Or it is confessional, sensational, and graphic but goes little further than rendering scenes in distressingly harsh detail. They begin by recording experience, to the point where there is only circumstantial detail, with little or no broader audience appeal or larger idea. The next level of writing-which begins with a deep engagement with the subject-begins to examine a theme or idea and is a big step and depends in part on levels of reading, education, awareness of a worldview or vision. The bigger ideas, the context, the overlap with an outside reader's world seem unnecessary or unworthy of consideration. The learning curve for these men is steep. Sometimes, in a matter of months, they write with greater maturity, precision, and honesty. They hear, in the other men's work, real effort to capture experience through well-chosen, independent, fresh, well-earned language. They have to grow beyond embryonic ideas of what good writing is and how much work it takes to shape and share a complex thought. I realize that I am talking to myself when talking to them. I see that what needs to be said in my own life is the hard stuff-my fears, anger, and sense of injustice. It takes so much energy to keep that repressed, bottled up, confined. I have begun that process but have not finished. There is work to be done. It begins with invitation, leads to listening, and then progresses to the craft of shaping for oneself and for a reader. It is one thing to be heard, another to be understood. When I reload the Subaru and head back toward the city, I remember that when I began to write, I found someone inside myself I did not previously know. The words led to ideas, strung together an identity, spoke taboos, and affirmed beliefs. The words took on a life of their own when put to paper. They made some of the darkness conscious. It is the words wrung from darkness that I trust when I go to the prison or to the classroom. With some respect, skill, and something to say, students and inmates might find a way to save us from ourselves.
