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.

The San Quentin Project collects a largely unseen visual record of daily life inside one of America's oldest and largest prisons, demonstrating how this archive of the state is now being used to teach visual literacy and process the experience of incarceration. In 2011, Nigel Poor-artist, educator, and cocreator of the acclaimed podcast Ear Hustle-began teaching a history of photography class through the Prison University Project at San Quentin State Prison. Neither books nor cameras were allowed into the facility, so an unorthodox course with a range of inventivemapping exercises ensued: students crafted "verbal photographs" of memories for which they had no visual documentation, and annotated iconic images from different artists. After the first semester, Poor says, "one student told me he could now see fascination everywhere in San Quentin." When Poor received access to thousands of negatives in the prison's archive, made by corrections officers of a former era, these images of San Quentin's everyday occurrences soon became launchpads for her students' keen observations. From the banal to the brutal, to distinct moments of respite, the pictures in this archive gave those who were involved in the project the opportunity to share their stories and reflections on incarceration.

Robert Hayden was one of the most important American poets of the twentieth century. He left behind an exquisite body of work, collected in this definitive edition, including A Ballad of Remembrance, Words in the Mourning Time, The Night-Blooming Cereus, Angle of Ascent, and American Journal, which was nominated for a National Book Award. Also included is an introduction by American poet Reginald Dwayne Betts, as well as an afterword by Arnold Rampersad that provides a critical and historical context. In Hayden s work the actualities of history and culture became the launching places for flights of imagination and intelligence. His voice characterized by musical diction and an exquisite feeling for the formality of pattern is a seminal one in American life and literature."

"Inside silence there is a sliver of light that is the seed of the music of these poems, the origin of a melodic range we seldom see in a poet's first collection. These melodies move in a harmonic range affirming human struggle with an extraordinary elegance. This collection of song is definite evidence of the gift."--Afaa Michael Weaver

Gripping and terrifying, eloquent and heartwrenching, this debut collection delves into hellish territory: prison life. Soulful poems somberly capture time-bending experiences and the survivalist mentality needed to live a contradiction, confronting both daily torment and one's illogical fear of freedom.

From "Tell this to the people you love":

or think about--the young boy, whose name you won't say, his name written in dirt by the fence closest the weightpit, 'cause prison cells drive men to practicehistory, writing names--their own, someone else's--into myth--on walls, benches, evendirt . . .

Reginald Dwayne Betts received the Holden Fellowship from the Warren Wilson MFA Program for Writers. A Cave Canem fellow, Breadloaf Writer's Conference scholarship recipient, and graduate of Prince George's Community College and the University of Maryland, his poetry has appeared in such journals as Ploughshares and Poet Lore. His memoir A Question of Freedom has just been published by Avery Books/Penguin.