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All Of It with Alison Stewart
Reginald Dwayne Betts New Poetry Collection 'Doggerel'
00:19:34
Legal Scholar and poet Reginald Dwayne Betts has just released his latest poetry collection 'Doggerel.'
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- [00:09]
A
This is all of it on wnyc. I'm Alison Stewart. We finish out our producer Pick show with lawyer, advocate and poet Reginald Dwayne Betts. I first heard of Betts in 2016. I was working for PBS NewsHour, and crime reform was one of my beats. I met Betts when I was doing a story about an organization to help artists who were incarcerated. He was one of the inaugural fellows in 1996. He was part of a carjacking at 16 years old, and he served eight years behind bars. Betts has spent his adulthood on prison reform. He graduated from Yale Law School. He teaches and he wrote several books. His latest is a book of poetry called Doggerel. It came out 20 years to the day he was released from prison, March 4, 2025, the day he was on our show. Betts believes poetry matters. He believes books matter. So much so that he founded Freedom Reads, a library service to get books into the hands of incarcerated people. Freedom Reads started five years ago, and there are 419 Freedom Libraries in 12 states. Let's listen to Reginald Dwayne Betts. This is him reading his poem White Peonies, White Pennies.
- [01:28]
B
This is how it happens. One morning the ground is only the ground, and then green shoots through the rich brown loam. I learned the word loam when I was starving for something. Fools would call it love and I would say it was a time machine, longing for some days, months, years, when the sorrows didn't bloom like this thing from the ground that I can barely name. Tell me how these peonies have migrated from Asia to my garden and found their way into my line of vision despite prison and all the suffering. I don't speak. It all happens so sudden, is what I mean to say. When sadness becomes a beauty before your eyes, so startling, you ask friends what to name the flower before you. I admit I pretended to be God to give a name to this thing that gives me joy. I called it Sunday and then called it my firstborn. Have you ever been so rattled by the unexpected that you wanted someone's blessing to name the thing? The peonies are so lovely they frighten me. They grow on thin stems longer than my arms, with blooms heavier than the stalks. But isn't it always so? The beauty of the world so hefty? We fear the world cannot stand it, and yet why would we not want to pray when we notice? Why do we forget that naming is the first kind of prayer? Even as the white flowers turned into scented oil against my skin?
- [03:06]
A
That's Reginald Dwayne Betts, reading from the book Doggerel Poems. This is your third book of poetry. And in the back you explain the way the book came about. And you write very clearly that poetry matters. Why do you believe that poetry matters?
- [03:24]
B
It's wild. It's my fourth book of poetry. I'm going to say five, though.
- [03:28]
A
Okay.
- [03:29]
B
Because I want all my. And it's funny because I say that because, you know, the images that start the book are pictures that come from poems I was writing in prison.
- [03:40]
A
Yeah.
- [03:41]
B
And I mean, I literally, you know, I say I wrote five books, but really, I'm just saying that I've been counting these poems that I wrote in prison where you could see the holes I punched into the paper, how I stitched those pages together, and the books I carried around the side with me. And when I was a kid and I was writing those poems, trying to understand what it meant to be in prison. And some of the themes and ideas are things that, you know, kept me alive. And it all happened because of poetry. It literally opened up a world to me where some of this stuff is written, you know, in a super maximum security penitentiary where most of the people around me, you know, had life. And I've literally gotten some of those guys out of prison. I mean, it's kind of miraculous.
- [04:34]
A
So what made you keep the images, the ones that we see in the book?
- [04:40]
B
Oh, I got those poems. You know, I got the book one day. I mean, you know, it's one of those things, and it is really hard. I traveled to five different prisons. It's hard to keep track of things. So I don't have everything that I wrote, but I mean, I got a stack of things to capture this one formative time period in my life. 1998, 1999. And I mean, I'm signed in the bottom of the pages, you know. You were serious?
- [05:04]
A
You were serious?
