When Men Wreck Their Endangered Bodies

Carol Tyx speaks Nov. 5 at Mount Mercy University, her first live appearance to read from her book, published this year. She has done other readings, but via video conferencing. Most of her audience was online.

Poet Carol Tyx, who retired last year and is now a professor emeritus at Mount Mercy Univeristy, came back to campus Nov. 5, 2020 as a visiting writer. She has written a book of poems called “Remaking Achilles.”

It’s a grim story, but one I’m glad that she has told. It takes place at the Angola State Prison, the largest state prison in the U.S.A, in Louisiana. In 1951, 31 white inmates at the prison (where the African-American prisoners outnumbered them) slashed their own Achilles tendons so that they would be unable to walk. Achilles is also the name of an imagined Black inmate who is a character in Carol’s book.

Carol Tyx speaks at Mount Mercy University.

The prison used its inmates as labor on an 18,000-acre plantation, a modern-day form of slavery. The men didn’t want to be able to walk so that they could not be forced to work in the fields. And the slashers caused such a stir that a public investigation led to reforms.

As Tyx notes, those reforms weren’t the end to troubles at the prison—but she said she wanted to explore the story of men who literally put their bodies in danger in the hopes of avoiding cruel treatment and perhaps gaining more of a chance of surviving prison. They were cutting their own bodies to try to save them.

The poems are presented in a chronological order, and many voices are heard: “Ain’t got what it takes for the long line today, four miles out, four miles back.” Prisoners, a nurse who sacrificed her job to testify to an investigating committee, a sheriff—they are heard in this collection.

Student in Flaherty Community Room listens to Carol Tyx.

https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.740565050628&type=3

More of my images from the event.

It was great to hear Carol read her words and describe the reasons for the poems.

My wife, a nursing professor at MMU, decided to accompany me to the poetry reading, and I think she was glad she did. The nurse’s story was a pivotal one, and when the talk was over, I purchased a copy of the book for her.

I’ll read it too. Probably not in one uninterrupted slog—I don’t always read a lot of poetry at once—but the taste of this book was enough to make me hungry for more.

Mary Vermillion, MMU English professor, displays Carol Tyx’s book.

Mary Vermillion commented on Facebook that this is the first image of her masked.

It’s a ghastly story, but one that Carol has given voice to—or many voices to. As she noted, left untold, the story would fade away.

Carol was introduced by Mary Vermillion, English professor at Mount Mercy. Both have helped run a book club, where students from MMU can discuss books with inmates at the Anamosa State Penitentiary, not too far away.

Anyway, I think any writer does a service if they can take a reader somewhere new, help them see the world, a bit, through others’ eyes. I think that is what Carol has done here, and I look forward to seeing the world through different eyes when I read her poems. Mary has written more about the book:

REMAKING ACHILLES: Poetry by Carol Tyx

Mount Mercy video of the presentation.