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Category Archives: ezwwaters
For the Love of Poetry
I love poetry. It is only fitting that my fourth book of poetry, The Black Blood of Poetry, will be released this Valentine’s Day. Although this forthcoming selection, on its face, may not seem like “love poetry,” it is, because … Continue reading
Posted in Black Shadows and Through the White Looking Glass, ezwwaters, Growing Up, John F. Kennedy, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, Poetry, Politics, race, Revolution, Sometimes Blue Knights Wear Black Hats, Streets of Rage
Tagged 1960s, Countee Cullen, Decisive Decade, JFK, Malcolm X, MLK, RFK, The Black Blood of Poetry, William Blake, William Carlos Williams, William Shakespeare, Willliam Wordsworth
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Journey Through Crime, Justice & Literature, Part III
Continued… (If you missed the second installment, then click here: Journey Through Crime, Justice & Literature, Part II) The modern War on Crime, as we know it, was inaugurated with Richard Nixon’s campaign for the presidency in 1968. Nixon declared … Continue reading
Posted in Black Shadows and Through the White Looking Glass, crime, ezwwaters, Justice Chronicles, Politics, race
Tagged Abel Meeropol, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Alexis de Tocqueville, Attica Correctional Facility, Attica Rebellion, Billie Holiday, cien anons de soledad, Class, De Profundis, Democracy in America, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Great Society, Gustave De Beaumont, Hudson Valley Black Press, hyperincarceration, Loic Wacquant, Medellin Cartel, Michelle Alexander, Nelson Rockefeller, News on a Kidnapping, One Hundred Years of Solitude, Oscar Wilde, prisonm-industrial complex, race, revanchist America, Reynold's Magazine, richard nixon, Strange Fruit, The Ballad of Reading Gaol, THe Four Zoas, The Gulag Archipelago: An Experiment in Literary Investigation, The House of the Dead, The New Jim Crow, The United States Penitentiary System and its Application in France, war on crime, War on Drugs, Watergate, William Blake
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Journey Through Crime, Justice & Literature, Part II
…Continued (If you missed the first installment, then click here: Journey Through Crime and Punishment, Part I.) Crime and Punishment was first published in The Russian Messenger, a literary journal, in twelve monthly installments in 1866. I reread passages of … Continue reading
Posted in crime, ezwwaters, Justice Chronicles, juveniles, Murder, Parole, parole board, Politics, race, raising black boys, remorse
Tagged ABACADRABA! Or NOtes on the War on Crime, art, Cicero, Cicero's Murder Trials, crime and punishment, Dostoevsky, Endless Punishment is a crime, Felony MUrder and the Misdemeanor of Attempted Escape: A Legislative Error in Search of Correction, Fordham Urban Law Journal, Gary McGivern, Governor Mario Cuomo, Hamlet, HIcksville, Murder Trials, New York Times, Newsday, Notes from Underground, PEN, Peter J. McQuillan, photography, Poetry, Portia, The House of the Dead, The Merchant of Venice, The Russian Messenger, travel, writing
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Journey Through Crime, Justice & Literature
I first became interested in the story of crime and punishment, how we tell those stories, at 16 years of age. Then, three childhood friends were arrested for two homicides. Two were immediately arrested, one was on the run for … Continue reading
Posted in crime, ezwwaters, Justice Chronicles, juveniles, Life Sentences, Murder, Reentry, Streets of Rage, Urban Impact
Tagged "Shakespeare and the Law" column, Alexander Dumas, CPL 440.10, crime, Crime & Punishment, DIck the Butcher, Dostoevsky, Edgar Allan Poe, Eyewitness News, felony=murder rule, Henry VI, history, Jack Cade Rebellion, Julius Caesar, Justice Frederick C. HIcks, Mark Anthony, murder, New York Law Journal, news, Nicholas Capaldi, Part 3, Raskolnikov, Russell Sage College, Sybil Hart Kooper, The Art of Deception, The Cask of Amontillado, The Count of Monte Cristo, THe Quadrivium, The Trivium, true-crime, writing
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How to Mentor Teens Effectively
When I worked in child welfare more than 20 years ago, my supervisor would assign to me what she thought of as the toughest “cases,” i.e., teenagers, and cases where the child ended up in the system because of an … Continue reading
Posted in ezwwaters, juveniles
Tagged child welfare, Family, Mentor, mentoring, Odysseus, Telemachus, Ulysses, writing
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I Know Why the Caged Poet Sings
Some of my favorite poets happen to be named William – William Shakespeare, William Blake, William Wordsworth, and William Carlos Williams. When I meet most people, I often ask them what their names mean or the backstory of their names. … Continue reading
Posted in Black Shadows and Through the White Looking Glass, crime, ezwwaters, Growing Up, Justice Chronicles, juveniles, NYPD, race, raising black boys, Sometimes Blue Knights Wear Black Hats, Streets of Rage, Urban Impact
Tagged Countee Cullen, fiction, George Washington, life, short-story, Thomas Jefferson, travel, William Blake, William Shakespeare, William Wordsworth, Willliam Carlos Williams, writing, Yet Do I Marvel
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Blacklight
I turn on the Blacklight, And look under America’s skin, Peeling away layers, Exposed is her skin disease, Her obsession with race, Her legacy of Slavery and Segregation – Those peculiar institutions! The auction block, like a butcher’s block…. … Continue reading
Celebrating 65 Years of Life
I saw the best minds of my generation drop out of school and get their education on the streets, in the schools of hard knocks: in group homes, reform schools, jails, reformatories, insane asylums, and prisons. They dropped out of … Continue reading
“Teaching” Alice Walker
In preparation for a lecture in the course I teach, African American Literature in the 20th Century, I am re-reading excerpts from Alice Walker’s In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens: Womanist Prose. In her prose, Walker makes nearly perfect sense. … Continue reading
Posted in crime, ezwwaters, Justice Chronicles, Lest We Forget, Politics, race, Sometimes Blue Knights Wear Black Hats, Streets of Rage
Tagged Alice Walker, Brownfield, GrangeCopeland, In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens: Womanist Prose, Mister, personal, Poetry, Relationships, Rodney King, Saving the Life That Is Your Own: The Importance of Models in the Artist's Life, sex, Streets of Rage, The Color Purple, The Third Life of Grange Copeland, women
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Easy Waters 