Stone Hotel

by Raegan Butcher

A moving, spare collection of poetry on life behind bars. All encased in the usual lavish, beautiful CrimethInc production.

Genres: Poetry

132 pages, Paperback

First published February 1, 2003

About the author

Poet, novelist, singer, actor, former prisoner and now full-time recluse, Raegan Butcher lives in the Pacific Northwest with a growing collection of rescued animals.

Reviews

[Janie · Rating 5 out of 5]

An intrepid and honest book of poetry by a man who did the crime and then did the time. Plainly spoken and unsparing, these poems guide us through the experiences of armed robbery, consequent arrest and eight years behind bars. What I found interesting in this poetic narrative was the author's trepidation to re-enter the outside world. In his words:

"i am so afraid
i'll have to go back
to the same

shitty jobs
the same failed relationships

endless nights
filled with loneliness
and frustration"

While life behind bars is challenging and monotonous, the outside world can be just as ruthless. But I have much hope for the narrator, who accepts that "that's just the way it is." I am looking forward to reading many more of his books.

Thank you to my friend Jason, who recommended this fine collection to me.

[Jason · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the best books of poetry I have ever had the pleasure of reading, it is such a shame only 2000 copies were produced, I would love to get my grubby mitts on a copy, it deserves wide spread release.

Butcher tells his life on these pages, from committing the crime, being captured, sentenced, doing the time and finally his release.

When you read this you can pick up easily on his feeling, you can sense his regret at what he has done and most of all you can feel the tedium he experiences being stuck in his cell.

My favourite has to be 96 hours and the judge not using Vaseline as he screwed him over.

I hope Butcher writes more and manages to keep out of jail.

*August 2016. Second reading, I've got myself a paperback copy, book is still one of my favourites... now all I gotta do is get it signed.

*December 2017. Third Reading, still loving this, always moved on Butch's release from prison.

Blog review is here https://felcherman.wordpress.com/2017...

[Harry Whitewolf · Rating 5 out of 5]

I can't remember the last time I read a poetry book so quickly. I mean, sure, it's short, but that's not the point I'm making. I've just flown through Stone Hotel in half an hour of frenzied, captivated reading. Why had nobody told me about Raegan Butcher before? I feel like I've been let in on a great secret of a work (despite the author's well known presence to many others).

Stone Hotel: Poems From Prison simply tells it how it is. The short almost-beat like stanzas and simplicity of words are highly laboured in skill and precision. Make no mistake, this isn't a book trying to make a buck on telling the gaol routine through poetry- this is simply the work of a poet in prison- a great one at that, and he's tellin' in true.

Funny, wincing, self reflecting, society reflecting- and with it prison's mirror, humanity reflecting, sad, and with the gritty reality of fights, deaths, piss, the inhumanity of arse cheek spreading, stories- almost haikus- of fellow cell mates (the short ones which begin with a name are truly great), and tales of the heart. Butcher punches a beautiful beast of post-modern prose (which occasionally brought Billy Childish's writing to mind) like he's sliced open a cow to expose every stench and entrail of the interior. This is Johnny Cash's San Quentin album for the literary market, and a whole lot more.


Harry Whitewolf, author of Route Number 11 and New Beat Newbie.

[Rupert Dreyfus · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a fantastic read which I have stumbled upon by chance. It moves like a 7 year sentence in prison with all its ups and downs. The anxiety; the boredom; the people; the personalities; the danger; the corrupt system; the worry; the reflections; the honesty; the lack of personal space; the expectations of release. It's all there.

I'm personally not big in to poetry so I think this has broader appeal. It was more like reading profound musings than poetry. You could probably return to it an endless amount of times and find a new favourite quote. The snippet that presently stands out to me:

"i had a life
but you could hardly call it blessed
i started out with nothing
and i still have most of it left"

- what is left.

I'm glad to have picked this up.

EDIT: I've placed this in my top 10 books of all time. The more I reflect on it, the better it is. I'm hunting down a signed paperback copy...

