By Heart. Judith Tannenbaum
Although I do all I know to welcome the us my pedagogy honors, in my heart of hearts I believe writing is a solo journey. So I am most grateful to have been granted the residency I am now beginning. Its promise of twenty hours each week at the prison means that I can add individual consultations, such as this one with Spoon, into my weekly schedule. My curiosity now will have plenty of room. I’ll have time to ask: Who is this person, my student? What are his loves, interests, and responses to the world? Which writers, poems, artwork, and theories might move him? The residency will give me time to listen and to read each student’s work so I can at least catch a glimpse of his path. And then more time to find material—books, single poems, recorded poetry readings—he might respond to.
Right now Spoon Jackson is before me, and I turn from my thoughts to the man. Twenty-nine years old, Spoon started serving a life without possibility of parole sentence when he was twenty. My daughter has recently turned sixteen. For the sharp slice of one moment, I imagine that Sara has fewer than four years more to live in the world, that at twenty she might end up in prison or disappear in some way. No! I throw a mental screen down fast on the thought. I will not imagine that. No!
How can I hold that No!—a human reaction that makes me want to turn away—and still say Yes to Spoon Jackson? How can I feel for Spoon’s fate, and the harm he caused that shaped that fate, and yet not be washed away by emotion? A Goldilocks question about finding “just right” between the poles of too much and too little. And also another task of a teacher not often listed alongside lesson plans and the rest. Right now, in this basement classroom, does “just right” require more distance? I could turn Spoon Jackson into a story. I love stories and Spoon has just shared an epic about a young man’s path from high school to state prison; from the heart of the high desert to San Quentin, the infamous Bastille by the Bay.
Or does “just right” require less distance? If so, I have to rouse myself from all this thinking and look at the human being on the other side of the table, the one whose eyes slide everywhere except toward my face. This twenty-nine-year-old man I’ve been talking with since 3:30. Real, no story. Dark skin, broad nose, a heart beating under his blue prisoner’s shirt. Spoon Jackson. A near stranger now slightly less strange.
2
In Silence
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 streetlights 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 1977 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 daytime. At night, I took all the college classes, self-help, and personal expansion programs offered: A 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, weirdos, professors, and highbrows, 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