Felon: Poems

by Reginald Dwayne Betts

A searing volume by a poet whose work conveys “the visceral effect that prison has on identity” (New York Times).

Felon tells the story of one man in fierce, dazzling poems― canvassing his wide range of emotions and experiences through homelessness, underemployment, love, drug abuse, domestic violence, fatherhood, and grace― and, in doing so, 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. Challenging the complexities of language, Betts animates what it means to be a “felon.”

From “Night”

What she tells prison killed you
my love, killed you so dead that you’re not
here now, you’re never here, you’re always.

Genres: Poetry, Nonfiction, Race, Audiobook, Social Justice, African American, Book Club

Audible Audio

First published October 15, 2019

About the author

Reginald Dwayne Betts is a poet, essayist, and national spokesperson for the Campaign for Youth Justice. He writes and lectures about the impact of mass incarceration on American society. He is the author of three collections of poetry, Felon, Bastards of the Reagan Era, and Shahid Reads His Own Palm, as well as a memoir, A Question of Freedom. A graduate of Yale Law School, he lives in New Haven, Connecticut, with his wife and their two sons.

Reviews

[Roxane · Rating 5 out of 5]

Outstanding poems about incarceration and how a man can still feel like he is in a cage as he walks free. The range here is impressive. There is a real honesty here of a man who is looking into himself without blinking. At times, it is uncomfortable, but in a good way. The redacted poems about bail injustice are particularly powerful but really, the collection as individual poems and as a whole, is incredibly moving, nuanced, and compelling.

[Cindy Pham · Rating 4 out of 5]

I usually don't pick up poetry books, but the cover for this caught my eye as well as the unique format of the poems as I flipped through the pages. My favorite were the redacted poems, which I originally thought referenced the censorship of prison letters, but found out they were taken from actual legal documents and purposely censored to create prose about bail injustice. This was super creative and poignant all in one. The writing is very strong throughout this collection; the choice of words are smartly put together. Overall, these poems felt raw, powerful, and complex.

[Jenny (Reading Envy) · Rating 4 out of 5]

These poems tell the truth about how prison changes you, how it never leaves you, and what relationships are like afterward, particularly if you are also black and recently incarcerated. It is its own form of PTSD.

This collection came out from W.W. Norton on October 15th.

[Joshua · Rating 4 out of 5]

4 stars for creativity and for showing me something new.
My curiosity to discover new and different ways of expression and storytelling is what gets me to take a moment and read poetry, but only on those rare occasions when it appears underneath my nose. The more an author strays from conventional writing and structure, and dares to creatively experiment with words and grammar, the more I end up liking it.

In FELON, the author used legal paperwork to highlight some injustices in our legal system and the harsh realities of life:
He took court documents from civil rights cases and crossed out sections with a black marker to make it look like a redacted document. The intentional way it was done left enough words to create poems about some of the inequities within the criminal justice system.
The rest of the poems explicitly describe the struggles of everyday life told in a way to make it feel tactile.

The author’s life is an impressive story of its own. He was convicted of carjacking as a teenager and sentenced to 9 years. He left prison and went on to graduate with a Juris Doctor degree from Yale law school. His story reminds us that we are not defined by our worst decisions or mistakes, but rather by how we respond and choose to conduct our lives afterward. A testament to what is possible when you’re granted access to education, the possibility for redemption.

[Kimber · Rating 4 out of 5]

Primal, exquisite and even beautiful: to intertwine the experience of life after prison and always keeping that experience with you. I won't share an excerpt because each poem needs to be read in its entirety- each poem needs to be fully felt in its whole expression. I see these poems with a reverence, a respect- for great poetry is truly rare and must be treasured when it is found. It is a rare art form in its fullest expression & these are a stunning accomplishment.

[Becky · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you have followed my reviews for at least two whole months (I'm sorry), you'll know that after reading Cathy Park Hong's book Minor Feelings: An Asian American Reckoning, I challenged myself to read more poetry, specifically poetry by the BIPOC community. I am NOT a poetry reader, and generally struggle with verse and unconventional writing and composition structures because my brain just doesn't work that way. But the more I read from the writers and thinkers who are telling their stories and sharing their experiences and perspectives, the more I'm realizing much of it will be in poetic form, so I'm pulling up my big girl pants and reading it even if my brain is like WHY IS THAT LINE BREAK THERE??

