SOURCE: "Belly Songs: The Poetry of Etheridge Knight," in The Hollins Critic, Vol. XVIII, No. 5, December, 1981, pp. 1-11.

Nelson is an American poet and critic. In the following essay, he provides a thematic and stylistic analysis of Knight's poetry.

 "Cell Song"

Night Music Slanted
Light strike the cave
of sleep. I alone
tread the red circle
and twist the space
with speech.

Come now, etheridge, don't
be a savior; take
your words and scrape
the sky, shake rain

on the desert, sprinkle
salt on the tail
of a girl,

can there anything
good come out of
prison 

While doing eight years (1960-68) in Indiana State Prison on a drug-related armed robbery charge, Etheridge Knight turned to poetry. Within the bleakness of steel bars and

Front and back covers for Knight's 1973 poetry collection.

concrete walls, the frustration, immobility, rage, fear, and loneliness of prison life, and the long stretches...