poetry/prison issues/criminal justice/death row

TRAPPED UNDER ICE:
A Death Row Anthology

Trapped Under Ice: A Death Row Anthology Trapped Under Ice:
A Death Row Anthology
edited by Julie Zimmerman
Biddle Publishing Company

Many states are bringing back capital punishment in the belief that executing criminals will make our streets safer and our justice system more just. It is easy to rally support for killing a killer, a criminal who is known only through the crime committed. It is less easy to condemn to death someone you know personally, if only through his words.
ISBN: 1-879418-19-3
©1995
$10.00 US
Softcover

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EXCERPTS

Isolated man, abhorrent to the masses,
Reviled by country, friends and family
Bury your dreams in society's garden
To be fertilized with hate and mirth

-from The Exile by Gene Hathorn

Trapped Under Ice introduces you to twenty-nine poets who are also prisoners. Meet the twenty-eight men and one woman who speak through this powerful anthology. Listen to the voices from death row.

Am I not worthy, have they no compassion,
is my life worth so little, can they not see my tears,
and do they not know I need help?
Is it I, O Father, that must reach out and help them?
Bring them through this walk of Death we all must take?

- from Condemned to Die by Richard Shere

Trapped Under Ice is a collection of poems written by Death Row inmates and other prisoners who have contributed on their behalf. They write of enduring incarceration and of facing execution, and they will make it difficult for any reader to look at electrocution or lethal injection in quite the same way. Both supporters and opponents of capital punishment who listen to these voices will at least understand that they are human.

At the end of the fight,
Horizontally crucified,
tightly bound with glaring light,
Sodium pentothal sent with a sigh,
minutes after midnight.

- from Final Solution by Steven Ainsworth

ENDORSEMENTS

"Your article, "Trapped Under Ice", [based on the book]...is about the most powerful piece we have published in my five years at Swarthmore, and I thank you for sending it to me. I was moved to write my editorial about capital punishment and, more importantly for me, to sign a Declaration of Life. I expect that this article will bring strong reactions because of its ability to hit people in the gut, not just the brain.