You know. As brains do.

This is the first poetry collection I have attempted since I challenged myself. I dipped a toe in the very shallowest end of the poetry pool by listening to an audiobook of a novel in verse (The Poet X) which was great, and there was some poetry included in Four Hundred Souls: A Community History of African America, 1619-2019, which was also great, but maybe didn't count toward my challenge REALLY... but I figured that it was time to really dive in, so I saw this available from the library and snagged it. No audio, just my eyeballs and Reginald Dwayne Betts' words.

Apparently the audio is fantastic, and I definitely would have loved to listen to it instead. I just think that my brain is wired more for verse and cadence via auditory mediums. My eyes tend to read the words and get all jumbled up in the structure of the lines and not take in the meaning. My brain is BROKEN when it comes to poetry, y'all. For real.

But, I took my time with this, and read a little bit at a time over about two weeks, and really tried.

And man, I hate admitting how much of a struggle it was, because I feel like that reflects poorly on this collection, and let me assure you - it's NOT the writing or the content or the message or anything that Betts did, or didn't do, that was the problem. It's one hundred percent me and my inability to appreciate the format.

Forcing myself to take the time and really READ these poems, to really let them percolate, was necessary. I wanted to be lazy. I wanted nothing more than to just rush through it to get it over with, but I wouldn't let me do it, because the whole POINT of my challenging myself to read this kind of work is to experience it and learn from it. And dammit, I was gonna do it.

And this collection was wonderful. Gritty, raw, heartbreaking, and real. I found myself rereading lines and sections over again, not because of my refusal to skim or skip ahead, but because some lines were so powerful that I kind of had to do a double take. I had to linger over it, and just sit with it a minute.

The first poem that was in the style of a redacted court document struck me as so damn brilliant I read it three times through. Twice back to back, and then again the next day when I picked the book up again. There were several of those style poems, and by the last one I did find myself wondering if it was a sort of gimmick, but even if it was, I don't care, because it worked. It felt like it was cutting to the heart of the biases and structured cruelty of the criminal justice system, and THAT kind of brilliance and insight and perspective is why I needed to read the poetry.

I didn't love every poem here. Some of them I didn't understand fully, and I think that's to be expected, honestly. But I understood enough to appreciate this for what it conveyed.

I will definitely be reading more of Betts' work, and other writers' work. I still don't love the format, but I'm in the pool now, so I might as well keep swimming.

[Traci Thomas · Rating 4 out of 5]

It’s hard to rate a collection of poems as I don’t know much about poetry. But I liked most of these and felt I understood them. Some really landed in wonderfully profound ways. A real talent.

[chantel nouseforaname · Rating 5 out of 5]

You can feel the suffocation.. the ways that America, its systemic injustice coupled with one's own personal mistakes can create a lack of space around a black man.

I loved these poems. Traumatic. Eye-opening. We are fortunate that in his personal space, Reginald has found the words he needed. He is a master wordsmith. You can feel his truths liberating himself and others through each page. He takes you through a range of his thoughts and emotions. He stokes the fires inside you allowing you to locate, wrestle with and sit inside of your own.

HIGHLY RECOMMEND. NPR's best of 2019 brought me to Mr. Betts.

[disco · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is how misery sounds: my boys playing in the backseat juxtaposed against a twelve-year-old’s murder playing in my head.

[may ➹]

“They / Don’t know every love is a kind / Of robbery. And sometimes hurt / Is a kind of mending. A body only / Broken by death. Every moan ain’t / A cry. This is always about vulnerability.”

a beautiful, harrowing & often hard to read collection on the impacts of incarceration—how incarceration drastically alters relationships & forces one to reconfigure the meaning of freedom, and how feeling caged extends beyond physical imprisonment. the redaction poems were my least favorites, to be honest, but very compelling in their callout of the systemic barriers to freedom & power in the US.

