Randall Horton is the author of a memoir and four powerful poetry collections, including his most recent #289-128 – once his state Department of Corrections number, now reclaimed for his art. The collection explores the experience of imprisonment, remembers the voices and yearnings of people inside, and pushes back against hollow language about mass incarceration. On the show, he talks about the power in taking back for poetry's purposes the state number that followed and follows him, pays tribute to Etheridge Knight, shares a few secrets from his creative process and sneaks in some credit to his steadfast mom.
Author Bio:
Randall Horton is the author of the poetry collections#289-128, Dark Anarchy, The Definition of Place, andThe Lingua Franca of Ninth Street. His memoir,Hook, was the winner of the Great Lakes College Association New Writers Award.Horton currently a Professor of English at the University of New Haven. He’s received numerous awards, including the Gwendolyn Brooks Poetry Award, the Bea Gonzalez Poetry Award, the Great Lakes College Association New Writers Award for Creative Nonfiction, and a National Endowment of the Arts Fellowship in Literature. In 2018-2019 Randall was selected as Poet-in-Residence for the Civil Rights Corps in Washington DC, a non-profit that challenges systemic injustice in the American legal system.
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[00:00:00] Dwayne Betts: There's somebody in like, you know, Sydney, Australia right now with a book in their hand that's thinking about the world, along the same lines of the conversation that we're having.
[00:00:12] Jason Reynolds: It's literally us manipulating and maneuvering 26 letters into different arrangements that might just liberate somebody.
[00:00:21] Mariam Toews: Literacy is is freedom.
[00:00:25] Dwayne Betts: And so, so many people was yelling, you know, and it was wild to me. I was like, "this is literature right here." You know what I mean, I was like, I was like, "this is the importance of books."
You're listening to The Freedom Takes, a podcast from the Million Book Project. I'm your host Reginald Dwayne Betts. I'm a poet, a lawyer, and the director of the Million Book Project.
[00:00:48] Elsa Hardy: I'm Elsa Hardy. I'm a historian and a law student, and I work with Dwayne on the Million Book Project.
[00:00:53] Betts: And, uh, today, you know, as our guest we got my man Randall Horton. He is the author of four collections of poetry: "Pitch Dark Anarchy," "The Definition of Place," and "The Lingua Franca of Ninth Street."
And finally, the book that we'll be talking about today, {289-128}. He's won numerous awards. He is a tenured professor at the University of New Haven, and I am really happy and thankful to call him a good friend of mine.
[00:01:22] Hardy: So Randall, our hope is that you'll open the show with a reading of one or two poems from {289128}.
[00:01:28] Horton: Sure, and thank you um for inviting me. Glad to be here. It means a lot to appear on this podcast. Let's get right to it. Um, the first poem, um, is "Escorting the Criminal Justice Advocate Through State Prison." And just for setup, I always I repeat the number, um, the state number, which is 289-128, which my--which was my department of corrections number.
[00:01:52] Betts: Oh shit. Oh, wait. You was locked up?
[00:01:55] Horton: Yeah, man you ain't know?
Man, I've been trying to tell folks, but they don't believe me [Laughs]
Well, we'll figure it out one day. [begins reading] "#289-128: Escorting the Criminal Justice Advocate Through State Prison" of being not alive, but trapped-- in perpetual madness at roxbury. walk with trustee {289-128} escorted through habitual routines & storylines a different kind of nightmare: life for not taking life.
one hour a day under the feet at rec, gravel crunches around an oval track. for a decade, breathe deep the pollen & horse shit. glorious oh the hills of hagerstown! on the top tier watch angel jump minus his wings & halo, life was on impact-- a story of survival no one survives. day after day become a callous heart. or. A broken mind unable to escape--frozen & hollow there is no escaping tonight. visit each unit after lock in-- taste the fetid air. cell by fucking cell, make no mistake, language matters. through narration mouth j-u-s-t-i-c-e, a filthy word in the eyes of confined men. evolve toward the difficult thesis-- .a thing for sure, underscored at best.
"#289-128 .OR. This Malus Thing Never to be Confused with Justice."
nothing symbolic. okay. dark is dark--cage is cage. hunted & hunter are both in the literal. make believe & what ifs do not exist: a lie. nothing cryptic here. okay. rape is rape. prey must pray. no minute in the future safe and quiet insertions of shank in masking tape. okay. nothing here, infinite: only time is constant to the merciful & merciless--
there are no allegories to hide behind. he slit his wrist means he slit his fucking wrists okay? there is a cell with one window just before day. dawn's early demise magnifies a dull metal toilet, the cool water cooling two can sodas. each wall a slab of soft gray cinderblock, no posters featuring eroticized women with an exclusive in Black Tail. okay.
the wall that slits the light does not reveal nothing new, ever. The expose, the changing same: always a holding. one window offers a gateway. my face pressed against the window & time rules this empire. okay. the mind held hostage by time. mind & body conjoined twins. the other wall holds a frame, the frame holes a metal door to contain utter disbelief. of the visible: walls are gray not like summer, but darker--yes, there is darkness. okay?
