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Felon

Poems
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( 2,928 ratings, 435 reviews)
Book Hero Magic crafted this summary to help describe this book. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! Summary
Felon explores the enduring impact of incarceration through a collection of intense, dazzling poems. Reginald Dwayne Betts navigates emotions and experiences including homelessness, underemployment, love, drug abuse, domestic violence, fatherhood, and grace. The work presents prison not just as a place but as a pervasive force shaping a person's life. Betts employs a range of poetic forms, from revolutionary found poems created by redacting court documents to a striking crown of sonnets concluding the volume. Through these redaction poems, Felon spotlights the societal erasure of the poor and incarcerated, challenging labels and exposing failures within the criminal justice system.
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Format: Hardback
$4899
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Book Hero Magic created this recommendation. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! IS THIS YOUR NEXT READ?

This collection is ideal for readers interested in contemporary poetry that confronts social justice issues, criminal justice reform, and personal resilience. It appeals to those who appreciate innovative literary forms and profound emotional narratives within the arts and culture genre.

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One of the New York Times's 100 Notable Books of 2020 Winner of the 2019 NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Work in Poetry Finalist for the 2019 Los Angeles Times Book Prize in Poetry A searing volume by a poet whose work conveys "the visceral effect that prison has on identity" (Michiko Kakutani, New York Times).

Book Hero Magic formatted this description to make it easier to read. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! Description

Felon tells the story of the effects of incarceration in fierce, dazzling poems, canvassing a wide range of emotions and experiences through homelessness, underemployment, love, drug abuse, domestic violence, fatherhood, and grace. In doing so, it creates a travelogue for an imagined life. Reginald Dwayne Betts confronts the funk of post-incarceration existence and examines prison not as a static space, but as a force that enacts pressure throughout a person's life.

The poems move between traditional and newfound forms with power and agilityβ€”from revolutionary found poems created by redacting court documents to the astonishing crown of sonnets that serves as the volume's 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.

Book Hero Magic summarised reviews for this book. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! HOW HAS THIS BEEN REVIEWED?

Critics acclaim Felon for its nimble diction and powerful critique of the carceral state. Dwight Garner of the New York Times highlights its poignant portrayal of reentry into American life, while Carolyn ForchΓ© praises its energy and lyric force in addressing the criminalisation of poverty. Dan Chiasson of The New Yorker commends Betts’s use of redacted text to reveal deeper truths and the emotional depth of poems on fatherhood. The book is recognised as a unique, revealing work of radical poetic expression.

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Book Details

INFORMATION

ISBN: 9780393652147

Publisher: WW Norton & Co

Format: Hardback

Date Published: 15 October 2019

Country: United States

Imprint: WW Norton & Co

Audience: General / adult

DIMENSIONS

Spine width: 15.0mm

Width: 163.0mm

Height: 218.0mm

Weight: 327g

Pages: 112

About the Author

Reginald Dwayne Betts is a husband and father of two sons. As a poet, essayist and national spokesperson for the Campaign for Youth Justice, Betts writes and lectures about the impact of mass incarceration on American society. In 2011 Betts was awarded a Radcliffe Fellowship to Harvard University’s Radcliffe Institute of Advanced Studies. The author of the memoir, A Question of Freedom (Avery/Penguin 2009) and the collection of poetry, Shahid Reads His Own Palm (Alice James Books, 2010), Betts’ work possesses a careful, complicated and often difficult-to-confront intimacy that challenges conventional ideas about crime, masculinity and redemption. In 2010 he was awarded an NAACP Image Award for A Question of Freedom, and a Soros Justice Fellowship to complete The Circumference of a Prison, a work of nonfiction exploring the criminal justice system's role in the every day lives of Americans who have not committed crimes.

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