Poet's Choice

My first poetry teacher was a rusty-handed Mississippian named Etheridge Knight, whose first collection was printed while he was still in jail, where he'd come under the tutelage of Gwendolyn Brooks, grande dame of black American letters. Before there was spoken-word verse or poetry slams or hip-hop, there was Knight. He had a scraggly moustache and a soul patch above his chin. His jaw was lumpy and uneven, with patches of white skin edged in pink -- ragged and tear-shaped. He preached that poetry was an oral art, proclaiming his own from memory in bars and on street corners. Once he took students to 116th Street in Harlem to read aloud among the marginalized. We quickly learned that our hand-wringing, milquetoast lines could never draw a crowd the way Knight did. That evening, he half-sang his toast for folk hero Shine, who was a porter on the Titanic strong enough to swim to safety. (I eventually heard Knight's lines used to close Russell Simmons's "Def Poetry Jam" on Broadway.)

Knight, who died in 1991, is perhaps best remembered for character narratives -- from lowly Shine to anointed Malcolm X. His mythic prisoner, Hard Rock, defied authority while others cowered: "He had been our Destroyer, the doer of things/We dreamed of doing but could not bring ourselves to do." But after authorities lobotomize him, it takes Hard Rock "exactly 3 minutes to tell you his first name."

The poems of Knight's that I cherish most -- with lines more lyrical than narrative -- show how a prisoner's affliction can push him painfully inside himself. Like Dickinson, whom he loved, he often uses capitalization and line breaks to startling effect.

CELL SONG

Night Music Slanted

Light strikes the cave

of sleep. I alone

tread the red circle

and twist the space

with speech.

Then, the voice shifts, as he chastises himself for self-pity:

Come now, etheridge, don't

be a savior; take