A Call To Poets Opposed to the Death Penalty

Poetry

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Poetry

A Call To Poets

Opposed to the death penalty

More of this Feature

• Summary of reasons justifying a grant of executive clemency
• Poems by Stephen Anderson

Join the Discussions

• Appeasement at Any Price
“People need to be made to feel better when they see a murderous crime, and having a defendant to convict and kill works well...”
   --Al, NamVetPoet
• Pls. tell me, what is political poetry?
“The intent is perhaps not always to change what or how readers think, but at least to spark thought.”
   --Dreamboat Annie
“Shelley said it best: 'Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world.'”
   --Eric Paul Shaffer
• Political poetry: polemic or poetry?
“Many of the poets I heard stated an argument, some quite well, but I was unsure if we were hearing poetry.”
   --Doug Holder

Related Articles

• Death Row Poetics (Wili Otey)

Elsewhere at About

• The Death Penalty, Pro and Con at About Crime/Punishment
• Death penalty links at About U.S. Politics: Current Events
• Death penalty links at About Civil Liberties

Elsewhere on the Web

• PEN “Freedom To Write Bulletin” on Anderson's case
• PEN American Center Prison Writing Program
• Amnesty International Web Site Against the Death Penalty
• “Poet laureate of America's damned” by Bell Gale Chevigny in the San Francisco Chronicle
• “Death Row poet's final pleas” by Kevin Fagan in the San Francisco Chronicle

From the get, we have had two major political goals here at About Poetry:

To end the death penalty, the cynical state-sanctioned murder.
Universal access to all literature, including the evergrowing poem called the Web.

Now we must get busy on a specific death penalty case involving a poet. Read Eliot Katz's memo, below -- then please send a poem to Governor Gray Davis.

ADDENDUM, JANUARY 29, 2002
Sad to say, Stephen Wayne Anderson lost his final appeal before the U.S. Supreme Court last night, and the execution took place just after midnight Pacific time at San Quentin. We thank all of you who responded to our call by writing to Governor Davis, and we will keep this article up at About Poetry as a resource for those who wish to continue fighting to end the death penalty. As Eliot Katz wrote in this morning's email, “One of these years the U.S. will join the rest of the world in banning this barbaric practice....”

Bob Holman and Margy Snyder

Note to Poets Opposed to the Death Penalty

A good friend of mine in San Francisco works as a lawyer handling death penalty appeals. He's just alerted me to the urgent case of Stephen Anderson, who is scheduled to be executed in California on January 29. If you're against the death penalty on humanitarian grounds, and have a few minutes this week, you may want to fax or email a short note to California's governor Gray Davis urging him to commute Stephen Anderson's death sentence to life in prison. The reason I thought poets might be especially concerned about this case is that Stephen Anderson has become an accomplished poet and writer while in prison. In 1990, he won a PEN American Center Prison Writing Award for Poetry. It's possible that letters from writers might potentially be helpful in holding off this execution.

Below I'm enclosing an excerpt from the appeal for clemency which Stephen Anderson's lawyers have filed, along with some of his poems that were included in the appeal. As I think you'll see, without denying the seriousness of the crime, there seem to be some compelling reasons to urge the governor to commute Anderson's death sentence to life in prison, including his remorse for the crime, opposition by members of the victim's family to capital punishment in this case, inadequate legal representation during the penalty phase of his original trial, and Anderson's efforts at self-education, rehabilitation, and literary expression during his years in prison. And, of course, the inhumanity of capital punishment.

PEN's Web site has more information about this case, and also includes PEN's letter to the California governor opposing the execution.

If you have time and would like to write the governor, his address, fax number, and email are:

Governor Gray Davis
State Capitol
Sacramento, CA 95814
fax 916.445.4633
email governor@governor.ca.gov

Eliot Katz

Eliot Katz is a New York City poet and author of Unlocking the Exits (Coffee House Press). He is also a coeditor of Poems for the Nation (Seven Stories Press), a collection of contemporary political poems that Allen Ginsberg was compiling in the year before his death. Two of his poems appear here at About Poetry:
“In Praise of the Seattle Coalition,” written in response to the WTC demonstrations in Seattle in 1999
“When the Skyline Crumbles” in our collection of Poems After the Attack

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