Teaching Poetry in Prison
by Jane Zwart
Say poetry is a luxury, its rococo codes
and squandered tundra of page.
Say it’s what I did in lieu of laundry
because sometimes it was.
Worse: say some other woman is doing
long subtraction, rent from pay,
heat from pay, light from pay--
say she can’t make ends meet
whereas I am solving for line breaks,
language the only triage I know.
Surely it’s true, and surely
a poem can’t make it fair.
Say poetry is a luxury. Once I said
I wanted to give all my things away.
To eat every meal from the same plate.
To have a set of clothes
and a change of clothes.
One lamp, no art. And the books?
my dad asked. The problem
with beauty, he said, isn’t delight.
The problem with beauty
is that none of us is wholly free
until all of us are. Say poetry
is a luxury. Maybe, but somewhere
there’s a gate it will take song
to open, and on some cell there’s a lock
only a poet could break.
and squandered tundra of page.
Say it’s what I did in lieu of laundry
because sometimes it was.
Worse: say some other woman is doing
long subtraction, rent from pay,
heat from pay, light from pay--
say she can’t make ends meet
whereas I am solving for line breaks,
language the only triage I know.
Surely it’s true, and surely
a poem can’t make it fair.
Say poetry is a luxury. Once I said
I wanted to give all my things away.
To eat every meal from the same plate.
To have a set of clothes
and a change of clothes.
One lamp, no art. And the books?
my dad asked. The problem
with beauty, he said, isn’t delight.
The problem with beauty
is that none of us is wholly free
until all of us are. Say poetry
is a luxury. Maybe, but somewhere
there’s a gate it will take song
to open, and on some cell there’s a lock
only a poet could break.
Jane Zwart teaches at Calvin University and co-edits book review for Plume. Her poems have appeared in Poetry, The Southern Review, Threepenny Review, Ploughshares, and, one other lucky time, in Muzzle, and her first collection of poems is coming out with Orison Books in February 2026.