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I read and read and read
and watched movies and read

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articles and learned so much.

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One of the things that was
particularly horrifying

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to me or out of a million
things that were particularly

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horrifying to me,
one of them was

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that many of the
prisons in this country

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are scaling back on allowing
reading materials in.

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OK.

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I could say why that's bad.

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I hope you all understand
why that's bad.

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I am a poet and a
teacher of literature.

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But I wanted to write a poem
that tried to make that point.

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This is called "Corrections."

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"Can a visa still ease a
book across this barrier?

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I charge the guards
to drop defenses

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in the face of twice cruel loss.

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Where the pen excludes the pen,
liberties at a double remove.

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Must prison trap the
soul with the body?

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Let folks be free
to think at least.

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The captive mind preserves
its muscle by working out.

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If we crop the scope of
thought to fit a cell,

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its curve, allowed
to grow again,

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will likely tend toward return.

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Move inmates to shape a slope
that bends toward justice.

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Pay their debt by spending
time reading way past

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where the yard
stops and learning

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sentences that end with hope."

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Somehow that was a sonnet.

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