- [05:05]
B
I was serious. You even see me writing you? I got the phone number to the publisher. I saw that in the back. Nobody. Nobody.
- [05:14]
A
Check this out.
- [05:15]
B
I didn't get my book yet. Oh, man, if that. Hey, yo, if them brothers still around. It was. It was. Yeah, it was the Baltimore bookstore I used to buy books from. And they would mail me books all of the time. Man, I was. I almost felt like they were part of my community because I write them and they wrote me back and they were giving me this vital thing. I mean, you see me, I got Sony Sanchez phone in my life. I mean, like, there's people that I was reading to survive the Penitentiary. And now I could call them. I mean, it's kind of humbling.
- [05:52]
A
Do you remember the first poem? Poem or poet that meant something to you?
- [05:58]
B
Yeah. I mean, I had gotten really. Was Sonia Sanchez, Lucille Clifton, Robert Hayden. I had the first. Man, I don't believe I'm crying on tv.
- [06:13]
A
It's radio. Nobody sees it.
- [06:15]
B
Oh, that's cool. I wasn't crying. No, I mean, the first book I bought, the first poetry book I bought was Sonia Sanchez Homegirls and Hand Grenades. I was going to a super maximum security penitentiary. And that's the book I bought to take with me. It served me well, really did.
- [06:36]
A
What were you thinking about when you read poetry when you were incarcerated?
- [06:44]
B
I mean, everything. You know, I learned about move listening to Sonia Sanchez. I learned about Frederick Douglass listening to Robert Hayden. I learned about the world, honestly. I learned to know myself better. And also I'm reading Etherish Knight and I'm learning that the penitentiary is a legitimate subject of exploration. It is a legitimate place to explore what it means to be alive. And so, you know, when I started to write my own poems, that's what my own poems was about. Like figuring out how to notice something around me that was more than just.
- [07:17]
A
The suffering I was sharing with you. I've been writing poetry lately. Really bad poetry.
- [07:22]
B
Yeah, I love it.
- [07:24]
A
Do you write in a journal? Do you? I see on the. You see the pictures in the book you wrote on whatever was possible. But now do you set time aside to write? When do you write?
- [07:35]
B
I mean, I write anytime. I mean, the beautiful thing about this. I mean, some of these poems were literally written on the side of the road in Italy. Some were written, man. One of these poems arriving late. I wrote at the airport. I was so mad that day. It was like Mother's Day or the day before Mother's Day. And we missed out playing. And I was mad and I was trying to salvage the day. And we met a woman named Ellsberth. And she said, you know, you should have came to us. You was running late. You should have came to me. And you know, as a black woman, saying, I would have made sure that you ain't messed up your mama's Mother's Day. And I said, you know what? That's okay. Me and my mom never hung out at the airport for three, four hours. And we hung out and it was lovely. And I told this woman, I said, I'm gonna write a poem for you. Watch. And I was. We were in one of the lounges and I wrote the poem And I wrote it on my phone. My mom was talking to my aunt, and my aunt was like, I don't know what this boy doing. He's scribbling. He might be writing something. And. And it became the poem. And I think the poem is beautiful. So for me, I write poems wherever I am. And if I have my phone, I now use my phone. If I gotta use a piece of paper, I use a piece of paper. If I just gotta remember it, I just remember it in the moment.
- [08:48]
A
My guest is poet, lawyer, and founder of Freedom Reads, Reginald Dwayne Betts. His new book is called Doggerel. So you write in the back how you like to read your poems to people.
- [08:57]
B
Yes. Yeah.
- [08:58]
A
You want to get them out into the world, you read it to your Uber driver. What do you get by reading your poems to strangers?
- [09:07]
B
I get to be a poet. You know, I get to be a poet in the world. And I also get to. I get to be vulnerable. I get to admit that I have something that I want you to enjoy and to find meaningful and appreciate the fact that you might not want it and you might not hear it the way I hear it, but there's something beautiful about not holding it all in. I feel like I tried to hold it in for a long time and it almost buried me.
