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| Crossing the Yard: Thirty Years as a Prison Volunteer | 
| Author: Richard Shelton
Publisher: University of Arizona Press
Category: Book
List Price: $17.95
Buy New: $8.61
You Save: $9.34 (52%)
New (32) from $8.61
Avg. Customer Rating:  2 reviews
Sales Rank: 379264
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 256
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.8
Dimensions (in): 9 x 6 x 0.7
ISBN: 0816525951
Dewey Decimal Number: 365.92
EAN: 9780816525959
ASIN: 0816525951
Publication Date: October 1, 2007
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
Ever since he was asked to critique the poetry of a convicted murderer, he has lived in two worlds.Richard Shelton was a young English professor in 1970 when a convict named Charles Schmida serial killer dubbed the Pied Piper of Tucson in national magazinesshared his brooding verse. But for Shelton, the novelty of meeting a death-row monster became a thirty-year commitment to helping prisoners express themselves.Shelton began organizing creative writing workshops behind bars, and in this gritty memoir he offers up a chronicle of reaching out to forgotten men and womenand of creativity blossoming in a repressive environment. He tells of published students such as Paul Ashley, Greg Forker, Ken Lamberton, and Jimmy Santiago Baca who have made names for themselves through their writing instead of their crimes.Shelton also recounts the bittersweet triumph of seeing work published by men who later met with agonizing deaths, and the despair of seeing the creative strides of inmates broken by politically motivated transfers to private prisons. And his memoir bristles with hard-edged experiences, ranging from inside knowledge of prison breaks to a workshop conducted while a riot raged outside a barricaded door.Reflecting on his decision to tutor Schmid, Shelton sees that the choice has led me through bloody tragedies and terrible disappointments to a better understanding of what it means to be human. Crossing the Yard is a rare story of professional fulfillmentand a testament to the transformative power of writing.
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| Customer Reviews:
Frank M July 29, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
Mr Shelton rises to the top of my heroes. My heroes are those that rise above their accomplishments to help others reach inside themselves to gain self worth and to reach their own accomplishments. All great teachers bring a sense of hope to their students, a sense of their own worthiness. To leave the confines of his own comfortable academia, Mr Shelton brings his entire heart and soul to the rescue of men without much hope, in his walk across the yard! Every teacher should read this book and discover their own worth!
what a great book! May 17, 2008
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
I encourage anyone wanting to know more about prison and prison arts to read this book. Shelton is such an honest reporter. He tells us about his initial morbid curiosity when asked to "read the poetry of a monster" - an attitude he's now ashamed of - and the desperation he felt when witnessing unexpected horrible consequences for some of his prisoner students as they became poets. He tells us about institutional stupidity and the subversion he found he had to use in order to get anything good done inside. Especially he tells us about the dozens of men he worked with inside, many of whom are now well-published writers (see Ken Lamberton's "Time of Grace" mentioned on this page). "Crossing the Yard" is both moving and unadorned (honest, straight-forward). I'm so grateful for this book.
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