Box Poetry

Poetry Cannot Be Contained 

By Serena Cai

Poetry cannot be contained. 

The word "box" brings something, 

a feeling or emotion, to mind.

I know the meaning: it's to shut something 

up in a tight space. To hold something against 

its will. 

That something is poetry.

I was on the Internet just the other day, 
eyes almost glazing over when I 
stumbled upon Reginald Dwayne Betts. 
This man, sentenced to life in a metal box, 
became a life boat in the ocean. 

Lost. 
Adrift. 
Questions spiraled in his head like endless
daggers? Where to go? What to do? 
What to feel? 

IT came like a blinding light, 
a secret angel come in the night. 
IT carried him along like the breeze
and made liberty beat under his 
ragged pulse. 

Words of weavers of words, magicians 
of time, danced on his lips like a child's feet. 
His soul began to beat and his feet began 
to tap. And so did the souls in the box 
next to his. 

It would be ninety six months later 
when he would be released from this cage.
He would become a prison advocate but 
more importantly: he would serve as 
a conduit for words. 

That ragged box of steel lines and broken 
dreams was no barrier to IT. 
Poetry could not be contained. 
It passed along the lips of each prisoner 
and rolled in their minds. 

Poetry will not be contained.

~~~~~~~~~

The poem above is one that I wrote and have constantly edited for the past week. It relates to the story of Reginald Dwayne Betts, a former prisoner and current poet. Betts was arrested for carjacking years ago and in his prison time, he and his fellow prisoners found hope and inspiration in the poems they read. Later, when Betts left prison, he would become a prison advocate and fervent poet. 

His story is connected to my answer to the Box Problem because Betts is proof that poetry goes beyond even that of the metal bars of a prisoner's cell. 
It cannot be contained. 
As hard as you try, no matter how thoroughly and enthusiastically you figuratively stuff that poem into that box, it will never go in. No matter how many ways you twist it and crumble it, some part of that poem will slip out and influence the life of someone near you like it did for Betts and his fellow inmates. Art cannot be contained. 

To understand a poem, I suggest that you never box it up. Boxing something implies holding it against its will. It implies forcing it into a small space not meant for it. 

Instead, if you want to understand a poem, hold it lightly in your mind. Hold it like a question, a query, a gentle inquiry. Lure it out, coax it to reveal its hidden secrets. 

As Billy Collins so gracefully put it, don't "tie the poem to a chair with rope and torture a confession out of it." 

Be gentle with the poem. 

Let it unveil itself to you slowly. 

Peel back each heavy layer of meaning and hope that maybe one day,

you can get to the core. 

~Serena