Sunday, September 3, 2017

Maybe the Fool


They are gathered there, as volatile a mix as any in the years of the workshops: Sonny, the self-described rage-a-holic, Handpoet, the on-fire Aztec teacher, Cercedes, the braided tough guy who likes to get in my face, Ortega, who wants the first draft to be the one that gets published, and Bell, the quiet giant to name a few. The only inmate race missing here is white. We are reading an inmate poem about poverty. One of the COs is sitting in, but that doesn't keep them from saying what they want to say about the poem. "I love it," Ortega jumps in. "I wouldn't change a thing." He is sitting next to me, and his gaze is both a challenge and an opening. I have to be diplomatic. There is some face to be lost here if I go too hard. "Let's look at the lines that work best," I offer up as an entry into the discussion. I ask the men to identify and read the line that stands out. We go around. "So, what do you think?" Cercedes interjects, looking right at me. "You got some answer there and you're holding back." I wish I had the magic comment, question, or incantation that would prompt the writer to send his poem from where it is into the realms of the sublime but I don't. I can only point in the direction of where others have gone. I read a published poem, similar in form and subject, but that has more sensuality, more metaphor, has greater complexity of ideas, intensifies feeling as it progresses, and ends with a zapper of a turn. "Sensory detail, images, examples, structure, and sharpening ideas" I say. "That's the work we as writers all have to contend with when revising." A mutiny of sorts erupts, but the writer of the poem in question, nods, and says "I think I get what you're saying," and that settles the rebellion just a bit. Sonny backs off, but Ortega and Cercedes are not done. They demand more explanation, and make it clear that they, as inmates, have just as much to say as I do. What am I doing here? That "I" is more of a "he," some alter ego that has fallen into a slot on a roulette wheel and is going along for the ride. Is that he the fool in the cross-hairs on a Saturday in a dark room with men hungry for expression, for insight, for direction, for something to hang on to? Maybe. Whoever this is is not the hero of the show. Rather, he is the one who meets the gaze of his own shadow. 

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