In 1996, 1.2 million citizens were incarcerated in U.S. prisons for violent crimes and other felonies. By the year 2000, that number is expected to exceed 2 million. In response to this crisis, throughout the nation, programs built largely on the work of volunteers have risen to challenge traditional concepts about the prison system and rehabilitation, and to engender a new awareness of possibilities. Cell Count, an eloquent and sensitive collection of poems, is the product of one such program. Cell Count’s teacher-persona struggles to come to terms with his inmate-students who are tragically much more than the sum of their crimes. “Cell Count is not a book for Sunday afternoon reading. Innocently, I stepped across the line into Christopher Bursk’s world. An iron gate clanged shut, and I was alone, a red beam. . .aimed straight into my eyes, ‘digging a tunnel into my brain./I had to stare into the center of that burning/till it was all I could see.’ “Cell Count is not just a book about the prison system. When the guard-tower floodlights snap on, trapped in its crossbeams is the book’s persona—a college instructor engaged in directing a poetry workshop in a reconverted storage closet in jail or counseling individual inmates in an interview room more cramped than a cell. He is teacher, poet, political activist, a man committed to making a difference in the lives of his students, yet he doesn’t seem certain why he feels compelled to do so; he is not entirely sure he wants to try this hard. Cell Count details the life-quest of this activist who, despite his fears, his hatred of evil, his repugnance for violence, his despair at what may be a hopeless endeavor, still acts, still takes a stand.” —Robert A. Fink
Chris Bursk, recipient of NEA, Guggenheim, and Pew Fellowships, is the author of nine books including his most recent, The First Inhabitants of Arcadia from the University of Arkansas Press, 2006. In addition to having worked as a volunteer for three decades in the corrections system, with those on probation and parole, he is currently a professor of language and literature at Bucks County Community College. His work has appeared in magazines such as Paris Review, American Poetry Review, Poetry, Manhattan Review, and The Sun. His poem, "Ovid at Fifteen," won the Another Chicago Magazine Award, judged by Robert Dana. Chris has won numerous awards for his humanitarian and literary efforts including Bucks County Citizen of the Year and Poet Laureate of Bucks County. His book - The Infatuations and Infidelities of Pronouns - won the Bright Hill Chapbook competition and is scheduled for publication in the Spring, 2011. He is most importantly the grandfather of six.
