal sexuality tend to
change behind bars. Upon release, some
women remain “changed,” while the majority
of former prisoners return to heterosexual life-
styles. The warden deeply feared homosexuality;
any manifestation of “butch” conduct was
enough to tag an inmate a troublemaker and
“male attire” was expressly forbidden in the
rules guide. Correction officers were warned
not to wear pants to work, and thus their uni-
form remained skirted. (Although many C.O.’s
were, in fact, gay, the atmosphere reflected the
warden’s artificial notion of femininity.)

After this incident, | was informed that the
poem had been confiscated and that Elizabeth
Powell had been placed in solitary confinement

pending a hearing by the disciplinary board. |
was told that | would be allowed to continue
the poetry class for the time being, but that if
another incident like this took place, | would be
asked to leave the prison. The warden sincerely
hoped that | had “learned a lesson.”

I had. It was just as | had told them: a dra-
matic testimony to the power of words—and, |
thought, one of the stupidest things | have ever
done. It was easy for me to drop in and talk
about “getting it down right” and being honest
in writing—| went home every night. For me,
there was no danger of being thrown in solitary,
having my personal papers raided, or worse. It
occurred to me that even when | had written my
ever-so-honest article, | had used a pseud-
onym to protect myself. There were obviously
bigger risks than job loss at stake for women or
men who chose to write while incarcerated;
risks | had clearly not understood. Words could
indeed turn around the authorities, but could
also turn them into the oppressors they actually
were.

Elizabeth Powell was in the bing for three
weeks. When she came back to class, she was
ready to go another round (she had written 25
poems, all dealing with homosexuality, while in
lock), but | had made a decision. | explained
how | felt as an outsider, with no right to tell
them how to write in this volatile situation, but
| asked that they make a distinction between
public and private poems to protect themselves
from exactly this kind of censorship/punish-
ment. Private poems were, obviously, ones you
could get thrown in the bing for; public poems
could be “published.” At this point, | also went
back to the warden and told her she should not
be surprised at some “emotional” poems; |
described the class as “therapy” and she agreed
that that was a good way of viewing it.

The class flourished. The women began to
express themselves, to find words underneath
and in the midst of the gloss of everyday lan-
guage. Some discovered (recovered?) a sub-
terranean language like subway graffiti: the
poem became a Kilroy, a zap: “I was here.”

I had quit my mental health worker job and
was concentrating on expanding FREE SPACE,
as the class had come to be called. The NEA had
given us some funding, as did Poets & Writers
and some local banks. Linda Stewart of The
Book-of-the-Month Club mailed boxes of over-
stocked paperback books; we amassed our own
library and Ted Slate of Newsweek donated sup-
plies and equipment.

Tom Weatherly taught a second poetry class,
Gail Rosenblum taught fiction, and Fannie
James, an ex-inmate, ex-student of the Space
whom the warden actually allowed to come
back to work with us, taught poetry and library
skills. Each teacher learned to cope in his or her
own way with the trials of trying to run a writing
class in a prison. Each class was like a hypothet-
ical leap: it would take place 1) IF the officer in

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