- [09:35]
A
I'm gonna ask you to read Losing Weight. This is the one you read to your Uber driver, I believe.
- [09:40]
B
Yeah. I like this one because I lost £60. Yeah. But much more than that. And this poem is one of the entryways into thinking about how my relationship with a dog and also with myself radically changed. Losing weight when I wanted to lose weight. When I started, it began with hunger, with needing to feel my body asking for more of it, all butter and salt and forgiveness for Hennessy cursing through these veins another tide ushering me back to all my prisons. It started with fear, or not fear, but walking literally with what I'd feared. A dog with teeth that fled when threatened even if them vampire things wouldn't break my skin if I were another treat. We walked to the driveway's end, then more steps into the space past the yard feel safe into this Jack Russell terrier that fit inside my palm as a pistol once did, let me slip all those memories and yes, I began wanting the world as she did Full gulps of ascent into my nose twitched like a conduit for what might be possible. And somehow more and more and more of me disappeared during those moments with my loves, the puppy leading in the two lights illuminating my world and Maybe it's folly for a man to admit he is in love with a son young enough to still believe his father's burdens will not touch him. And an older son who knows it doesn't matter. Because the only burden to worrying is never seeing your father weep. And now entire pieces of who I was have begun to fall from my body worries and so much more as I become wildly as light as wind as when my only burden was the cells I left behind.
- [11:42]
A
That's Reginald Dwayne Betts. Tell us about your Jack Russell, Taylor.
- [11:48]
B
Yeah, the dog we got during the pandemic, actually. And you know, you get a dog and you gotta learn who you are by having a dog. And most of what you learn is that you're not in control. And walking a dog, it's interesting, too, man. Walking a dog made me see how I had also been invisible. You know, I've been Ralph Ellison's nameless narrator. And having a dog made me visible in all kinds of ways. And it actually made me make myself visible, though, you know, it has given me permission, a wild permission to insert myself in people's conversations because they talk about having a dog and I miss my dog.
- [12:34]
A
Is a poem. You have a poem here called Race. And it mentions Taylor again. Would you read that?
- [12:41]
B
Yeah, Taylor's get to be the star of the book. You know, that's the thing. She probably asked me for royalties or at least for me to walk her more. Race once up 92. If a single step I race Taylor, a small Jack Russell whose heart, when resting, beats 50 times per minute and mine beats 53, if at all. Low, low, like the resting rate of the champ the year he quit being Cashless Clay and chose to become Muhammad Ali. And ain't we all out here trying to become somebody. So once when Puppey wanted me to release her leash instead of holding tight, I say, down, girl. And she lies all cool on the asphalt waiting to launch herself at the next child in cleats, but only with my say so and only to steal a kiss. Shahid understands the desire to be seen as more than a threat waiting to pounce. And so instead of saying, no, baby, I shall race and we run in these steps and my heart rattles and hers is audible even as her paws turn. Tay tay. Two steps at a time and for a glimmer into the DeLorean. And maybe I'm flying back too if the fly is to be unafraid of the sunrise in your rib cage, Shahid.
- [14:10]
A
That'S what you used to Call yourself Yes.
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B
Yeah. Shahid.
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A
Shahid. Why Shaheed in this poem?
- [14:17]
B
Yeah, it's sort of like, you know, I write this poem, poetic poem called the Guzzle. And it has a self referential in that you sign it in the last couplet. And I was thinking about how do I sign my name? And you got artists who do things like they put some mark in every poem and they know about it. It was, how do I put my signature on all of these poems and how do I give myself permission to remember that prison is a part of my experience, but it is not all of my experience. And so I'll have a line where it just creeps in, but it's not the whole thing. Shahid knows what it's like to be desired as more. There's something waiting to pounce and then I'm back. It's like, you know, it's like the poem within a poem. It's the story within the story. And for me, the story within the story. You know, it's a lot that came out of prison and that's what it.