[HeavyReader · Rating 5 out of 5]

Here's the review that I wrote for this book that appeared in Slingshot #82 and a variety of other places.

I encounter a lot of trite crap posing as poetry. Often I read or hear poems that are so bad I squirm in embarrassment on behalf of the author. Having been subjected to many poorly contrived pieces, I was surprised and exhilerated when I began reading Stone Hotel: Poems From Prison by Reagan Butcher. I was sucked in, immediately hooked by the dramatic pictures painted by Butcher--often in few words, but always in vivid detail.
Butcher uses his words to tell the stories of his life, starting with the armed robbery he was convicted for in 1996. He takes his audience through his arrest, the suicide watch he's placed on, the mental ward he's confined to, his conviction, and his transfer to prison. The last line of "Prisonbound" reads, "i had 2,555 days to go." In addition to details of those 2,555 days, the book's next 86 pages are filled with Butcher's hopes, dreams, fears, and desires.
I particularly appreciate Butcher's straight-up honesty. He manages to write about his love for his young daughter and of romance lost without seeming sappy or fake. Whether writing about strip searches ('designed to humiliate/ dehumanize/ demoralize and intimidate'") or self-gratification ('masturbate/ 3 times/ in 20 minutes/ the last/ orgasm/ just a dry/ spasm/ in a cramped hand'), he doesn't sugarcoat or pretend.
My favorite pieces are his brief and pointed descriptions of inmates he encounters. These poems are as short as eleven words, but they speak volumes nonetheless. Butcher makes each word count.
This book illuminates a skill and talent that goes beyond sharing the details of life in prison, although (according to my friends behind bars) Butcher does that well. The greatest beauty here is that Butcher puts words together in ways that shock and delight. Consider the final words of the final poem in Stone Hotel: 'i've walked thru hell/ wearing gasoline shoes.' That's a whole world of meaning in ten little syllables.

According to
[http://crimethinc.com/blog/2006/09/13...],
In August of 2006, the last copies from the first limited and numbered printing of Stone Hotel were sold. While a reprinting in the future remains a possibility, we’ve decided to make this PDF of the book freely available in the meantime to keep the text in circulation and help promote Raegan’s writing and new book, Rusty String Quartet. We’d like to remind everyone that we think a book of poetry like this one is the best example of why reading books on a computer screen is the worst format possible—it truly cannot be compared with the experience of reading such a finely tailored book in the real world. But alas, Stone Hotel is no longer in print, and this PDF will have to do; we can only hope that after enjoying these poems you will consider getting your hands on Raegan’s finely printed second book, filled with 264 poems in 340 pages, still in its first printing of 2,000 copies.

[Arlene Sanders · Rating 5 out of 5]

STONE HOTEL is a collection of poems by a man who was sentenced to eight years in prison.

The first poem details the crime. Nowhere in the book did I find any attempt to excuse, minimize, or deny the crime. The poems simply tell us what happened, how he was apprehended--by dogs, "their nostrils full of my fear"--and what followed as he served his time:

I am surrounded
by men who live
in cages

and blink in the sun
like psychotic moles

connoisseurs of
hatred

disguised as racial pride

the tattooed husbands
of battered wives

who think
love is a clenched fist

Disclaimer: As one who reads and writes fiction almost exclusively, I am not a sophisticated reader of poetry. I am a visual person who reacts to poetry in a way that unsophisticated listeners respond to music. That is, the words in poetry, or the notes in a musical composition, bring to mind a scene or a series of events that I can hear or see.

Certain passages in T. S. Eliot's "The Waste Land," for example, summon vast, empty stretches of desert sweeping out to the horizon. Poe's "The Bells" tinkle silvery in a little Christmas shop I visited as a child. Wagner's "Tannhauser" is background music for elephants slowly marching in to perform in a circus.

