Kelly Weston

11 – 7 – 06

For my Current Literature class I am doing a fiction project.  I began my research with the topic of gang fiction and prison literature in mind.  The first thing I did was go to Wikipedia and look up prison fiction.  I found many hits on fictional prisons, which is clearly not what I wanted.  I continued to search and the person I found to be most prevalent for prison fiction is Etheridge Knight.  I found out his biographical information and some of his works.  I was most interested in his poems.  He writes a lot about his feelings while in prison.  So far my project is very intensive on Knight and his work.  I would eventually like to go more extensive with other prison fiction pieces and authors.  I am continuing to do more research.  Here is a poem by Knight that I found.  I am not sure I completely understand it yet, but I am trying to read more of his poems to understand them as a whole.

    CELL SONG

Night Music Slanted
Light strike the cave of sleep. I alone
tread the red circle
and twist the space with speech

Come now, etheridge, don't
be a savior; take your words and scrape
the sky, shake rain

on the desert, sprinkle
salt on the tail
of a girl,

can there anything
good come out of
prison

Written by Etheridge Knight (1931-1991)
http://www.ctadams.com/etheridgeknight4.html