[Jeimy · Rating 3 out of 5]

These poems are raw and best appreciated listening to the audiobook which is read by the author.

[Craig Werner · Rating 5 out of 5]

This will almost certainly be my choice for best poetry volume for 2019. Betts has written powerfully of his experience in and after prison--he wound up incarcerated as a result of a dumb youthful mistake that probably wouldn't have landed an affluent and/or white kid in jail. After his release, he pursued a law degree and has now established himself as both a writer and a lawyer.

Which, as Felon makes crystal clear, doesn't mean his life is anything resembling easy. The shadows of his actions and his incarceration loom over every one of these poems. He's both honest and lyrical in confronting the inside of his head and the effects his thoughts have on marriage and family. It's hard, hard, the deepest kind of blues. He's aware of the relationship between the personal swamp and structures of power that don't play out into justice or equal treatment before the law: the series of "found poems" based on redacted court briefs is searing. But he's not running away from his own complicity either.

Some lines:
"We live somewhere between almost there/ & not enough"

"I know hurt like a wandering song."

And from the brilliant "I Think of Tamir Rice While Driving:"

& this is
why I hate it all, the protests & their counters,

the Civil Rights attorneys that stalk the bodies
of the murdered, this dance of ours that reduces
humanity to the dichotomy of the veil. We are

not permitted to articulate the reasons we might
yearn to see a man die. A mind may abandon
sanity. What if all I had stomach for was blood?

But history is no sieve & sanity is no elixir
& I am bound to be haunted by the strength
that let's Tamir's father, mother & kinfolk resist

the temptation to turn everything they see
into a grave & make home the series of cells
that so many brothers already call their tomb.

[Carey · Rating 3 out of 5]

Sealey Challenge 2025: 16/31

I'm glad I chose to experience this collection as an audiobook as the spoken word narration was powerful, and the addition of music at key moments added emotional depth and atmosphere that enhanced the listening experience.

The collection explores the realities of being Black, incarcerated, and the struggles faced upon re-entry into society. Written by a formerly incarcerated poet who is now actively working to support others, the book brings a rare and necessary perspective that I deeply respect and admire. I especially appreciated the redacted court document poems and those reflecting on fatherhood because they were among the most emotionally resonant and thought-provoking for me. Of course, different readers may find other pieces that speak to them more personally.

While I found much to value in the collection, I did struggle with some of the more experimental forms. At times, the language and structure made it difficult for me to fully grasp the meaning of or connect with certain poems. That said, I still believe this collection holds important merit as it is undeniably important, even if not every element fully landed for me.

[Isabelle reads a book a day because she has no friends · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars. It’s always difficult for me to rate poetry collections. This one was a mixed bag; some poems I thought were fantastic, and others were strung together like gibberish. Lots of run on sentences and confusion on my part, but the author was brutally honest in a way I really appreciated. Overall I love the concept and the fact that this book exists, but some of it fell through for me. Still worth reading for the perspective, and oh gosh, those blackout court document poems that will hit you in the gut.

[Miya (severe pain struggles, slower at the moment) · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an amazing collection. Any poetry lover needs to read it. There is so much depth and vulnerability. It hurts your heart to read some of the things written, but it is important to hear these feelings and many others that are completely overlooked. Injustice and the system...the aftermath. It is necessary to confront and change what we are doing to humans. Read it if you are one for change.

[Glennys Egan · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this slowly, a poem or two each evening over a few weeks. It was needed to absorb the stories, confessions, tributes contained in these. A deeply moving collection. The redaction pieces are especially powerful.

[Theodore]

I'm new to poetry. My idea of it stems from rhythmic qualities. So it doesn't feel necessarily fair of me to rate this. However, as an introduction this collection of poetry was incredibly raw, moving and powerful.

[Jennifer nyc · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.5

[Tim · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book caught my attention from the title despite being a book of poems. I often find poetry impenetrable. However, my spouse is in law enforcement and over the course of 20 years together, I have heard a lot about the criminal justice system and incarceration in this country, or at least in my part of this country. One thing I've heard, and from my own reading have come to agree with, is that we have to do a better job of making it possible for those who have served their time to re-enter society.