The following are among the images that came to mind as I read the poems in Raegan Butcher's STONE HOTEL:

1. Attack scenes in JAWS
2. The plane crash in Nelson DeMille's MAYDAY
3. The chase in the opening scene of the James Bond film "Casino Royale"
4. WWII documentary film footage of the bombing of Hiroshima
5. "The Scream," a painting by Edvard Munch, National Gallery, Oslo, Norway

In STONE HOTEL, the poetry is understated. The scream lies beneath the words as the author finds himself "strangled by the hands of a clock" in a cage where "privacy is a thing of the past," and "even fear has gone stale with time."

In a poem titled "96 months" there is a rape scene, five lines long. One of the lines is only one word. The rape is described almost casually, a calm report slotted in among mundane images of rapists of another sort:

- a lawyer "bored and preoccupied/not even working for his money"

- a prosecutor "thundering doom/and calling for the max"

- and a judge "pinch-eyed and displeased/working on getting re-elected"

And then the rape--the real one--itself deceptively mundane. (You have to close your eyes to hear the scream. The scream lies below the words.)

Butcher tells us about the snitch, and how he was found:

hanging from
the light fixture

a bedsheet
around his neck

face purple

eyes filled with blood
like bright red eggs

STONE HOTEL is not for the faint of heart. Raegan Butcher's writing is brilliant, raw and powerful. And as he writes, Butcher does my favorite thing for an artist to do--he never looks away. He confronts his subject with hard, cold objectivity and conveys it to us in the simplest way imaginable. This isn't poetry to make you smile or warm your soul. It isn't meant to entertain you--but then, neither is a plane crash or Edvard Munch's picture of a scream.

[Damion · Rating 5 out of 5]

Awesome collection of poems. Straight to the point and raw. more like prose. Some of the most honest accounts of prison life read. No bravado or bullshit. Makes me want to read more from this underrated author.

[J.A. Carter-Winward · Rating 5 out of 5]

A Look Inside the Inside

After finishing Raegan Butcher's poetry collection Rusty String Quartet, I was eager to read his other book, a gift at Christmas, Stone Hotel: Poems from Prison. The only comparison I'll make is it took me a long time to read RSQ because there was so…much. So much depth. I read Stone Hotel in one sitting because there was so much…well, depth. But in a totally different way.

Stone Hotel is much more of a story to me. It took me not only to a foreign place, that place being the other side of the law, but to a place I don't want to visit. But to peek inside that place? Fascinating, rich, surprising, funny, predictable at times (but not in a bad way), disheartening, cold, frightening and despairing. The style of poetry is the same: stark and honest. He hits you between the eyes with lines like:

tattooed husbands/ of battered wives/ who think/ love is a clenched fist.

Some of my favorite poems are when he pulls back a little from the realism and gives us something that is universal, open-ended and almost lyrical even, like in "dimestore Dillinger" and "a walk among the tombstones"—

i look out of my window and see / burning flowers and starving armies / but when i look up into the night sky / i see the souls of dead heroes.

A lot of the poems are very funny, in the 'tears of a clown' sort of way, my favorite kind of humor, poems like "the devil's dandruff" (the funniest indictment of cocaine I've ever read) and "jeremiah," simple, understated and deadpan funny.

Other favorites are poems about specific inmates, and usually the title of the poem is the guy's name. Those were all fascinating and chilling, with the exception of "smoky," which was a poignant piece about the prison barber with a poet's soul who died of cancer behind bars.

This is another collection that you must have if you enjoy the post-modern poetry style dipped in starkness and bold truth. Butcher is skilled at taking you there and bringing you back, and making you crave another ride. I hope someday he takes up his poet's pen and gives us more.

[Alan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Something happens to poetry when it is written from a hard undeniable life, a hell or some bitter tangle, when written by blade in the the flesh of the poet something happens to poetry,
It becomes readable.

"
SNITCH

the cops found
him
hanging from
the light fixture
a bedsheet
around his neck
face purple
eyes filled with blood
like bright red eggs
piss & shit
dripping down his legs
and no one
could figure
out
how he managed
to tie
both of his
hands
together
behind his
back
"

"same old story
everyone has a name
no one has a father"

The book is amazing. Underedited, and better for it. Poems were smuggled out of prison in the soles of his shoes, it says.

