Beauty is a verb The new poetry of disability

Book - 2011

"Beauty is a Verb is the first of its kind: a high-quality anthology of poetry by American poets with physical disabilities. Poems and essays alike consider how poetry, coupled with the experience of disability, speaks to the poetics of each poet included. The collection explores first the precursors whose poems had a complex (and sometimes absent) relationship with disability, such as Vassar Miller, Larry Eigner, and Josephine Miles. It continues with poets who have generated the Crip Poetics Movement, such as Petra Kuppers, Kenny Fries, and Jim Ferris. Finally, the collection explores the work of poets who don't necessarily subscribe to the identity of "crip-poetics" and have never before been published in this exact c...ontext. These poets include Bernadette Mayer, Rusty Morrison, Cynthia Hogue, and C. S. Giscombe. The book crosses poetry movements--from narrative to language poetry--and speaks to and about a number of disabilities including cerebral palsy, deafness, blindness, multiple sclerosis, and aphasia due to stroke, among others"--

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Subjects
Published
El Paso, TX : Cinco Puntos Press c2011.
Language
English
Other Authors
Jennifer Bartlett, 1969- (-), Sheila (Sheila Fiona) Black, Michael Northen, 1946-
Edition
1st ed
Physical Description
383 p. ; 23 cm
Bibliography
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN
9781935955054
Contents unavailable.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

This powerful anthology attempts to-and succeeds at-intimately showing (meaning, at various times and among many other aims, sharing the experience of, defining the self in terms of, refusing to define the self in terms of, trying to define, exploring the indefiniteness of) disability through the lenses of poetry. According to the editors' preface, "we include not only poets who created and embrace the disability/ crip poetics movement but also those who might resist such a classification and have never been considered in that exact context." Indeed, some readers and writers may strongly resist the idea of disability as a context for gathering poems, though what emerges from the book as a whole is a stunningly diverse array of conceptions of self and other. There are no simple truths here. Jim Ferris insists readers "Look with care, look deep./ You know you are a cripple too. / I sing for cripples; I sing for you." The poet and novelist Jillian Weise bucks at the "disability poetics" banner in an essay in which she says "I.find it discouraging that these first efforts are essentializing, seeking to brand a common disabled experience." Coming from across the aesthetic spectrum, these poets and poems demonstrate the deep truth of what Vassar Millar writes in a poem anthologized here: "No man's sickness has a synonym." (Sept.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

From "Poems with Disabilities" by Jim Ferris: I'm sorry--this space is reserved for poems with disabilities. I know it's one of the best spaces in the book, but the Poems with Disabilities Act requires us to make all reasonable accommodations for poems that aren't normal. There is a nice space just a few pages over--in fact (don't tell anyone) I think it's better than this one, I myself prefer it. Actually I don't see any of those poems right now myself, but you never know when one might show up, so we have to keep this space open. You can't always tell just from looking at them either. Sometimes they'll look just like a regular poem when they roll in--you're reading along and suddenly everything changes, the world tilts a little, angle of vision jumps, your entrails aren't where you left them. You remember your aunt died of cancer at just your age and maybe yesterday's twinge means something after all. Your sloppy, fragile heart beats a little faster and then you know. You just know: the poem is right where it belongs. Excerpted from Beauty Is a Verb: The New Poetry of Disability All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.