I was eager to hear Betts' voice and was not disappointed. Articles and interviews are capable of giving the facts of life after prison such as the challenge to getting hired when you have to “lead” with the fact that you have a felony record. And they can give snippets of the emotional arc or journey that was traveled – maybe we hear about that first realization of remorse or that they wanted to be a better role-model for their kids or some other snapshot that tells their story. And that’s fine for a piece of journalism. But these offerings in Felon: Poems give a full weightiness to a life, to that life. You get the sense of this is what it’s like to live with those memories and grapple with them everyday: the memory of what landed you in jail, the memory of what in your life led to that moment in time that landed you in jail. The memories of jail, what you witnessed, who you met and lived with and bonded with there. Carrying all those memories back into the world upon your release – and now bonding with your wife or girlfriend or partner, bonding with your children, being an outsider – totally outside a society who doesn’t let you in. The poems are not all bleak though. There are moments of joy and pride.

About mid-way through the book, I read more about Betts himself, curious as to who this man is. He’s accomplished a lot since leaving prison, including graduating from Yale law. For better or worse, that made a difference to me and the esteem in which I held him. Law school, particularly an ivy league law school, is an unquestionable mark of achievement in my world. While it’s uncomfortable for me to admit, it did give his words more weight with me. The poems I read after, I read with different eyes than those I read before learning about Betts’ after-prison life.

There were some poems, some phrases or references I didn’t get – partially because poetry isn’t my “thing” and partially because the reference was so far outside my life, I simply didn’t have the context to understand. I want to have a fuller understanding though, because I know that my society, my country, can do better with its criminal justice system. And it will take a society, it’s not something that my husband, or a judge, or a poet or any one individual can do alone. It will take all of us, even those of us not directly connected to the criminal justice system, to improve upon what we have.

#blacklivesmatter
#civilrightscorps

[Caroline · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a powerful and eloquent collection. Betts is able to communicate the experiences surrounding crimes, and the depth, prejudice, and eternity of the aftermath. The poet owns his actions in full, and tells us how they haunt every minute of his life inside and outside prison. He speaks of love for his wife and his small sons. But he also demands that we own the world faced by young black men, and the criminal justice system as well.

"That want to be known, governs us all."

The language is informed by the streets, prisons and jails, newspapers, classical and Biblical works, in vocabulary, allusion, and rhythm. Really something. But Betts himself is evidence of the wide range of potential outcomes for any individual. He served eight years for carjacking. He has subsequently written and taught poetry, been active in juvenile justice programs, and graduated from Yale Law School.

I listened to Betts read his book, which I highly recommend if you can get it from your library or some other source. If you are going to read it, I still recommend going to Audible.com to listen to a sample so that you have his voice in your head as you read. It's worth a second and probably third read.

[tayler · Rating 5 out of 5]

phenomenal. please read this

[Patrick · Rating 5 out of 5]

2021: The Year of Poetry is very much becoming a thing. It took me three weeks to read this not because I wasn't engrossed by every single word, but because each of these masterpieces required me to put down the book and savor, reflect, and marvel at what I had just read. These poems are tender and heart-wrenching, a no-holds-barred exposition of life before, during, and after prison.

[Elizabeth Pinborough · Rating 5 out of 5]

This collection blew me away. Prisons are death houses that beget a state of mind, a set of memories alive in the body long after people have been freed. Betts experienced the interior of prison firsthand as a juvenile tried as an adult and sentenced to nine years. Betts’ erasure poems are powerful, the markered lines showing the fury of the American criminal system, “a lawless and labyrinthine scheme of/ perpetual debt,” which desperately needs reform.

[Greg Bem · Rating 5 out of 5]

There really isn't another collection of poems like this one out there. The sprawl of incarceration is challenging to reconcile as it is to comprehend generally, but Betts provides the many opportunities to learn it.

[Becky · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm always fascinated by redaction poems and the ones on the bail system in this collection were phenomenal.