"#289-128: quiet before the storm in the dayroom"
stainless steel tables with stop sign seats hold dominoes, checkers, playing cards alongside a group of old heads studying, not the bible, but the qur'an for balance. rippling keys from a manual typewriter echo from cell 42 on the top tier-- filing a writ, perhaps a hail mary; yet hope-- in the dayroom men craft greeting cards or bracelets from slivers of colored plastic under the bolted tv big pun gets a tattoo the cost: five cup-a-soups & two kippers for a naked lady drawn with a walkman tricked out by a needle the cassette gone the music gone. hear the clink of metal or thud from a steady stream of urine in toilet water before the flush & release--
there is laughter over our sadness lingering beneath fake smiles someone owes for a bag of heroin & before lock-in will battle the creditor like a gladiator: a spectacle we call theater of the absurd.
"#289-128: Remember"
do not turn from the difficult thesis-- think back to the slim praying man in cell 15 with needle stuck in vein, religion nor dope can stop time-- remember 72 in a unit built for 30. that never ending revolving door--or the overcrowded choir singing--I am the wretched of the earth typed on a smith corona at night. how cell 23 demanded rabbled art--what about the couple in cell 22, lifers who found love doing a bid-- father and son as cellies on the top tier. no generation will be left behind--too many bodies lingering in limbo, the worn out illusion of truth see-- memorialize faces you will forget--victim turn perpetrator in cell 6 sold at 8 for a bag of meth, nothing here is black and white--
[00:07:41] Betts: poems is powerful, man. I've- made me remember, um, uh, you know, some of the themes come up and up again, and I know our listeners who primarily, you know, this show is for people doing time- will recognize things in the verse. But do us a favor though. Can you, uh, describe the structure of this joint and sort of situate the motivation for, um, for everything from, um, the sections to the title {289-128}.
You know what I mean? I, I legit know my state number. I got a lawyer number too. I don't know what the fuck that is. But my state number is 251534. You know, it's like--
[00:08:25] Horton: --it's, it's the one you remember. Yeah. You can't forget it. It's like on all my documents.
And even when I was going, thinking about this project in some kind of way, I think my mom has sent me, uh, some old mail and, uh, and it was a bunch of letters and it had 289128. And I was like, oh wow, that was it. That's how she saw me. But anyway, that sort of gave me, the license, to sort of like embody that 289-128 and sort of flip it.
And so there's, the, the book is structured in that the first section is "Property of the State", uh, and these poems are obviously about the inside and they sort of critique, um, the system in various ways while trying to give voice, um, and a sort of humanity too, in, in this kind of way. You know a lot of times, I think people think because there's all these things that go on in ti- in prison, that there isn't like an ounce of humanity sometimes. We know that-that statement to be false. The second section, which is, um, " Poet in residence cell 23," which is actually the cell that I was in. You know, I wanted to use that as sort of a, of a grounding point in how the poet can sort of imagine outside of his confined space. And the last section, um, "is it poured in New York" and it sort of echoes the returning citizen and what one sort of deals with and sees, um, when one gets out.
But also, like one never escapes the 289-128. I don't care. Shit.
[00:09:55] Betts: Yeah
[00:09:55] Horton: So all of these three sections sort of try to contribute in some kind of way to sort of this talk that we're having about what does it mean to , A- be involved in the criminal justice system and B what does it mean to critique it? And my job is to, to bring that humanity to in some, in this weird kind of way, I think, that always needs, like, it needs to be that.
[00:10:16] Betts: I wanted to ask Elsa, what's your state number?
[00:10:18] Hardy: My state number? I don't have one, that's the point. [Laughs] You mean my driver's license number?
[00:10:25] Betts: You know, it's, it's so funny. Right? Cause I was, I was thinking of how it's always three of us. Right. And, and like me and Randall both got state numbers.
And like, when you say 289-128, it's just like natural. And I almost wondered, I don't know, I was wondering how does that sound to you Elsa? Like I almost wonder like, because, cause I know that we try really hard to, when we in the same space together, Randall, with anybody that's been locked up, it's not like we try to normalize prison, but we try to normalize our ownership of that experience.
And I've never asked anybody who's like been in a room with us. Like, how does that feel? You know, like, I'd be like, yo, all my groomsman, you know, been to prison.
[Laughter] Are you bragging?
[Laughter] And I- [Laughter] I just, I don't know, it hit me. I wonder how you hear that, Elsa?
[00:11:10] Hardy: No, I mean, I think it's just another example of the kind of disconnect, between people who have been in prison and people who haven't. Cause I have no like touch point for understanding what it's like to be referred to as a number. There's probably the only number that I can summon with that kind of ease is my childhood phone number and my current cell phone number.
But like the experience of being associated with the number, you know, I don't have any context for that.
