Cell Count

In 1996, 1.2 million citizens were incarcerated in U.S. prisons for violent crimes and other felonies. By the year 2000, that number is expected to exceed 2 million. In response to this crisis, throughout the nation, programs built largely on the work of volunteers have risen to challenge traditional concepts about the prison system and rehabilitation, and to engender a new awareness of possibilities. Cell Count, an eloquent and sensitive collection of poems, is the product of one such program. Cell Count’s teacher-persona struggles to come to terms with his inmate-students who are tragically much more than the sum of their crimes.“Cell Count is not a book for Sunday afternoon reading. Innocently, I stepped across the line into Christopher Bursk’s world. An iron gate clanged shut, and I was alone, a red beam. . .aimed straight into my eyes, ‘digging a tunnel into my brain./I had to stare into the center of that burning/till it was all I could see.’“Cell Count is not just a book about the prison system. When the guard-tower floodlights snap on, trapped in its crossbeams is the book’s persona—a college instructor engaged in directing a poetry workshop in a reconverted storage closet in jail or counseling individual inmates in an interview room more cramped than a cell. He is teacher, poet, political activist, a man committed to making a difference in the lives of his students, yet he doesn’t seem certain why he feels compelled to do so; he is not entirely sure he wants to try this hard. Cell Count details the life-quest of this activist who, despite his fears, his hatred of evil, his repugnance for violence, his despair at what may be a hopeless endeavor, still acts, still takes a stand.” —Robert A. Fink

The Adverb
Anonymous Poem Picked Off The Floor
Ashes, Ashes, We All Fall Down
At The Defense Table
Birds Of A Feather
Breaking The Chains Of Silence
Crime
Does Poetry Matter?
Don't Let Go
Five-to-seven, Armed Robbery
Foot Soldiers
Foster Child
Gaelinda
Good Behavior
I Was Home. I Was Watching Television
Imagine It Was Your Mother 1
Imagine It Was Your Mother 2
In The Jail Of A Warden Who Loved To Play Golf
Is This All We Are?
It's Nothing Personal
The Note
Out-of-the-body Travel
Phone Call
A Place For Sorrow
Plaster Of Paris
Police Blotter
Police Blotter
The Portfolio
Ratted Out
Retribution
Self-pity
Side Real Time
Smash And Grab
Spite
Sudden Draft
Taking Final Exams In Jail
Tiny
Traffic
Tramp Steamer
The Trial Of Billy Budd For Treason In The Murder Of J. Claggart
What Are You Doing Here?
Why Are You Back In Jail?
Will
Words Said In The Dark
-- Table of Poems from Poem Finder®