FRIGHT
Arthur John Shawcross
- Sullivan Correctional Facility
Once away from the camp of quiet activity you start to feel
The quietness and those damn mosquitoes for fair
In their quest of blood for a warm meal while in a
swarm of
Busyness in the air.
When all is quiet
after a long march you wonder
If at all you are alone; off in the distance
You hear or think you hear cursing from under
The brush or up in the tree's in an instant.
Remember those
lizards of the region called the gecko,
Can you recall what they say; all the while
It was hard to get use to, "Oh" this little pest of woo
Got us into unnecessary tightness of the bile.
Another that was
hard to miss was that stinking dung beetle
In it's hunt for wastes anywhere that humans are found
With the noise of an approaching aircraft, it made us settle
A little lower in the grass with sweat all around
Then suddenly
to hear metal against metal
Tightens the nerves and the splanchnic muscle
For you know that someone comes to do battle
Them for Mr. Ho, and us for Uncle…
The poem "Fright" by Arthur Shawcross, one of the most prolific
serial killers of modern times, illustrates and reveals the more human
side of the man, the myth and the monster. "Fright" begins
simply enough with a recantation of Shawcross's experiences of freedom,
of his spending time in the beautiful landscape of upstate New York,
where he lived before his arrest and where he committed the string
of prostitute murders, for which he earned the moniker, "The
Genessee River Killer." Shawcross often spent his days fishing
along the banks of the river and also spent quite a bit of time camping.
Shawcross, alludes
to his crimes in the poem when he hints in the second stanza about
hearing or
thinking that "you hear some cursing from under the brush."
Shawcross again, invites the reader into his
darker side in the final line of the third stanza. This line : Got
us into unnecessary tightness of the
bile", is similar to the statements he made to police about the
killings, when he blamed his victims for
their demise.
In "Fright",
we see the same sort of symbolism present in the poetry of other convicted
murderers, in that he provides the reader with images that are both
familiar but also take on a more sinister element when the author's
background is taken into consideration.
The poem, deals,
not only with nature and the author's crimes, but also with his experiences
while
in Vietnam during the war. Shawcross had steadfastly maintained that
it was these experiences that led him down the path of serial murder.
Describing the creatures he encountered while in the field during
the
war, allows Shawcross to relive these moments and also allows him
to transport the reader to a geographic location that many will never
directly experience for themselves.
In the fourth stanza, Shawcross again parallels his crimes with his
experiences in Vietnam when he
writes: With the noise of an approaching aircraft, it made us settle
a little lower in the grass with sweat
all around." Here he is talking about hunting down the enemy
and hiding from them. Shawcross was apprehended at the Genessee River
when he was spotted from a police helicopter circling the area.
The most important
part of the poem is the fifth and final stanza. Here, Shawcross is
brought out of
his fantasy world, the place where he relives his former life on the
outside and thrust back into the
horrors of maximum security behind bars. He draws the reader back
into this world with him. He, again,
creates a parallel between his time spent in Vietnam and his time
spent committing his crimes when he
writes " For you know that someone comes to du battle them for
Mr. Ho, and us for Uncle… " His intentional omission of
the name Sam at the end is also very enlightening. Shawcross, who
blames his service in the Army for his incarceration behind bars refuses
to acknowledge the great symbol of the American military movement
in words. It is both his respect and resentment towards this symbol
that makes this poem an excellent source of material for the study
of death row poetry.
Unlike the work
of Lemuel Prion, which we examined last month, Shawcross's poem is
more than a symbolic expression of his feelings towards his current
situation and that of his past freedoms. It is a
monument to the time he served in the war and, at the same time, a
direct assault on the way in which he was forced to live then and
is forced to live now.
Now while, Prion
was able to win the audience over with his emotional outpouring and
heartfelt expression of loss, Shawcross offers the reader no such
demonstration. His is straightforward accusatory musing about one
of the worst periods in American life. Even the reader who can see
the parallel between his work and his love of nature cannot help but
feel the harsh overtones which reveal the actual meaning behind the
work, that of a man being trained to kill and then frightened by the
results of that training.
Arthur Shawcross committed some of the most horrible crimes of the
modern era. Of that, there can
be no great debate. But, we must consider his work, both his poetry
and his paintings as an example of one man's struggle to come to grips
with an equally horrible experience which might have, in some
miniscule way, contributed to the acts which led to his justified
incarceration.
What Shawcross
offers as a poet is much the same as what Anne Sexton offers. Each
speaks of their life as no other before them dared to speak of it.
Both poets arguably suffer from some sort of mental
illness. The deeper connection between the two is that Shawcross and
Sexton both speak through that madness and rise above as witnesses
to the inner lives of other people who are exactly like them but have
no public voice in which to express their haunting nightmares to the
masses.
Many things have
and will continue to be said about the crimes which Arthur Shawcross
has been convicted of committing. However, we must consider the body
of his poetic work to be an achievement, if for no other reason, than
because in it, we can find elements of the mental dynamics of both
violent
criminals and sufferers of the Vietnam war.
Dr. Christopher
Kurtz has been corresponding with Arthur Shawcross for over a year
and owns a large
collection of his unpublished poetry.
Next month the
work of Phillip Carl Jablonski will be reviewed.
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