[00:11:35] Horton: Yeah. It's interesting. I do think about it in this effortless kind of way, because I think everywhere I move in the state of Maryland, that number followed me and I've had to write something down, I had to put it there.
You know, there's always these sort of things in place to sort of, you know, make you not forget that. But like Dwayne says, I think we claim ownership for it and try to take power from that in some kind of way, like you did with Felon. Right? Same thing with me with 289-128. I can't let that be the defining moment.
I can't let the criminal justice system have that satisfaction of not giving me a voice and a self.
[00:12:07] Hardy: You're talking about how that number is ingrained in your minds, but like, do you think your moms would be able to, to remember that number off the top of their head right now?
[00:12:16] Betts: I'd probably cry if my mom told me that number.
[00:12:18] Horton: No, I don't think she would, but you know what?
I don't know. She used to send me this little, these little notes in, I know she had to take the time to write that number. All the time. And so I don't know, maybe it's fading now, but I, I don't know how she felt in that moment of having to, you know, refer to her, a son as this sort of number. Well I know my father, you know, felt a certain kind of way about it, um, about the whole experience. And that's a whole nother thing. We talk about this sort of like things people deal with in terms of the shame of incarceration or, how can I say it, come to the reality that someone is on the inside that you love and that you got to try to figure out how to deal with that.
[00:13:00] Betts: Shit. Cuz they ain't read the new Jim Crow.
[00:13:01] Horton: Right! They don't get it, they don't know. They can't... [laughter]
[00:13:04] Betts: Your pops was like, your pops was like, "what you talking bout systemic racism?" And didn't that n**** sound dope! [Laughs] Like mom, my mom would be like, "hold up, I understand, I think what you saying, but I'm confused." They'd be like, "why are you confused?" "Cause I'm pretty sure Dwayne robbed somebody with a gun, like I just don't understand what racism had to do with that shit."
[00:13:26] Hardy: I just wanted to ask you guys both a question about language, 'cause before I started working with Dwayne, I would see him at conferences, hear him speak and stuff. And one of the times that I heard him speak, he went off about the expression, "human caging."
He was just like, don't say that to me, you know? I wasn't in a cage. And more recently, I heard him talking about how he doesn't like the phrase mass incarceration, um, and your poem that you read for us, "This Malus Thing Never To Be Confused with Justice" is also sort of rejecting the symbolism and the euphemisms that we often use to talk about prison.
Um, And so you both seem to believe in the power of language because you're poets, but you also seem to recognize its shortcomings, especially when talking about prison. So I was wondering if you could both talk a little bit about how you've wrestled with that tension while working on your projects.
[00:14:17] Horton: For me. Um, I've I got a lot of issues with the way we use language in terms of this whole criminal justice rubric, um, prison, convict, felon, and all of that. I think a lot of times as a poet, you know, I might mention some of these things, it's not a contradictory. It's just for me. I understand sometimes, um, that in that contradictory, I'm trying to get to something that cuts in terms of the language. And, for me, it's always the idea how do we not, um, reinforce the stereotypes that we're trying to break free of. And that this is sort of like my whole critique, a lot of times, even with organizations and advocates who are doing the good work. And I think a lot of times we have to police them in terms of like the, uh, I don't know about policing, damn. [Laughs]
[00:15:06] Betts: Shit I be policing the hell outta... [Laughs]. Forreal cause it's like some legit shit though. It's like, I hate the word "human caging."
[00:15:13] Horton: Right.
[00:15:14] Betts: Cause like the idea of a human cage doesn't allow for the men that found love in cell 42.
[00:15:19] Horton: Exactly.
[00:15:20] Betts: You know, the best book about this might be Brothers and Keepers by John Edgar Wideman.
[00:15:25] Horton: Right
[00:15:26] Betts: And what's interesting is that was written in 1984.
[00:15:29] Horton: Right.
[00:15:30] Betts: When the term mass incarceration wasn't in popular parlance. Right.
[00:15:33] Horton: Right
[00:15:33] Betts: And, and listening to his mother, talk about why the system ain't shit.
[00:15:38] Horton: Right.
[00:15:39] Betts: That is a beautiful thing, because I feel like what happens is these terms allow us not to grapple with what frustrates us about the system.
[00:15:48] Horton: Right.
[00:15:48] Betts: And so what happens is the terms become as empty as the stereotypes.
[00:15:53] Horton: I mean, I think about all the places in, where I was being held and the places I went from Virginia to DC to Maryland. Regardless of the situation, I think. I remember people, man. I remember I remember names. I remember conversations. I remember people, you know, crying to me about the, you know, their mother and father dying in prison, losing their girl.
Um, and they got a whole other account of life going on, whatever, but I'm saying there's always these moments where people become real, you know, they open up. There is some of that.
[00:16:30] Betts: And that is not captured. That's not captured in the word "human caging."
[00:16:34] Horton: Right.
[00:16:35] Betts: Literally like the people who say human caging, they don't even care about those things.
[00:16:38] Horton: Right right.
