Maybe I should have listened better in ENG 311. Maybe I shouldn’t have stopped writing angsty lyrics decades before Taylor Swift took all of my teenage ideas and made millions.
Either way, I would love to say that I'm a ‘poetry person’ but I am, frankly, too distracted neurotic impatient.
Somewhere, in a parallel universe, I wile away entire afternoons sipping tea and reading poems next to my dog in front of our fireplace. Inspired and unburdened, I don my overcoat and Wellies to walk across the auburn fields just beyond my home— the dog bounding ahead as I stop to marvel at the blue-fire just beyond the clouds, the geese mapping the world overhead. This version of me is too transfixed and beguiled to be bothered by life’s little dramas.
Meanwhile, in reality, I pass another day huffing over what is for dinner again, forced to admit that I am seldom beguiled. Also, I don't read poetry for fun. Not the adult kind.
I do read Shel Silverstein and Naomi Shihab Nye with my youngest child at tuck-in each night hoping against hope that he will remember me as that mom instead of the one complaining about all of the nonsense in the world while eating handfuls of chocolate chips after dinner. Maybe, when I am 60, when no little people live in my home anymore I'll read poetry for the heck of it. Maybe then, when it is just me and the dog and my melancholia left.
But not this dog— she will be gone by then.
My error might be thinking that I have to live poetry to enjoy it, because there is one exception: I am consumed by the poetry of prisoners these days.
Send me all of the poems written by our incarcerated writers and I DO like them, Sam I Am— in a box, with a fox, in a house, with a mouse— standing over running water at the kitchen sink, losing track of what I was meant to be doing.
If not beguiled, I am at least a glutton for this misery— placing myself where my son lives. Let me find clues that prison can turn a wayward young man tolerable, maybe even wise. Give me proof that my son will turn out okay. Promise me that not all is lost and remind me that some people would give anything to be standing in this kitchen trying to decide what is for dinner ‘again.’
I received a Thank-You note last year after donating to a prison reform event. It was a handwritten note, which was lovely, but it was the stationary that got me. A landscape scene drawn by a prisoner— his name on the back. You know that I couldn't just leave it there. I looked him up on the State offender tracking system, hoping he wasn’t too ‘scary’ (as if I had any right to decide if he was redeemable based upon his picture and charges and release date).
Turns out, he is a murderer.
He stabbed a man in a bar fight in 1984 and was sentenced 60-90 years. His earliest release date is 4/15/2045. If he makes it to that day, he will be 81 years old before he is even eligible to be free in the world again. His name is Troy Chapman.
Well Bridget, someone says, it's one thing to advocate for your son. It's another to start caring about people who kill other people.
Is it though?
At the age of 20, after drinking all night, Troy was confronted by his drinking buddy. The two argued and ended up on the floor in a sloppy tussle. Another man at the bar intervened, picking Troy up and shoving him across the floor. Drunk, young, and impulsive, Troy pulled a knife and stabbed the man who had pushed him. That man died.
Troy wasn't a choir boy. If you read his backstory, you find all of the clichés: absent father, childhood trauma/death, family substance abuse history, juvenile delinquency. And while I do not know his full story, I see myself and my son within some of it. His 20-year-old actions cost him and his family (and another man and his family) the rest of their lives. There but for the Grace of God.
This month’s Misfit Lit choice is Troy’s own words. He has penned a book of poetry called The Knitting Birds and Other Poems.
Admittedly, I have found Troy Chapman way late. He has already received national attention as an author including multiple awards, and he has been featured on NPR and Michigan Radio. He has published three books from inside— one on ethics for prisoners (talk about niche). He is talented, friends— talented enough to keep my impatient, frantic soul reading poetry at my kitchen sink.
He captures familiar scenes from the 1980s like they happened last week: a Formica table, an off-road Pontiac Firebird, his aunt’s pickles from a jar. He writes, in Sonnets to My Children, a love note to the kids that he will never have. He grieves his place in the world and he foreshadows his ultimate death, his inevitable return to the ground, the sum of his life— perhaps limited only to paying a debt.
