Richard Shelton's first interest in a prisoner's poetry was born from curiosity rather than charity. In 1970, a convicted murderer named Charles Schmid--on death row at the Arizona State Prison in Florence--wrote Shelton and asked him to critique his work. Shelton, then a professor at the University of Arizona, accepted. He has since admitted that he did so "for all the wrong reasons...I was fascinated because he was a monster."
Shelton may not be proud of their first contact, but his...
]]>