[00:16:40] Betts: I mean, I'm generalizing and maybe it's wrong to over-generalize, but I just want to say, like, I don't hear those folks talking about the substance of the life that like gets stomped out by incarceration. And, and the substance of the life that people like push to make still exist even while doing time.
[00:17:01] Horton: Mmm hmm.
[00:17:03] Betts: Who is your audience though? Cause you know, like you, you write explicitly about prison and I do too, but the question is like, do you or I write explicitly for people in prison?
[00:17:14] Hardy: And just to jump in here really quick Randall. So we were talking about this question and Dwayne was like, "what does audience even mean?"
[00:17:21] Betts: Yeah, I said something stupid like that. Like I was like, I was like, what the hell does audience mean? People in prison don't know I exist. And then you hit me to something else that I just didn't even recognize. And I thought it was really, really kind of dope. Didn't know that that's true.
[00:17:35] Hardy: Yeah, I was telling Dwayne, I used to work for a college program at Cheshire. It's a men's prison in Connecticut. One of my jobs was to like, they would fill out research requests.
So if they wanted any information from the internet or from the library, they would fill out this little form and I would bring it in. And I used to get lots of requests being like, I want a book written by a formerly incarcerated. XYZ. Um, it seemed like a lot of the students were really looking for models for like what their life could look like afterwards.
And then recently I got an email from somebody, um, and it was before we were scheduled to interview you like months ago, somebody asking for, um, books written by a formerly incarcerated poet. And I was like, well, to my knowledge it's only Dwayne, but, but I think that there are people in prison who are like really hungry for material that are written by people who have had similar experiences to them. So that's why, that's kind of the background for that question.
[00:18:31] Horton: Right. First of all, I write what makes me feel good as a, as a person? I think, I think for me, my story coming out of, out of that time, I spent on the inside. Uh, I was, I was trying to get, try to find a whole new life, man.
I need to get some things right with myself. I spent 30 years doing what I did. It was, it wasn't an accident. It wasn't a one-off. I mean, I was dedicated, I was dedicated to the craft for us.
[00:18:58] Betts: That was good too, though. It was it was good too, though. You had him, you had him running.
[00:19:02] Horton: I had him running, but then, but I also went inside too. They got me. But I'm just saying I have to wrestle with that in another kind of way too, I mean, especially when I go talk to young kids, because they hear the story about this guy that sort of did all these things, but at the same time, I have to remind them of the consequences. But getting back,
[00:19:19] Betts: Hold hold, tell tell I mean, and we ain't gotta go like deeply into it, and I know we're going to have these folks check out, they're going to want to read the, the poetry book. And we sent it, we sent hundreds and hundreds of copies in, but if would, you know, you said you were hustling. And I think that can mean a lot of different things to folks. And it will be nice actually to, just for one second, situate that. You spent 30 years doing what, and now you're doing what?
[00:19:40] Horton: Wow. Okay. So I spent, I spent 30 years, um, in the drug trade in cocaine trade. I started out in 84. Um, I was at Howard University and it got to the point where it was making... it's more money than we could think about ever making with a degree. And so I had a connect from Miami and then eventually what happened was, um, we started going to The Bahamas and then we hooked up with some people who had connects, um, with some cartels in South America.
So we used to smuggle, we smuggled drugs from, um, from, from Bahamas to Miami to DC. I've I've came across customs, I've rode in boats and planes with that whole thing. And it's not a, I'm not trying to even exaggerate it. It's just sort of like something that's sort of happened. And I fell into.
When I say I was dedicated, I was 18 and fell into this whole kind of life. And you 18 and you see two, $300,000 on a regular man. This is late 1880, 83, 82. And they talking about if I graduate I'm going to make 40. So, you know, my dumbass at the time though that you know, I'm like, no I'm going here. And I was working.
I had an internship on Capitol Hill man I was doing all the stuff that one was supposed to be doing in college. Right. I couldn't have asked for a better existence. But I threw all that away because there was just something there that wasn't right with me. I had all these issues with the larger world. I come, I'm coming out of this whole experience, my parents, a child of the sixties and the black guys moving.
They've created this space for me to sort of have this free thought. And I'm thinking like, I don't like the way shits set up, you know, why I always got to be the one trying to get an internship and I can't get one or, why, I always got to be the one behind the eight ball. So I'm looking at the econ-. I'm talking that life. Coming from Birmingham, I'm looking at coming from integrated society.
Me and my mother integrated in the Birmingham school systems in 1973. So I've been dealing with race a long time. It's not a new thing for me. You know what I'm saying? From day one. When I was born, man, I was, I was born, um, uh, as a premature baby in a segregated hospital then, because they didn't have an incubator they put me in all baby ward for 11 days. And my momma couldn't even see me for 11 days.
[00:21:50] Betts: Shit. That shit sound like the hole.
[00:21:52] Horton: [Laughs] Nah for real. In my new book [Laughs]
[00:22:00] Betts: Ayo it's funny 'cause this shit's not funny at all but like...
