Incarceration Nation

Stephen John Hartnett is assistant professor of communication at Univ. of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, as well as a poet, musician, and prison activist.

Incarceration Nation speaks from a big heart, an informed mind, and engaged action. The book is large enough to hold the 'hope and terror' required as we investigate prison. Hartnett honors the names and words of real people living their lives behind' bars, includes the speech of those we pay to guard them, shares what his own eyes have seen, and calls on thinkers and poets from Rousseau to Eugene Debs, from Whitman to Peter Dale Scott. There's even room for music. Without avoiding terror, this book uses words like grace, thankful, and joy—human words born from the choice Hartnett has made: to love.

• Chapter 1 Introduction: A Reader's Guide to Investigative Prison PoetryChapter 2 Pendleton PoemsChapter 3 "Do Right and Fear Not!" : Five Meditations on San QuentinChapter 4 Perhaps Some GraceChapter 5 Emptiness Doesn't Take Notice: Supermax PoemsChapter 6 Transcending Schelling's LamentChapter 7 About the Same as Commercial FishingChapter 8 Love and Death in CaliforniaChapter 9 Visiting MarioChapter 10 Karina's QuestionChapter 11 Notes