17 pages • 34 minutes read
Daniel BeatyKnock Knock
Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 2013A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Background
Literary Context
Daniel Beaty’s poem “Knock Knock” belongs to the genre of slam poetry, which typically combines writing, performance, competition, and audience participation. Such poems are written to be presented at public events, where multiple authors perform their own work before a panel of audience members who evaluate it and declare the winner. The word “slam” refers to both the high-energy style of performance and the audience’s lively reaction to the poem. They can “slam”—as in “loudly criticize”—the poems they dislike. Some prefer the phrase “poetry slam” to “slam poetry” because they see it less as a distinct poetic genre and more as a type of presentation. Poetry slams began to develop in the 1980s in reaction to traditional poetry readings, which some younger poets perceived as dry and passionless. The goal was to bring new vitality and energy to poetry and attract a wider and younger audience. As the slam poetry movement spread throughout the United States and beyond, numerous regional, national, and international competitions emerged. While its competitive nature has been exposed to criticism, slam poetry has developed into one of the most popular and widely accessible forms of poetry in contemporary culture. It has proved to be a democratizing force because it attracts poets of diverse backgrounds and frequently addresses the issues of racial, economic, and other forms of injustice. In addition to being socially engaged, slam poems tend to be formally loose, rising in energy, and relatively short because the performance is often limited to three minutes. “Knock Knock” features all these traits as it gradually reveals and intensifies its indictment of racism and poverty without adopting a regular meter or a rhyme scheme.
Social Context
The incarceration rate in the United States surged drastically between the 1970s and 2000s. There were approximately 400,000 inmates in American prisons and jails in 1973, but by 2008, that number rose to over 2.3 million people, close to 1% of the country’s population. Ethical and economic concerns led to its reduction in the 2010s. Nevertheless, according to World Population Review, close to 0.64% of American citizens and residents were incarcerated in 2021, much higher than in any other economically developed country. The United States has only 5% of the world’s population, yet nearly 25% of incarcerated people worldwide are inmates in American prisons and jails. The problem was effectively captured in the title of Peter K. Enns’s influential 2016 book Incarceration Nation: How the United States Became the Most Punitive Democracy in the World.
The situation is further exacerbated by inequitable demographic distribution of incarceration. The rate of Black Americans in prisons is five times that of white Americans. In 2008, when incarceration reached its peak, 0.25% of white Americans were behind bars, as opposed to 1.58% of Black Americans and 0.69% of Latinxs (Carson, E. Ann. “Prisoners in 2018.” Bureau of Justice Statistics Bulletin, 2020). In 2021, 1.24% of all Black Americans were incarcerated. In some states the rate is even higher: Nearly 3% of Black Wisconsinites are in prison. These disparities have contributed to broader racial inequities in American society. The historian Michelle Alexander offers a powerful analysis of the problem in her 2010 book The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness.
Incarceration has profoundly affected the lives of more than 5 million American children who have had a parent in prison or jail at some point in their life. Approximately 2.6 million children are in that situation on any given day. That includes 7% of all American children, 11% of all Black children, and 12.5% of the children who live in poverty (Eversley, Melanie. “Report: One in 14 children has had incarcerated parent.” USA Today, 2015). Many studies have shown that these children experience “complex threats to their emotional, physical, educational, and financial well-being” often with lifelong effects that impede their efforts to develop productive and happy lives (Martin, Eric. “Hidden Consequences: The Impact of Incarceration on Dependent Children.” National Institute of Corrections Journal, 2017).