[00:22:05] Horton: But no you just said in my new book I make that connection between the incubator and the hole.
[00:22:09] Betts: Yeah, nah man
[00:22:11] Horton: Anyway, so I'm getting back to your point of talking about, you know, whatever, who was my audience. So when I come out. I mean, I, I, I discovered language. I discovered poetry. I discovered books. I discovered whatever. And that was the only thing, man, writing a fucking poem was the only thing that made me happy.
[00:22:29] Betts: And you come out, you go to Howard, they don't really accept you back. You go to UDC, you get, um, you get a master's degree from Chicago State and then you get a PhD in literature and poetry from SUNY, Albany. And, and, and take a few fellowships after that. But at this point you a tenured professor at the University of New Haven, I think is really important to say that. One, to say that, like, when you say you have value in this language thing, but also that the language thing took you on his journey.
Because I think folks inside need to know, I don't know who the audience is for the poems, but shit, I know who the audience is for the life, you know? And like, and I think that that like our listeners, our real audience for like witnessing, what all of this stuff shook out to be. And it really is. It really is impressive because it's hard to get a teaching gig.
[00:23:15] Horton: Right, right, right.
[00:23:17] Hardy: So Randall, I'm gonna embarrass myself really quick and tell you that I asked Dwayne the other day, if you guys met in prison and he could not stop laughing. And before he gets on my case, again. The reason I thought that was because I noticed that you quoted Fats. Who's one of his good friends from prison.
And so I just like figured that you knew him there too.
[00:23:39] Horton: Yeah, no, I got you. I got you. But you know, we talk and so I've been, I've been following Fats for years, for years. Almost as long as I've been knowing Dwayne or shit close. I don't know, Fats uh, but it was really important for me to do something because I knew his story and they just sort of like lead the book with that, because I think his quote, that shit is like so powerful, man.
[00:24:03] Betts: He said, he said the only thing less than a n***** is a prisoner.
[00:24:06] Horton: Right. Yeah, exactly.
[00:24:08] Betts: Yeah, man Fats is home. And he think he's famous because he's in that poem. He was like, yeah. You know, man, [Laughs] They be quoting me and shit, you know? [Laughs]
[00:24:16] Horton: Yeah. But you know, so that was sort of the impetus for that, but we didn't, you know, we, we got, we met, I can, I met Dwayne, um, actually through a friend of our mutual friend of ours, a poet, um, Chicago, Tony life flip from DC.
And she, she knew me. Um, and. I guess when she married Dwayne, she actually called me. She said, I got somebody you got to meet, you know? And I was like, okay, okay. You know, how people be talking or whatever. And we just started when we started talking, man, and we just had, we just been cool ever since damn near.
[00:24:49] Betts: Yeah
[00:24:50] Horton: Um, so that's been my guy, man. Cause like, I think a lot of times when you enter this space, you don't necessarily know who's who and what's what. It can be a little, you know, daunting. I know I'm going to do this. Regardless of what. I already know, but you know, it's always good to know that I know somebody.
[00:25:07] Betts: I will say, um, in terms of navigating the space, it has been extremely useful when I didn't get accepted to Howard or when I couldn't get a gig, or I remember when you had that, um, the HBCU in North Carolina, that hired you and then pulled the offer back. Like, I don't know if it wasn't anybody else that I could talk to about stuff like that, you know. Other folks would be like, well, you just gotta.
[00:25:27] Horton: Yeah.
[00:25:27] Betts: You know, I mean, how do you know? It's cause you've been in prison and it was always confident to be able to talk to you and be like, Yeah, we know what it is.
[00:25:33] Horton: Right? Yeah. I already got it. I mean, we've, we've never wavered on our view of that. And I think it was always good to talk that out because that was something that we had to work through. And at the end, that it did mean something, but I think it was good because we proved we'd prove them wrong every day by what we do. We didn't meet in prison getting back to that. [Laughs]
[00:25:52] Hardy: And what about your relationship as writers? Like do you guys read each other's work before, like shown to other people or like. Not really.
[00:26:01] Horton: Well, yeah, no, I think in the beginning, like we didn't get grown man shit, but we do like, he'll send me some shit, like yeah what you think of this? I sent him some shit like, yo, well, he'll do that, no, no, no question. But I know when we first started, like, man, we saw each other's, like whole manuscripts.
[00:26:15] Betts: For real.
[00:26:16] Horton: But it's always good to have someone to bounce, bounce stuff off of. I think you don't even understand. Cause I think when both of us came in and as we all, we all knew about Etheridge, right.
We knew Etheridge. We didn't know anybody else. And then we was like, Oh, There's, you know, there's Randall there's Dwayne. And so we here. And I think if you had, I almost know and Dwayne probably felt this at some point, you know, during them eight and a half, nine year, 10 years, that he was in, that, you know, that you want, when you get out, you want to be able to make a difference in people's lives and you wanted to do cause you and prove everybody wrong, that you know, that you are more than the sum of a prison sentence and a number, right.
