num_pages: 95
description: Felon tells the story of the effects of incarceration in fierce dazzling poemscanvassing a wide range of emotions and experiences through homelessness underemployment love drug abuse domestic violence fatherhood and graceand in doing so creates a travelogue for an imagined life. Reginald Dwayne Betts confronts the funk of postincarceration existence and examines prison not as a static space but as a force that enacts pressure throughout a persons life.The poems move between traditional and newfound forms with power and agilityfrom revolutionary found poems created by redacting court documents to the astonishing crown of sonnets that serves as the volumes radiant conclusion. Drawing inspiration from lawsuits filed on behalf of the incarcerated the redaction poems focus on the ways we exploit and erase the poor and imprisoned from public consciousness. Traditionally redaction erases what is top secret; in Felon Betts redacts what is superfluous bringing into focus the profound failures of the criminal justice system and the inadequacy of the labels it generates.Challenging the complexities of language Betts animates what it means to be a felon.
language: English
title: Felon: Poems
publisher: W. W. Norton & Company