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Excerpts of Reviews of DISGUISED AS A POEM
…this beautifully written and timely work layers many books into one. A witness to the prison experience, a quest for wholeness of vision, it is also a testament to the power of poetry and a memoir of a brave and original woman.
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Tannenbaum, a poet, teacher, and passionate community art advocate, shares her frank and moving recollections of teaching poetry at San Quentin prison during the 1980s. As she chronicles her demanding routines and indelible revelations in this realm of caged bodies and blazing souls, she articulates her belief that creativity is our birthright, no matter where we reside, and describes the liberating power of poetry as experienced by her students, men who have committed crimes but who write poems of heart-jolting beauty and insight.
Judith Tannenbaum has written a book that captures many layers of the complexities that arise in relating with prisoners… Although she describes in crisp detail the prisoners in her classes, with the backdrop of indignities they must handle, she also empathizes with the difficulties of the custody staff and administrators. She takes no easy ways out. I loved this book and heartily recommend it.
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This is a very moving account of one woman’s experiences as ‘poet-in-residence’ for four years at San Quentin. In the book’s introduction, Tannenbaum says that her years at the prison ‘taught me as much about what it is to be a human being as I taught my students about poetry.’ She then tells us about her encounters and friendships with the men she taught, sharing the lessons she learned with all of us. Especially poignant is her story about the staging of Beckett’s Waiting for Godot.
For grantmakers supporting art activities in institutions, Disguised as a Poem shows that people living in extreme circumstances can hear and be moved by a wide variety of poets, and such people’s writings are powerful.
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This collection of personal responses is a fine primer for those interested not only in prison life and the daily contrasts between ‘inside’ and ‘outside,’ but also – and this is far more important – in the sometimes excruciating emotional civil wars that cannot but bedevil the civilian humanist.
The author’s experiences are described without the protective armor of irony or attempts to render emotions moot by intellectualizing. In addition to examining paradox and the protection of one’s heart, she also takes us on a search for wholeness. Wholeness is not a commodity in obvious abundance in prison, but poetry becomes a way for the inmates to reclaim some measure of it.
Endorsements of Disguised as a Poem
Disguised as a Poem is one of the more remarkable works I have come across during many years in the study of writing about American prison experience.
Open-hearted and even-handed, this book tells stories that every American who hasn’t been inside a prison needs to know.
Disguised as a Poem is an honest and heroic account of an artist who instinctually understands that poetry and art can save lives.