- [15:09]
A
Is here when you read the story. Sometimes the dog references are really, really subtle. Sometimes they're metaphors. How did you go about, I don't know, is it a newfound love of dogs or is this a recent love of dogs?
- [15:26]
B
I think it's. I mean, it's new. New, but also it changed my attention and it was just really intense, I think what I was feeling and how dogs and this particular dog became a way that I was seeing the world and. And then, you know, as a writer, you just want a hook to be able to notice things differently. And it was so much that I just hadn't been noticing and it was so wildly radical that it was connecting me to people in different ways. And then sometimes it wasn't even about the dog, but it was about how the dog was the bridge for me, wanting to say something else about a person. So the first times the dogs showed up in poems, they just showed up because my homie, she loved dogs and she loved her dog and we had both got dogs during the pandemic and. And I just, you know, wanted to slip the dog into a poem and I figured it'd make her smile. I think it did.
- [16:25]
A
Sounds like you love your dog.
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B
Yeah, I mean, I am learning that I love a lot of things. You know, I am learning, you know, a dog teaches you to love the world. Maybe it does. And I think maybe that's what I've learned in this book and I learned in writing the book. And I learned what the dog has showed me.
- [16:43]
A
There's a poem devoted to your son Micah called Bike Ride. What's that about?
- [16:48]
B
Yeah, Makai. Makai.
- [16:50]
A
Excuse me.
- [16:51]
B
No, I set him up.
- [16:53]
A
My bad.
- [16:54]
B
He gonna spend the rest of his life fixing his name. You know, honestly, man, I was riding his bike and I ride. I rode eight miles this morning, but back then I could barely ride a mile and a half, and I wanted him to take a ride with me. And he did, man. And it was one of these beautiful father son moments that the next time I was riding up that same hill by myself. I had stopped to get my breath and I looked to the left and I saw the spot. And you know, my sons was there for me, have been there for me and are really remarkable young people and. Can I read it? Yes, please. Bike ride. Returning from a gravel path, I ride a bike with my oldest boy. And this is where he learns how the body fails you. Each time I pause, he asks if I'm okay. And I say yes and climb back on a bike as if I believe I won't falter again. I know I will. The ride no more than two miles along an Italian road, but so much more than my body can take. These days, we've been searching for a haunted house, and I should admit that my son don't like birds. But when I found this abandoned church and hundreds of wings turned it into a scene from Hitchcock, I wanted to share that mixture of joy and fear I felt I imagine he knew mostly I wanted to be close to him in a way that my father has never been to me. Back into that old church, we were interlopers and discovered barking that wanted us to take leave, particularly the Gandalf looking like little mutt in our path. Makai would have tangled with the beast to save me. I know as we ride and I stop and he asks if I'm okay. I don't know what it means for a child to see his father weep, but know what it means to be saved by a son.
- [18:52]
A
That was Reginald Dwayne Betts. His book of poetry is titled Doggerel. And that's all of it. All of it is produced by Andrea Duncan Mao, Kate Hines, Jordan Lof, Simon Close, Zach Ghatar Cohen, Elmi Leake Anderson and Luke Greene. Megan Ryan is the head of Live Radio. Our engineers are Juliana Fonda, Shana Sengstock, and Amber Bruce. Luscious Jackson does our music. If you missed any segments this week, catch up by listening to our podcast, available on your podcast. Platform of choice. If you like what you hear, please leave us a great it helps people find the show. I'm Alison Stewart. I appreciate you listening and I appreciate you and I will meet you back here next time. Since WNYC's first broadcast in 1924, we've been dedicated to creating the kind of content we know the world needs. In addition to this award winning reporting, your sponsorship also supports inspiring storytelling and extraordinary music that is free and accessible to all. To get in touch and find out more, visit sponsorship.wnyc.org.