By Heart. Judith Tannenbaum
cover design; Michel Wenzer for creating films for our project; Kjell Nordeson for recording help for these films; and Jim Carlson for so much. Judith gives big thanks to the staffs, administrators, review panels, and other artist residents at Hedgebrook, Ragdale, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and the Writers Colony at Dairy Hollow.
Judith treasures all her prison arts colleagues and thanks each and every one for the way that they and their work enrich her life. She also gives thanks to WritersCorps, the excellent program she’s worked with for fifteen years. Judith is so grateful to have a job that asks her to share what she learned during her years as a community artist and that also gives her time to write. A warm shout out to all WritersCorps teachers over the years and an especially long, loud, and deep thank you to program manager, Janet Heller.
More thanks from Judith to her closest friends—Elmo Chattman, the Harber-Schrogins (Maxim, Karen, Jonah, and Julia), Barbara Naiditch, Gail Todd—and family: Andrew Harkness; Debbie, Jim, Emma, and Gus Ingebretsen; Edith Tannenbaum; the memory of Bob Tannenbaum; and always at the top of Judith’s love-and-thanks list, her daughter, Sara Press.
Spoon gives gratitude to Mother Earth, his mom, his brother Abe, and his Peace G. family and friends in Sweden who have never stopped loving and inspiring him: Annika, Korina, Sanna, Jovanna, Simon, Daneila, Louise, Karin, Krister, Eva, Anna, Lisen, Jann, Michel, Harald, Stefan, Lena, Ingunn, Albin, Mimi, Sverker, and his second mom, Barbro. Spoon gives warm thanks to Samuel Beckett, Barney Rosset, Bill Irwin, Liz Irwin, and Jan Jonson.
Thank you to the wonderful New Village Press. Lynne Elizabeth and the whole New Village team have been fantastic to work with and we’re so grateful for everyone’s sincere interest in our story.
We thank the people who have shared our lives with us. We’ve changed a few names in By Heart, but not many.
Spoon speaks for both himself and Judith as he writes to his fellow prisoners and to young people around the world: “I hope you will continue to make a life out of nothingness. We are still alive and can create that whatever-it-is that frees our hearts and spirits.”
Chapter Five: Stanislav Baranczak’s “If you have to scream ...” is in Under My Own Roof, Mr. Cogito Press, 1980. Czeslaw Milosz’s “Dedication” is in The Collected Poems, Ecco Press, 1988. Pablo Neruda’s “To the Foot from Its Child” is in The Poetry of Pablo Neruda, Farrar, Strauss, and Giroux, 2005.
Chapter Seven: Gary Snyder’s “Hay for the Horses” is in Riprap, Origin Press, 1959. Tu Fu’s “Clear Evening After Rain” is in One Hundred Poems from the Chinese, Kenneth Rexroth editor, New Directions, 1971. Ogden Nash’s The Adventures of Isabel was published as its own book by Little Brown & Co., 1994. Victor Valle’s “Comida” is in Highlights for Children, 2000. Lilian Moore’s “Winter Dark” is in Winter Poems, Scholastic Publishers, 1999. The quote from James was recorded by Scoop Nisker and played on Kris Welch’s Morning Show (radio station KPFA in Berkeley, California) on December 3, 1987.
Chapter Nine: James Wright “A Blessing” is in his Collected Poems, Wesleyan University Press, 1951. Emily Dickinson (341), The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson, 1890. Robert Hass, “Spring Drawing II”, Human Wishes, Ecco Press, 1989. Poems by Myrna Scott (used by permission of author) are from Driftwood Shores, 1981.
Chapter Eleven: Excerpts from Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett, copyright © 1954 by Grove Press, Inc.; copyright © renewed 1984 by Samuel Beckett. Used by permission of Grove/Atlantic, Inc. and Faber and Faber Ltd. The quote from film-maker, Robert Bresson, is from Notes On Cinematography , translated by Jonathan Griffin, 1977.
Chapter Sixteen: Lines from Walt Whitman (“Leaves of Grass”) and Matthew Arnold (“Dover Beach”) are in the public domain.
We have rewritten some material in By Heartfrom previous work:
Judith:
“Artistic Imperialism,” Poetry Flash, 1987. “Human Beings Together,” Turning Wheel, 2003. “In My Two Hands,” coastnews.com, 1996. “Poetry, Teaching, and Love,” Memo: Arts, 1989. “Power or Prison,” inmotionmagazine.com, 2007.
Spoon:
Life/Lines poetry.org, Academy of American Poets. “On Prison Reform,” San Francisco Chronicle, 2006. “Right Now I Choose Sadness,” I Hear America Reading, edited by Jim Burke, Heinemann Publishing, 1999. “Speaking in Poems,” Teaching Artist Journal: Volume 5 Issue 1, 2007.
1
This Near-Stranger’s Words
“NINETY DEGREES hotter, I’d be warm,” Spoon Jackson tells me. Spoon sits near the bottom of a circular metal staircase in front of San Quentin’s education building. I stand, nervous as usual. Nervous not because this is prison, but because I’m always nervous. Nervous system nervous, nervous inside my skin. Skin now wet with the day’s unusual heat. Spoon and I wait for the officer to arrive, to unlock the door with a key from his belt, and to let us inside.
Us: a tall, black man in his late twenties; a short, white woman ten years older.
“I’m from the Mohave, the heart of the high desert,” Spoon says. A fact and, I assume, the cause of Spoon’s love of swelter.
That anyone could want this hot day even hotter is shocking enough. More shocking still are all these words from Spoon’s lips. Spoon? The man who has spoken so little in our poetry class this past year? I’m too hot to express my surprise with any grand flourish but I’m definitely surprised. I don’t know what Spoon notes on my face. His eyes are hidden by sunglasses, as usual, and I can’t see what he feels. We’re in pause-mode as we wait for the guard: small talk instead of conversation, silence (Spoon), smiles (me).
We wait and men move all around us. Mostly men dressed in blue denim, the blue that Spoon wears. A fair number of men in green. For example, the guard walking toward us. A few women, too, wear the green uniform. Some people are dressed, as I am, in street clothes. This Wednesday I wear a long flowered skirt, a turquoise shirt, Birkenstock sandals. Hippie both prisoners and guards tease me.
Movement, Afternoon Movement. That’s how this time of day is referred to at San Quentin. Most prisoners’ jobs are now over and the men in blue are on their way back to their cells or to workshops and classes that run until count clears, an imprecise moment that usually occurs between four thirty and five.
I’ve been teaching poetry at the prison for just over one year, and what I know of San Quentin is Monday nights: the sight of boats on the bay as I walk from the parking lot toward the castle-like structure ahead; the sound of guards joking as they go through the papers I carry; the creak of metal gates opening to let me inside, the clang as they shut; birdsong in the tree in front of the captain’s porch at the edge of what’s called the garden plaza; the slight dungeon-y smell of the education building and our basement classroom; prison place names: Yard Side, Bay Side, West Block, Four Post, Max Shack, the Upper Yard; walking through the last gate after class is over and hearing the sound of the bay lap the rocky shore, as though along the promenade in Nice or some other Riviera town. I know the men in my class—Angel and his jeremiads, Coties’ concern for his children, Elmo’s intelligence and strength, Spoon nearly silent. I know what they tell me, their writing, the poems and conversations we share. I know something and know this something isn’t much.
Now, this very day, begins the expansion of my poetry program from Monday nights to twenty hours each week. One element of this expansion is the addition