[00:26:55] Betts: Yo, in, Escorting a Criminal Justice Advocate Through the State Prison, you have a line that says "a story of survival, no one survives." And I do think looking at both of our bios, people would say we survived, but I don't know. I mean, I wonder.
[00:27:12] Horton: Some-sometimes when I say survive, I mean that in one sense, but also like we don't get to escape. That's what I feel like. You know, you know, people can look at me and I could be Dr. Horton or whatever, and I go across the yard and they'd be like, man, y'all don't know where the mailroom at Doc.
[00:27:28] Betts: I don't know, man. I, you know, it's interesting, man. I, I feel like we're successful, but I feel like, um, I feel like if you like fighting. And you got a record, then you should be happy. Cause you might have to fight forever. You know what I mean? That's that's, that's what I feel.
[00:27:44] Horton: That's what I'm saying. Yeah.
[00:27:45] Hardy: So I wanted to talk about the poem "Quiet Before a Storm in the Dayroom." And that poem was really striking to me because the beginning reads like this fairly pleasant domestic scene, there are people playing cards and dominoes reading.
Someone's making a bracelet, someone's getting tattooed and then it ends with this, like, you don't see the violence, but there's like, you know, it's coming. Um, and so just to bring in some some nerdy history stuff for a sec. In my field, in African American history scholars have been wrestling for like generations with the, you know, oppression versus resistance binary.
Like for a while, it was like politically necessary to make arguments about how oppressive slavery was, but they kind of went too far and they made it, you know, there was this idea that it was a totalizing institution and that it basically decimated all humanity. And then there was another generation who came a little later being like no people were fighting back.
And in that version of history, everyone was Nat Turner. And then there was another generation, which is kind of like the era we're in now where scholars are like, yeah, some people were resisting. Some people, were just like living in families and they were dancing, and they were singing and they were making art.
Um, and so I think that, um, that poem sort of shows a similar refusal to work within a binary. There's joy, but there's not only joy. There was violence, but there's not only violence. Does that feel like an accurate description to you? Or do you feel like the violence, like the oppressiveness always pervades?
[00:29:18] Horton: I don't know if it pervades, but it's ever present. Even in the mundane. Really what it's all about, like in the end, it's sort of, violence, is a sort of product of like this sort of set up.
[00:29:30] Betts: You know, it's almost like it's almost like we a fucking, a human being in a colander. Right. And the violence is in there too, but the violence is the water that washes over everything else.
And if all you do is stay attuned to everything that leads to violence, then you kind of disappear. You know. And you don't have, the, the vegetables or the fruit or the thing that sustains you, right. That the violence washed us over. Like you don't have that all you have is the violence washing over you.
And I think, I think maybe that's what I do think in terms of like, did we survive? I mean, I think when I say, yeah, I say, because we, we held on to something else that, um, that, that remained when, when we were able to come through like the violence and all that crazy shit. And I do think actually it's important for you to talk about the way in which D Ethridge appears in Poet in Residence and, and that sequence takes place primarily outside of prison.
And you got Etheridge Knight, which is like the quintessential prison poet for most folks. And I love the fact that. One, he exists in your book outside of prison, and two, he exists in your book outside of the context of prison, you know. It's like, he don't get to live like that. We was talking about being forever chained to the state. And, but I think you set him free a bit in his joint.
[00:30:51] Horton: Right? Yeah. I've got a lot of those poems, the Dear Etheridge poems. And I think I put, like I wrote a sequence years ago and, um, that was one, that I sort of like, got inspiration off, off the other sequences. And I'm like, how can I sort of like, do something different with Etheridge this time?
And it made, and it just made sense. Like, you know, to have him in there and representative, but not necessarily about prison. But about love because if you know, love, so that's what it's really about love. And for me, Etheridge is, you know, he got the, he got the most serious love poem Feeling Fucked Up. That's the best love poem of all time. Forreal. Fuck Coltrane and birds flying in the sky.
All I want is my woman back so my soul could sing. Exactly. Yeah, [Laughs]
I think
[00:31:38] Betts: that's the first poem that made me say, Um, oh shit... like...
[00:31:42] Horton: That was the one I was sitting in, I was sitting in the classroom somewhere and, uh, somebody had, you know, given me a book of the essential ethics and it said, read that poem, I'm like, fuck Coltrane. And like, who is this guy? And at the end, I'm like, Oh, I got to go get this book. Like, and so, yeah, it was, it was, it was like, I didn't know the whole, essential Etheridge. I knew of him. I didn't know that poem, uh, at the time. And it just, it just, it just messed me up. It sent me a whole nother direction, you know, honestly.
[00:32:12] Betts: I wouldn't take you out the box with one second.
[00:32:14] Horton: Yeah.
