Judith Tannenbaum

Thanks to Robert Pollie for the time, thought, and heart he put into the By Heart program he assembled and aired on KUSP on April 25. You can listen here. Robert taped Spoon ten or twelve times — via collect calls from prison, with beeps and recorded messages. I love hearing Spoon speak for himself. On all the other radio shows so far, I’ve spoken for both of us — though most have played at least part of Michel Wenzer’s audio tape of Spoon reading from By Heart). Most responses and reviews of our book mention the two-person nature of our narration. Robert’s show gives the same feel.

Spoon Jackson’s book of poems – Longer Ago — is now available on lulu.com
Here’s one of my favorite of Spoon’s poems.

DARKENED ROOM

I sit in a darkened room
to hide
from nothing in particular.

I sit in a darkened room
to think
about nothing in particular.

I knock one devil on his ass,
ten more appear.

The angels, they want to stay
in the heavens, safe among the stars,
the lights of dusty immortality.

The devils swoop like hawks,
they swarm around the head
like summer flies.

I sit in bare-footed silence
chiseled in-between the two,
trying to keep symmetry.

Please watch the incredible book trailer Michel Wenzer has made for By Heart: Poetry, Prison, and Two Lives.

Just home from residency at Hedgebrook on Whidbey Island overlooking Puget Sound. Six women writers are each given a cabin to live and work in, as well as meals. Applications for February through November 2010 must be postmarked by September 24, 2009.

During this stay I finished work on By Heart: Poetry, Prison, and Two Lives, the two-person memoir I’ve been writing with former San Quentin student, Spoon Jackson. By Heart will come out April 2010.

On my next-to-last night, I read Spoon’s first chapter in our book to the group. After I read the last word, the room was completely silent. I looked up from the page and saw each woman was crying. I went back to my cabin and tried to describe this amazing moment to Spoon in a letter to where he’s housed at New Folsom. Each woman wrote him her own note about what his story — and the beauty with which he wrote his story — meant to her.