[New-Poetry] CD Wright's body count

[Roger Day]

I think there used to be deemed some moral purpose in hard labour. I think not.

I hadn't thought about it that way - going to jail just to get a job. Not nice.

The furore out of prisoners earning money out of their status was one
blown up by the right-wing press in this country.

Roger

On Wed, Jul 2, 2008 at 5:54 PM, TheOldMole <Opus40-01 at opus40.org> wrote:
> When I taught in the NYS prison system, I was doing a class in public
> speaking, and I assigned a persuasive speech -- standard assignment. One guy
> gave a speech advocating the opening of factories in prison, where the
> inmates could work for pay. During the question-and-answer session after the
> speech, the rest of the class ripped into him mercilessly. They all thought
> it was a horrible idea -- "You're encouraging people to commit crimes so
> they can go to prison and get a job." I let it go on for a whole, because I
> thought it was a good lesson we could talk about after -- what do you do
> when you really misjudge an audience and your speech goes totally wrong. I
> asked the class afte -- "Why the strong reaction?" They said, "We don't
> identify ourselves as prisoners. This isn't our life -- that's why we're
> taking college courses to prepare for our future. If you gave this speech to
> a bunch of lifers, you might get a different response."
>
> Roger Day wrote:
>>
>> In the UK, you'd be on a sticky wicket morally if you re-imburse
>> prisoners for being, well, prisoners. There might well be a state or
>> federal law *against* prisoners making money out of their status as
>> prisoners. In the UK, I think it's the case that prisoners cannot make
>> money out of selling their life-stories to newspapers.
>>
>> Roger
>>
>> On 7/2/08, Rsgwynn1 at cs.com <Rsgwynn1 at cs.com> wrote:
>>>
>>> http://edelmangallery.com/lusterp.htm
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>>
>>
>
> --
> Tad Richards
> http://www.opus40.org/tadrichards/
> http://opusforty.blogspot.com/
>
> The moral is this: in American verse,
> The better you are, the pay is worse.
>  --Corey Ford
>
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