For the last 40 years, poet Richard Shelton has been helping prisoners in Arizona reclaim their humanity. NPR’s Arun Rath talks with Shelton about his work.
ARUN RATH, HOST:
While this may be the most peaceful era in human history, there’s still plenty of violence and suffering to support the pessimist’s view. Our prisons are full of men and women whose lives reflect that. But for the last 40 years, the poet Richard Shelton has been helping prisoners in Arizona reclaim their humanity through writing. In a section of this month’s Orion magazine, he highlights several pieces from his students that show their relationship with nature.
RICHARD SHELTON: A great deal of the work they have done over the years has to do with the natural world, or probably more predominant, the lack of it. That is, what does it do to a person to never see a tree, never see a bug, never see a bird? Many of them use that as a theme, and that was the theme of my introduction.
RATH: Let’s hear a poem written by one of your students. This is called “In The Absence Of The Moon,” read by our intern, Julian Burrell.
JULIAN BURRELL, BYLINE: (Reading) The wind is cold and barbed, and the moon is buttering dreams in another land. A day of snow grazed the night. My breathing clouds the air with possibilities. The wind refuses quickly to consider. In the absence of the moon, decisions of the wind are absolute. A campfire burns perceptions down to coals of truth. The smoke is gone. Beyond the edges of the ember light, yellow pairs of eyes stalk back and forth, testing the air for answers to hunger and desire. Tonight, I choose to howl, a song, a prayer, in the language of the lost.
RATH: “In The Absence Of The Moon” was written by Arizona state prison inmate Michael Small. Can you talk about what it is in these poems that impresses you, especially as a fellow poet yourself?
SHELTON: Well, the simplicity of language, honesty, intensity, compression – all the things that make a good poem. Those are just good poems, whether they were written by somebody in prison or not.
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