Winner of the NAACP Image Award and finalist for the 2019 Los Angeles Times Book Prize “A powerful work of lyric art.” —New York Times Book Review, Editors’ Choice
In fierce, agile poems, Felon tells the story of the effects of incarceration—canvassing a wide range of emotions and experiences through homelessness, underemployment, love, drug abuse, domestic violence, fatherhood, and grace—and, in doing so, creates a travelogue for an imagined life. Reginald Dwayne Betts confronts the funk of post-incarceration existence in traditional and newfound forms, from revolutionary found poems created by redacting court documents to the astonishing crown of sonnets that serves as the volume’s radiant conclusion.
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Felon
Winner of the NAACP Image Award and finalist for the 2019 Los Angeles Times Book Prize “A powerful work of lyric art.” —New York Times Book Review, Editors’ Choice
In fierce, agile poems, Felon tells the story of the effects of incarceration—canvassing a wide range of emotions and experiences through homelessness, underemployment, love, drug abuse, domestic violence, fatherhood, and grace—and, in doing so, creates a travelogue for an imagined life. Reginald Dwayne Betts confronts the funk of post-incarceration existence in traditional and newfound forms, from revolutionary found poems created by redacting court documents to the astonishing crown of sonnets that serves as the volume’s radiant conclusion.
Winner of the NAACP Image Award and finalist for the 2019 Los Angeles Times Book Prize “A powerful work of lyric art.” —New York Times Book Review, Editors’ Choice
In fierce, agile poems, Felon tells the story of the effects of incarceration—canvassing a wide range of emotions and experiences through homelessness, underemployment, love, drug abuse, domestic violence, fatherhood, and grace—and, in doing so, creates a travelogue for an imagined life. Reginald Dwayne Betts confronts the funk of post-incarceration existence in traditional and newfound forms, from revolutionary found poems created by redacting court documents to the astonishing crown of sonnets that serves as the volume’s radiant conclusion.
Reginald Dwayne Betts is the author of three books of poetry, including the bestselling Felon. He is a poet, lawyer, and the founder and CEO of Freedom Reads.
Table of Contents
Ghazal 1
Blood History 3
The Lord Might Have Given Him Wings 4
Behind Yellow Tape 7
Losing Her 9
Whisky for Breakfast 10
For a Bail Denied 11
Triptych 13
When I Think of Tamir Rice While Driving 15
In Alabama 18
A Man Drops a Coat on the Sidewalk & Almost Falls into the Arms of Another 26
City of the Moon 29
Diesel Therapy 30
If Absence Was the Source of Silence 31
Essay on Reentry 34
In Houston 36
Night 46
Essay on Reentry 48
Essay on Reentry 49
On Voting for Barack Obama in a Nat Turner T-Shirt 51
Exile 53
Parking Lot 55
Parking Lot, Too 56
Going Back 57
In California 59
Temptation of the Rope 63
Ballad of the Groundhog 65
November 5, 1980 68
& Even When There Is Something to Complain About 69
“When I came back, I was thinking about how to tell the story. And I wanted to meet people who in one way or number resembled the young people who I’d known as a kid and I was talking to various people, and I had some ideas. And then I got a call from a […]