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The Sayable

for men who write poems in prison

We talk yet again about the subjects
of poetry: childhood, light, the stars,
lost loves. These men, my students,

work their assignments, grope toward
word and line, not trusting poetry
or me. I hear my voice speak

this week’s lessons of using passion,
obsession, the freedom in the mind’s
leap, the maze that leads to discovery –

not knowing what it is we know
until we face it on the page. And I
am the one who introduces the subject

of regret. This is not about regret,
one is quick to say. Not about who
I was, nor who I have become. In here,

I sense, that is hard for anyone
to say. I am my history, a history
I embrace . . . and I mean all of it.

“I remember bathing suits and honest
women,” he wrote last week, “the heat
in Louisiana.” Not the past. We can’t

revisit, another says, we don’t dwell
there. We need to look for . . . “Light,”
is what he writes, “cold light

that morning: the trees, stately old men
enshrouded in flowing white coats.”
Suddenly, then, we talk of truth, its wreak

of havoc on our lives. The world, one
argues, won’t take Truth. He reads his poem,
“Inscrutable Soul”: “Guard her, for she is rash . . .”

Who are we? And what is sayable?
These are poetry’s questions. You men
are right; this is not about regret –

too small a word, too simple for our lives.
Poems beg us to use what we think is past,
that beckoning bridge we could walk out on.

Artist's statement

In my first experience teaching poetry at Lansing, I realized that context is everything when we use language. Words like “freedom” and “regret” as well as the traditional subjects of poetry took on new meanings as we studied together in that place. But choosing language was a bridge on which we could meet, different though our experiences were. Language gives us all humanity and helps us to redeem our pasts.

Raylene Hinz-Penner ’70, Topeka, teaches writing at Washburn University in Topeka. She has done writing projects with groups of both men and women in Kansas correctional facilities, including the one at Lansing. She has published numerous poems and is the author of Searching for Sacred Ground: The Journey of Chief Lawrence Hart, Mennonite (Cascadia Publishing House, 2007).