[00:32:14] Betts: I want, I want to ask both of y'all this right. You know, we both, we all think about incarceration, a fair amount. And, and we think about it with a, with a very contemporary, outlook sometimes. Yeah, so I guess I just wanted to, I wanted to, what you think that, you know, Fannie Lou Hamer, Ellison, shit, Malcolm X, you know what I mean? Like, like, like I wonder what you think they would say about prison. Maybe even specifically about us. Like, I just really, sometimes I think about that. I wonder if, if we sat down to chop it up, what would they say about my past? I asked you first Elsa. Because you the historian and I wonder what you think.
[00:32:57] Hardy: Well you know, it's hard cause they were living in a totally different world in a different context.
I think Malcolm X would get it. He spent time in Norfolk and um, that's where he got his, his start as like a public speaker was on the debate team there. But we were talking about this because you were saying like, nobody back then was writing about or would understand prison in the way that we're talking about it today.
And I was like, well, what about George Jackson? And you were like, yeah, he got it. But he didn't have any kind of platform. Like people weren't listening to him and subscribing to his ideas like in mass.
[00:33:34] Betts: Jason though, he wasn't talking about prison and Jackson's imprisonment was fucked up, he got one year life indeterminate sentence for robbery, but Jackson gained prominence for talking about like racism and larger societal issues though. I don't even think like, I mean, me personally, I just think that Malcolm X would be like, brother, you need to get your life together. Let me give you this coffee. You know, I'm gonna put this nutmeg in it, that's it. No more drugs brother. We offer that, you know, he would be like, you need to become, righteous.
And I think Ellison would be like, I don't know, man. I kind of tend to think that they would like... I think that they would have the same kind of disdain for our conduct that we might have.
I totally believe Ellison would,
[00:34:16] Horton: would fall in that sort of realm of disdain for conduct, just because of coming from now the whole Oklahoma thing and going down, um, Tuskegee and then leaving Tuskegee and going to New York.
He comes from a different generation that sort of like probably would be much more critical, you know? Cause the Ellison could be critical. He's been critical of even his men- his mentors, um, um. Not necessarily, no, I'm I'm thinking. Yeah. In terms of, uh, Richard Wright. So, I mean, he doesn't have a, the problem with the crit- with criticizing. He might have something to say. I think Baldwin. You know, we put, we're probably be a little bit more sympathetic though. Baldwin would probably, you know, follow the whole line that we are the wound created from, you know, whatever it is that is sort of continues to fester and not be dealt with. And, and how do we deal with this in some kind of way?
Hey that's
[00:35:09] Betts: an interesting question. I, you know, we always think about how we think about history, but how does history think about us?
[00:35:13] Horton: Right.
[00:35:14] Hardy: Have you heard people talk about mass incarceration as the civil rights era issue or era of our time?
[00:35:20] Horton: It could be considered one of them, but... I think we got a bigger issue with society, man. I mean, you know, that's part of the issue, but it's, you know, people make these decisions, you understand that, right? It's people that they're sort of like putting, you know, in this situation. We got a people problem.
[00:35:42] Hardy: Yeah. I just asked about that. Cause I, I feel like if you think about it in those terms, it's easier to like transpose those different historical figures. Dwayne was mentioning into this moment, but if you don't think about it in those terms and yeah.
[00:35:56] Horton: Right, right, right.
And I don't,
[00:35:58] Betts: and I don't know if they would do. I mean, that's the real dilemma, you know, and I think that's the catch 22 of it all is. You know, the civil right era wasn't about black folks rebuilding and remaking their lives as much as it was about society, giving them space to, to breathe.
You know? Whereas like, when I think about incarceration, I mean, a lot of us it's like, Oh, you shot, you shot, you shot Ray Ray, you know? Or like you sold dope or like you was robbing people, you can't, and it's all about imagining ourselves as something different. And I think it gives us, for me, it gets very, very complicated because having done some time.
I think so much of what I was and what I wanted to become was like centered around becoming something different. And I don't think that Fannie Lou Hamer or any of those folks, but my mom, my grandparents, like they didn't need to become something different. They just needed to be allowed to sit on the bus, which seems to be somehow fundamentally different.
I don't know. I think it's complicated and I think it's it's it's some real tension, and it's a part of the problem, but I don't know.
[00:36:57] Hardy: So, um, we had the staff meeting before, this team meeting, production meeting before this interview. And, um, each person sort of saw a different writer. His work, influence on your work and, um, so we were having kind of a debate about whether we were just making it up or if, if that influence was actually there. Some people thought Walt Whitman, obviously Etheridge Knight, like Dwayne has already talked about Ralph Ellison. It's clear that you're drawing on a bunch of different traditions, but which author's work would you say has influenced you the most.
[00:37:29] Horton: Shit, that's, that's an expansive one and and, and you're correct. All of those people are in there. You know, the influence, even prose writers or whatever. Um, Ralph Ellison, sometimes Beau and believe it or not as just his thought process of getting this and his language choice of words sometimes. And I'm thinking about Gwendolyn Brooks for her, you know, her sort of practicality on place and setting in how she inverts the other.