Out of Print: Available here in PDF: www.crimethinc.com/fighting

[Kent Winward · Rating 4 out of 5]

Stone Hotel fits nicely in the prison memoir genre, recounting the tales of prison life from crime to release. Butcher, always the moral convict, recounts the acute morality of our criminal class in short, direct prose placed in poetic format. After years of criminal defense work, I had to stop because the power of the State to crush the will of a human far surpasses most criminals ability to harm the public and it is a painful thing to watch. Butcher's poems are an ode to human resiliency and redemption.

[icedcheddar · Rating 5 out of 5]

its the jeet kune do of poetry. that is the best way to describe. brutally honest with himself and the rest of the world. excellent.

[Meg Tuite · Rating 5 out of 5]

I heard about this collection from a goodreads recommendation! HOLY SHITE!!! This is a collection for anyone who is all about life/death no subterfuge, full-on vulnerability in a place where that must be hidden to survive: prison?? yes, but LIFE? yes. Butcher absolutely takes us into the cell, but he also reminds us that what we consider a safe and comfortable life in a house with a lock, is just as much a cell!!! Marriage: another cell. Safe job, pension? Really? This is not to be missed. This is also not for those who want to escape and pretend there is no iron between them and the outside persona. So now a few quotes, but all of it is essential, stark, and solitary!
"i used to sit
and cry
and hold a loaded
gun up
to my head
but
i chose a
slower way
of being dead"

an easygoing guy

"highly religious
overwhelmingly friendly
neat in appearance
meticulous in his habits
worked the same job for 30 years
paid his bills on time
loved his wife
kept his garbage can lids on tight
and murdered over 49 women"

Nothing hidden. Straight up and zeroed in on humanity, with or without a past. Get a copy!!!

[Jackson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Here is my review of Stone Hotel from Verbicide issue #9 (Fall 2003):

It should be obvious that everyone who works with Verbicide is a huge Raegan Butcher fan—from his prose to his poetry, the guy can write, and I’m really proud that some of the poems included in Stone Hotel were published in Verbicide issue #7. Among the most touching aspects of the poetry of Butcher — written during his recently-ended six-year stint in prison for armed robbery — is his lack of self-pity and prisoner rhetoric (overt misguided emotion, revenge themes, repentance, etc.). The poetry is simple in its raw honesty and beautiful in its mature-yet-accesible language and intensely personal insights.

I am routinely unimpressed by CrimethInc.’s bullshit propaganda, but they have done a huge service to the literary world by printing this book. ‘Nuff said. Buy this book. Butcher’s poetry is must-read.

[Beauregard Shagnasty · Rating 5 out of 5]

Powerful stuff!

[Phil Volatile · Rating 5 out of 5]

Originally, I attained a PDF copy of this book. At the time the Kindle version wasn't yet available, but for the price, it's a waaaaay less expensive option than trying to attain a paperback copy; not that it wouldn't be awesome to have a print version, but the prices some people are willing to part with theirs are relatively high. I drink a lot of coffee and it makes my mind race. I was on my usual coffee fit when I read this book for the first time, and it really made me think. It was actually a bit shocking.

Butcher tells of what his life was like behind bars, starting with the final act that landed him there (if you want to hear more of the story as to WHY he was out robbing people at gun point, then you'll have to read Rusty String Quartet, as he talks about it in there). Murder, rape, violence, hatred, pain, humiliation, and even a little joy--it's all in there. Butcher seems to have this "matter of fact" approach to thinks, like, it's not insensitive or anything like that, it's more like "this is just how it is." I know that his time in prison must have been difficult; I couldn't imagine. But what he shares with us in Stone Hotel is a way for someone to vicariously experience what the prison life would be like.

In this volume, his first published by a press, he's compassionate, he observant, he's clear and concise--being able to say not too much, but just enough to convey his emotions and point of view, and then the poem closes. This is a really good collection, one I'll reiterate again--messes with your head a bit.

