The
Prisoner Poet
The Poems of James
Lewisohn
James Lewisohn, the poet
I interviewed in 1979 while he was incarcerated at the “Prison Farm” in Warren,
Maine, has produced several volumes of poetry as well as editied several
anthologies produced by the men in his poetry workshop at the prison. His work
was also published by several magazines and journals: Finkel, New York Quarterly, Sojourner, and The New Yorker.
As it has been 35 years
since I read his work, I don’t feel qualified to review Jimmy’s work here. He
gave me two volumes of his work when I interviewed him, but they have since
been lost in the flood of 2009 and I have not yet replaced them. I will
therefore, give you some of the critiques from the mass of materials he gave me
that day, as well as reviews and comments I have been able to find online. His
books include:
Roslyn,
1975, Casco Printing
Co., written partly before he went to prison and partly while he was
incarcerated.
Golgotha:
Letters From Prison, 1976, Greenfield Review Press
Lead
us Forth From Prison, 1977,
Greenfield Review Press
New
and Selected Poems,
1990, Horizon Press
Anthology: The Pushcart Prize II, 1977, Pushcart
Press
Anthologies of prisoners
in his workshop which Jimmy edited are:
Light
at the End of the Tunnel, 1976,
printed in the prison printshop
Out
of the Depths, 1977,
Downeast Graphics
At
the Ninth Hour, 1977,
Downeast Graphics
Reviews
from the media and comments from Jimmy
About Roslyn, The Church World, 1975:
…”there’s no mistaking
the true poet in James Lewisohn.”…”there are mind-sticking lines as ‘I have
become a celebrant of tombs’; ‘those who survive grow fat with angry cool’; ‘If
you live in the dark too long your hate the light—and I have lost my sight.”
Jimmy’s forward for this
book: “This small book is basically a love story…about my wife, Roslyn, our
life together, and the final catastrophe…It is more of a Kaddish for her, for
us, and someday a legacy I leave to our four children.”
About
Golgotha: Letters From Prison, The Bridgton News, 1976:
“These poems are not
wounded birds; they soar and sing. Lewisohn has reservoirs of hope…as insights
to the man, the poetry is excellent: reflections in a mirror.”
Back cover of the book: “They
are all love poems, they praise or they are prayers or they are struggles
against the darkness. They are psalms and failures, they are all I have and my
small gift for everyone who suffers and hopes.”
About Lead us Forth From Prison, Lewiston Daily
Sun, 1977:
“It is a poetry of
suffering and humility, of asking forgiveness but expecting none. Mr. Lewisohn’s
voice is strong and beautiful”…”a confrontation with James Lewisohn’s poems is
a confrontation with the strongest religious impulses from the heart of an
eloquent man.”
Joseph
Bruchac reviews Roslyn
Joseph Bruchac, poet and
editor of Greenfield Review, was oftentimes a guest poet at Jimm’y Poetry
Workshop at the prison. In 1976 he wrote a review of Roslyn, which I believe was published in the Review. It was one of the handouts Jimmy gave me and the source was
not given for this article.
He discusses the four
sections of the book: “Tragedy,” “Roots,” “Introspection,” and “Origins,” a
total of 51 poems. He says that “Tragedy,” about the tragedy of wife, Roslyn’s
death, is the strongest work in the volume. He calls Jimmy, “a distinctive
voice in contemporary poetry.”
He cites a poem called “Cerebral
Palsy.” From “Roots,” as evidence of Lewisohn’s capacity for compassionate, yet
clear vision:
“They have been joined
to a rhythm
Not their own
And by their hard
uncertainty
Each helps the other
struggle to
Untie the knots that
tangle in the mind
And joints…”
Another favorite of
Bruchac’s is “The Old” from Origins, which he calls honest and direct, “the
kind of poem needed by a society which relegates old people to places where
they are out of sight and out of mind:”
“The Old
For Ed Muskie
The old are beautiful
If they will forgive
themselves.
They arise out of
granite
Burning with a fierce
light.
The leaves fall
And they have learned
The trees by heart.
Words weaken against the
sun,
Their hands are open.
One child eating an
orange
Against the rain
Becomes a feast.
They taste the cold,
clear fruit
Upon their tongues
Knowing that the fruit
is ripe
And full of purpose.”
Bruchac continues:…“James
Lewisohn has the gift of being able to look, with different eyes, at people
whom society has condemned….Because of his own grief, James Lewisohn has a rare
ability to know the grief of others, to penetrate into those lonely places of
the soul which are best kept hidden if you are a prison inmate.”
He illustrates with one
section of “Tragedy” which goes:
“Grief is a stone that
leaves No Shadow
Or like the one Rose
Lisa left me
The water evaporates and
the Rose puts
Down its darkening
head until it Falls
Away
Petal by Petal, as the
last garland
Of its leaf divides.”
The review is four pages
long so I cannot include all the points Bruchac makes. I will close with his inclusion
of a letter he received from Jimmy dated December 1975 in which he included
this poem. I don’t know if it is included in any of Jimmy’s published work or
not. It was one of his recent poems at the time:
“Years
For David Hasson
An old Lifer
Locks himself in at
night.
He’s forgotten again
But today
Seagulls
Came over the walls
Without the sea.
Down in the shop
The band-saw
Cried like a child.
At night they give him Clorox
To sterilize his sleep.
Before a final cigarette
He turns to his ticking
clock
And then remembers.
He’s forgotten how to
dream.”
Buuchac ends by saying, “At
the top of the sheet he had written: ‘Joe its/a difficult/Balance. Love/your
life/Jimmy.”
Not all reviews of Jimmy’s
work were positive. In 1984 when he was released, he was interviewed by Jon
Fleming in a UPI story. I brought some of that story to you in the last blog.
Fleming said of his work, it has…”stark, gritty lyrics…very autobiographical
and usually bitter.”
He quotes from
“Christmas Letter from Exile”
December December
Is rung out
And beaten from the year
A false redeemer’s face
Gloats from the market
place
It’s dark to dark again…”
He quotes from Roslyn:
“Each day the air stands
still in me
Because you are not
here.”
He says Roslyn was not
written as “a defense or as a confession…but there’s little doubt Roslyn and other volumes published
during his first years in prison generated sympathy for his attempt to appeal
and overturn his murder conviction.”
In that same story is a
quote from our very own South End Poet, Kendall Merriam, which he wrote as part
of his review of Lewisohn’s work for a newspaper:
“In all of James
Lewisohn’s poetry, one has the feeling he is using it as a jailhouse lawyer
uses writs to reduce his sentence, that it’s a form of special pleading to show
that he is unlike the other murderers confined in Maine State Prison.”
Was it the passage of
time that perhaps dulled sympathy and support for Jimmy’s case? Some of his
supporters, including my brother, have since passed away. One thing is certain,
his poetry will survive Jimmy in this life and I expect it will also become part
of the legacy of Maine poets.
Thanks for listening.
Jimmy’s
books are available on Amazon and you might also ask at the Prison Store in
Thomaston, Maine.