When I say inverts the other, she, she gives power like, I'm trying to give the pris- like those, incar- those inside those that are inside some kind of power or some kind of license. And I always thought she did that. She does that. Especially with, um, Annie Allen. Not necessarily Walt Whitman. Um, but William Carlos Williams, um, believe it or not.
And he has a wonderful introduction is collected where he talks about the poem being like this whole machine and the mechanisms of how they work together. And I'm always interested in to how the par, how to have the parts work together. Right. Um, so that's there there's that too. That's a few of them.
Um, Dennis Brutus was, you know, I met Dennis Brutus, the South African poet when he was incarcerated with Mandela. And, he was, he was interesting and sort of someone that I was actually able to email and talk to, man. So that was always cool. Um, I mean, when I'm, there's always Etheridge at the background, because even if I'm not even writing about Etheridge, I feel like I'm always like carrying something for Etheridge.
We've been to the Etheridge Knight, um, festival in Indiana. And I used to, you know, I met, I met
[00:39:05] Betts: his sister, um, Eunice.
[00:39:06] Horton: We was there together We went to the grave.
[00:39:09] Betts: Yeah. And
[00:39:10] Horton: so, you know, I, I, I remember Eunice. I remember Eunice, um, you know, was, was really wanting her brother's legacy to live on before she passed away. And so I'm always thinking about, you know, like I'm extending what Etheridge might've done.
[00:39:24] Betts: Yeah.
This is
[00:39:26] Hardy: a question that we ask all of our, all of our guests, um, kind of unifies all the different interviews that we've done.
So Frederick Douglas said that when we read, we become forever free. Can you talk a little bit about what that quote means to you and how you think about the relationship between reading and freedom?
[00:39:43] Horton: Ha ha um, like I said, I gone to Howard. I've been to college and you know, like I, I knew what books were.
I had, you know, was familiar with them. Um, but they wasn't like my, my total focus. Prior to incarceration, I had a stint where, two year stint, where I was in the Navy, uh, in between my foolishness. Um, and I can remember, I had some time, somebody gave me the, um, the autobiography of Malcolm X was the first time I ever read it.
Uh, I read it from cover to cover and it actually affected me. And I was like, wow. Wow. But I didn't continue to read. But fast forward, when I, when I really understood that I was getting ready to go do some time in prison that I wasn't going to get out. And, uh, how do I combat the loneliness? Um, you know, books became the answer.
They taught me, they taught me how to write. They taught me how to use grammar. Before I went to prison I couldn't tell you where to put a comma, you know, or their or there. It was all the same me, you know, um, or some of those things, and I think reading just sort of like every night when I would read writers, it's sort of, I would recreate their scenes in my head and my dreams and I would see them. And then I was like, yo, I think I could, and I would like to do that. And so I started doing that. Um, and so reading brought me to writing, um, and it sort of like made me, you know, really understand that I could, I could really get a, I could, I could really educate myself to the point where I could have a new life.
I could see, I could see life differently. Cause books taught me to see life differently. I couldn't have done it on my own. Um, and so for me, um, it was, it was a power. With that. Um, I think for me, you know, everybody reads whatever book it was, I think early on, it was two books for me. It was, um, um, Nathan McCall Makes Me Want to Holler.
Then there was Carl Upchurch, "Convicted in the Womb." My mom sent me that book. I don't know what, how she got that book. She figured it out. But I guess she figured her son, needed to know something about somebody that was doing, incarcerated. He's passed away now. But I remember reading that book and reading about how he went through his whole experience and, you know, discovered books.
Those guys, they kind of gave me a pathway to like, if they could do it, I can do it too. I don't know when I'm gunna get the chance, but I'm going to be ready. So I'm going to read everything I can now. So it's not a cliche to say it fundamentally changed, you know, the way I think about life or the way I think about morality and my own morality.
And who I'm nice to and who, I'm not nice to him. Why and why do I need to change? I don't get those without reading and writing and then writing in trying to work it.
[00:42:24] Betts: Yeah, man. That's a good answer, man. It's always great hearing the answer to that question. I think everybody comes at it in different way, but it's always like really thoughtful about how, it cuts to the, cuts to the quick of it all.
[00:42:33] Hardy: Cool. Thank you so much.
[00:42:35] Betts: Yeah, nah, this was dope, man.
[00:42:37] Horton: Yo man, it's been good!
[00:42:38] Betts: But, uh thanks Randall. Thanks Elsa.
[00:42:39] Hardy: Yeah. Thank you so much.
[00:42:41] Horton: Thanks a lot.
[00:42:45] Betts: Thanks for joining us for The Freedom Takes, a new podcast from the Million Book Project. We'll be back next time with another contemporary writer. You can find out more about the Million Book Project, and subscribe to our newsletter, at millionbookproject.org. Our initiative was made possible by a generous grant from the Andrew W. Mellon foundation.
This podcast was produced by Erin Slomski-Pritz. With production assistance by Elsa Hardy, Kelly Hernandez, Tess Wheelwright, and Molly Auger. Theme music by Reed Turchi.