FREELAND by Leigh Sugar

The opening page to FREELAND by Leigh Sugar reads:

Freeland, Michigan is home to the Saginaw Correctional Facility, a Michigan state prison.

Leigh Sugar’s FREELAND is a book of obsession and careful analysis, one that constantly turns over the reality of incarceration in the United States in order to examine it from a variety of angles. For much of the book, Sugar’s speaker corresponds with an incarcerated writer, referred to as a beloved, and many of the poems in this collection map their relationship and how they must contend with the reality of one of them living in confinement. 

          These days I scrawl 619754
          on envelopes after a locked-up beloved’s last name.

          He says, Leigh, I dream I’ve forgotten my number
          and wake to realize I’ve forgotten my name.

          (from “Inheritance”)

This carceral reality inflects every poem in FREELAND and is omnipresent—for Sugar’s speaker, living a life outside of prison doesn’t mean that she ever stops thinking about prison; if anything, her freedom brings into stark contrast the fact that her beloved, and countless others, remain incarcerated in the United States. 

          What irreverent law,

          the cosmos: birds circle aimlessly

          in false dusk.

          (from “Eclipse Before Seeing You In Prison”)

In a breathless, unpunctuated prose block,  Sugar deftly renders the panic of not knowing what to do upon the release of the beloved at the end of a ten-year sentence:

          Do I stay in the car or do I wait for you in the waiting room
          where I’ve been returning all these years to visit     Do I call ahead

          or do I trust that everything’s proceeded smoothly     Do I bring

          a change of clothes for you     What color T-shirt do you want
          Vneck or crewneck      What size jeans      What fit      What fit will be

          in style in ten years     What brand of underwear     Do you still like

          black boxer-briefs      Sneakers or boots      High or low-cut socks

          Should I bring a snack      Is a bagel with cream cheese OK     How
          about fruit salad     How long since you’ve eaten a strawberry …

          (from “Fantasy”)

Throughout FREELAND, Sugar weaves in and out between invented forms: “Security” is written from the perspective of a prison security guard who is processing Sugar’s speaker through a checkpoint for a visit, revealing the guard’s casual, default dehumanization of the incarcerated while subjecting Sugar’s speaker to increasingly invasive searches. In a second poem titled “Fantasy,” words wrap around the page to form a box, or a door, with finely-tuned statements that show the ways in which we inhabit a world that contains structural deficits. It becomes clear that even some basic, humanizing wishes inhabit the realm of fantasy for how far we are from actually seeing these statements become truth.

          “Diseases have cures and doctors to cure them, and there is no hierarchy of who gets what care when. People only die when they’ve

          lived long enough to give love and receive love and learn as much as they’re capable of, and then when it happens it is without pain

          or cost. Cells are only what keep bodies and plants alive.”

          (from “Fantasy”)

The highlight of FREELAND is a crown of sonnets entitled “Corrections”—while other parts of the collection are experiments in form and language, with poems frequently departing from the left margin and across the page, the pared-down nature of the sonnet and their sequential links which build upon each other have a forceful, cutting effect which reveals the emotional core at stake in the collection. “Corrections” examines the ways that Sugar’s speaker’s relationship with the beloved is fraught as a result of his incarceration, and the strain that it places upon both of them to maintain this relationship in confinement and under constant surveillance. 

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          Through letters, we wrote ourselves into existence.
          Forged a shared history amidst the void.
          Became—ourselves, each other—characters
          for the other’s story. It’s too much pressure
          to be your symbol of freedom, I said, and knew
          I was projecting. I don’t know how to love you
          other than to tell you of my days, my meals,
          everything you cannot see. What if it’s not enough?
          What if writing you my life is a distraction
          from some other writing I should, could,
          would be writing? I’m afraid to be a woman
          waiting. I’ve always lived with hunger.
          I’m more afraid of your presence. Afraid
          of what will happen when the lack is gone.

          (from “Corrections”)

True to life, Sugar’s speaker does not arrive at a neatly-packaged revelation by the end of the collection—it is clear that she is changed by her experience and will be unable to stop thinking about the reality of incarceration. Readers of FREELAND will likely find themselves contemplating the structures, including language, that seek to render the realities and experiences of incarcerated people invisible.  

William Ward Butler / June 5th, 2025