[Stephi · Rating 3 out of 5]

A creative and poignant collection of poetry. My favorites were the poems composed with blacked-out legal documents.

[Ace Boggess · Rating 5 out of 5]

This collection is as close to perfect as any on this subject that I can imagine. The themes are personal to me. The writing is beautiful and disturbing. Many of the poems take on subjects (namely prison and life after prison) that I've been trying to write about for years, but they do it so much better. Some of these are poems I wish I had written.

Throughout the book, both the language and insight shared are moving, like in this opening of the poem "Confession":

"If I told her how often I thought
Of prison she would walk out
Of the door that's led just as much
To madness as any home we
Desired, she would walk our & never
Return; my employers would call
Me a liar & fire me. My dreams are
Not all nightmares, but this history
Has turned my mind's landscape into
A gadroon. I do not sing...."

The entire collection is filled with writing like that, except for a few long erasure poems made from legal documents. It's just so compelling. Even if you haven't been locked up, you will feel these poems: the anger, the sadness, the love of life, and also its dread.

If there's one book I've read this year that I wish everyone would pick up, it's this one.

Honestly, if the poems weren't as good as they are, the book would still be worth it just to read this one line from "Whisky for Breakfast":

" even G-d has no alibi."

Read this book. Read it twice.




UPDATE: 2/9/22
I've read this book half a dozen times now, and it has moved into my top-four go-to poetry collections along with Lehman's The Evening Sun, Zagejewski's Without End, and Smith's Life on Mars. I love ever word and turn of phrase in this book. If you ha
ven't read it, do.

[Mark · Rating 5 out of 5]

“This is the brick & mortar of the America
that murdered Tamir & may stalk the laughter

in my backseat. I am a father driving
his Black sons to school & the death
of a Black boy rides shotgun & this
could be a funeral procession. The Death
a silent thing in the air, unmentioned-
because mentioning death invites taboo...”

“Lost in what's gone. Reinventing myself with lies:
I walk these streets, ruined by what I hide.
Jesus died for somebody's sins, but not mine.

Did a stretch in prison to be released to a cell.
Returned to freedom penned by Orwell.
My noon temptation is now the Metro's third rail.

In my wallet, I carry around a daguerrotype,
A mugshot, no smiles, my name a tithe.
What must I pay for being this stereotype?”

^These 2 excerpts, are from Felon: Poems. It is a beautiful but also hard-hitting collection, directing an insightful spotlight on the Black experience in America today. It may end up being the best collection I have read this year. Warbling loud and clear...

[Richard S · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow. An Incredible collection of poems. The author spent 8 years in jail as a kid, then made his way all the way to Yale Law School. The poems are intensely personal, about incarceration, about life after prison, about marriage, drinking and being a father and a fatherless son. There are poems which are redactions of actual legal briefs.

But even more astonishingly, the poems are highly complex, often obscure and difficult to read. A lot of African American poetry is didactic and stylistically simple, but some of Betts poems are difficult, require multiple readings, and considerable thought.

So much personal pain. And a strong message about criminal justice, about bail, about unfairness in the system. But to characterize this as "social justice" poetry would be misleading, Betts shares his whole, entire self with all of its imperfections. You get the system and the effect of the system.

So much honesty. This kind of poetry puts the rest to shame. Their brilliance shines like a light in a world of suffocating darkness.

[Emmkay · Rating 4 out of 5]

Betts was incarcerated for years after participating in a carjacking as a teen. He is now a Yale law graduate and an accomplished poet, whose work speaks to the complex realities of race, gender, and mass incarceration. His work feels very masculine in tone, the relationship to self and others infused with the effects of (state and personal) violence, the relationship with an absent father, and frequent mention of whiskey. These were powerful poems, and varied in form. Among them were Ghazal (a ghazal is a form of Arabic poetry consisting of rhyming couplets, but here, each couplet ends the same way, with the phrase ‘after prison’), and a series of brilliant and poignant found ‘redaction poems’ in which Betts has redacted pleadings filed by a civil rights organization challenging the incarceration of people unable to pay bail. Really good.