[Binary Press · Rating 4 out of 5]

Stone Hotel fits nicely in the prison memoir genre, recounting the tales of prison life from crime to release. Butcher, always the moral convict, recounts the acute morality of our criminal class in short, direct prose placed in poetic format. After years of criminal defense work, I had to stop because the power of the State to crush the will of a human far surpasses most criminals ability to harm the public and it is a painful thing to watch. Butcher's poems are an ode to human resiliency and redemption.

-K
Editor-in-Chief

[Erika · Rating 4 out of 5]

This collection of Poetry will definitely put you right into the mix of prison life and all of the emotions that go with it. Haunting, and Raegan Butcher's words will stay with you long after the last page is turned.

I was one of the fortunate few to receive a complimentary copy courtesy of GoodReads FirstReads and the author.

[danadickerson Dickerson · Rating 2 out of 5]

how not to become rich & famous. christmas shopping is over for the nihilist in your life.

[Luke Spooner · Rating 5 out of 5]

Read it a few days ago and keep thinking about it. Very intense

[Christina Borgoyn · Rating 5 out of 5]

I won Raegen Butcher's Stone Hotel: Poems From Prison in a Goodreads Giveaway. I am a writer myself, and poetry is how I choose to explore that creative part of myself. Butcher's personal journey is ever present in this cold, straightforward body of work. There's a spark of life caught behind those prison walls. How such a soul survives is beyond me, but he did to share some rather amazing words with me. "If I had grown up...stable...well-adjusted...and lived happily ever after, what in the hell would I have to write about?" These words are so true to me personally. Here echoes a voice that mirrors mine: all the trials we go through in life lead to something greater. Butcher is not hesitant about admitting what happened to him, because something so much greater, grander, more beautiful, came out of that hard place.

[Tiffany · Rating 5 out of 5]

His poetry speaks with power and intelligence. Prison is not for everyone, yet the picture he emphatically conveys is one of humor as well as insight, the course of events that have led up to all he has experienced is a slight glimpse into the brilliant mind of a man who marches to the beat of his own drum and makes it work for him in his favor.
BRAVO !!

[Brendan · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm not really one to judge and critique poetry too much; it feels a little too odd to me to offer comment on something so personal to the author. I will say, however, that the poetry I prefer comes from the darker side of life, and this collection of Butcher's poems falls squarely into that wheelhouse.

[Melanie]

That not all poetry sucks.

[Steve · Rating 4 out of 5]

Stark and powerful. I could tell from a glance that this was a book of poetry I would enjoy. This collection is great, but all too short.

[Jimmy · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have often thought I would enjoy teaching poetry in a prison. If I ever did, I would hope to have results like the poems in this book by Raegan Butcher.

[Ryan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Darkly humorous and brutally candid, these collected poems each hit home in their own unique way. I wonder if originally they were formatted differently? There's a stretch in the middle where we are essentially meet 12 or 13 other inmates through these small 3-line poems and I got the impression those were originally put together in a different way? Regardless, the entire collection flowed beautifully and really showed us the different moods and emotions, on any given day, that Butch was feeling during his incarceration. Haunting, heartbreaking, hopeful, sickly hilarious. What an assortment. I, for one, am glad he got out and shared these with us. And wrote a whole slew of awesome books to read. I'm not sure if "writer" is what he'd mentioned always dreaming of doing while he was locked up, but I'm glad he's doing it.

[Andrea Janov · Rating 3 out of 5]

This collection offered a clear insight into a man's creativity and reflection while in prison. Some lines were striking, some lines were beautiful, some were awkward, but they were all naked, raw, and honest.

[S. M. S · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautiful, honest, and sad.

[Abbe · Rating 5 out of 5]

The book I actually read was called life inside but it wasn't on here and this was the closest book to it. All the poetry and drawings were from people in the Donald E. Long juvenile detention center in Portland or. The book was amazing and showed the growth in the inmates and it helped them to tell their stories.