William Eric Waters is an award-winning poet, fiction writer, essayist, educator, criminal-justice scholar, and nonprofit executive. Writing as William E. Waters, he is the author of the epic poem Black Shadows and Through the White Looking Glass and three poetry collections: Sometimes Blue Knights Wear Black Hats, The Black Feminine Mystique, and The Black Blood of Poetry. Under the pen name Easy Waters, he is the author of the novel Streets of Rage and the short-story collection Conundrums: Stories of Law & Justice. His work explores Black history, race, law, punishment, institutional power, accountability, redemption, and resilience.
This quote and commentary makes me think of Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave,” and Richard Lovelace’s 1642 poem you allude to: “Stone Walls do not a Prison make, Nor Iron bars a Cage.”
An earlier title of Conundrums was “Prisons Are Built With Stones of Law,” from a proverb of William Blake, from his 1790 work, “The Marriage of Heaven and Hell.” Coincidentally, America’s first penitentiary, the Walnut Street Jail in Philadelphia, opens in 1790, if memory serves me right.
William Eric Waters, aka Easy Waters 
This quote and commentary makes me think of Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave,” and Richard Lovelace’s 1642 poem you allude to: “Stone Walls do not a Prison make, Nor Iron bars a Cage.”
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An earlier title of Conundrums was “Prisons Are Built With Stones of Law,” from a proverb of William Blake, from his 1790 work, “The Marriage of Heaven and Hell.” Coincidentally, America’s first penitentiary, the Walnut Street Jail in Philadelphia, opens in 1790, if memory serves me right.
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