I do not have permission to share excerpts from the book here but to glimpse his unique perspective, I will share the widely published story he wrote for NPR’s This I Believe series in 2008 called Caring Makes Us Human:
“When the scruffy, orange cat showed up in the prison yard, I was one of the first to go out there and pet it. I hadn't touched a cat or a dog in over twenty years. I spent at least 20 minutes crouched down by the dumpster behind the kitchen as the cat rolled around and luxuriated beneath my attention. What he was expressing outwardly, I was feeling inwardly.
It was an amazing bit of grace to feel him under my hand and know that I was enriching the life of another creature with something as simple as my care. I believe that caring for something or someone in need is what makes us human. Over the next few days, I watched other prisoners responding to the cat. Every yard period, a group of prisoners gathered there. They stood around talking and taking turns petting the cat. These were guys you wouldn't usually find talking to each other.
Several times I saw an officer in the group, not chasing people away, but just watching, and seeming to enjoy it along with the prisoners. Bowls of milk and water appeared, along with bread wisely placed under the edge of the dumpster to keep the seagulls from getting it. The cat was obviously a stray and in pretty bad shape. One prisoner brought out his small, blunt-tipped scissors and trimmed burrs and matted fur from his coat. People said that cat came to the right place. He's getting treated like a king. This was true. But as I watched, I was also thinking about what the cat was doing for us.
There's a lot of talk about what's wrong with prisons in America. We need more programs. We need more psychologists or treatment of various kinds. Some even talk about making prisons more kind. But I think what we really need is a chance to practice kindness ourselves. Not receive it, but give it. After more than two decades here, I know that kindness is not a value that's encouraged. It's often seen as weakness. Instead the culture encourages keeping your head down, minding your own business, and never letting yourself be vulnerable. For a few days, a raggedy cat disrupted this code of prison culture.
They've taken him away now, hopefully to a decent home, but it did my heart good to see the effect he had on me and the men here. He didn't have a Ph.D., he wasn't a criminologist or a psychologist, but by simply saying, I need some help here, he did something important for us. He needed us, and we need to be needed. I believe we all do.”
When I shared this online last week, someone responded, “Well, don't kill people and you won't go to prison.”
I think Troy would agree.
By the miracle of Google, anyone can read of his 40 years of work toward redemption since he murdered another young man. He has used his incarcerated years to openly take responsibility for his actions and to intentionally contribute positively to our society— Certainly, he has given more to others than I ever have.
Not only a writer, Troy has been an integral part of The Wholeness Project within the Michigan Department of Corrections, as well as a dog trainer for Paws With a Cause. He has matured into a man known for teaching, speaking, and writing from a philosophy of non-violence rather than from the beaten down soul of a hardened, caged criminal. Supporting his work is supporting real change in a human being— a thing that prison alone could never do.
You can buy Knitting Birds HERE.
You can also read more about Troy in two places. The first is on a blog called Friends of Troy Chapman. The other is at The Prison Journalism Project, where he is a frequent contributor. If (after learning more) you would like to have Troy’s sentence reconsidered, you can add your name HERE or contact Michigan's parole board and the governor. Both have denied him commutation multiple times but if I am honest, given the givens, I would feel safer with this man as my neighbor than many of the politicians in my State.
Happy reading, fellow misfits! Stay tuned for fall book club details, and please tell me what YOU think of poetry in the comments!
I appreciated reading this — had not heard of Troy and so enjoyed reading about the joy a stray cat brought to so many there. I'm all for therapy animals in prison. Everyone wins.
One of the men that I interact with at the Cotton Correctional facility has been incarcerated for 40+ years for a crime committed when he was 17 years old. Armed robbery with unintentional murder. Enough already! His whole life, basically, behind bars. He isn’t a threat. He was involved in a bad situation as a teenager. I pray for his release.