Beauty Is a Verb

by Jennifer Bartlett

  BRIAN TEARE is the author of The Room Where I Was Born, Sight Map and Pleasure, as well as the chapbooks Pilgrim and Transcendental Grammar Crown. His most recent writing concerns embodied and medicalized consciousness and addresses both the symptoms of and treatments for gouty rheumatoid arthritis, celiac disease and multiple food sensitivities. An assistant professor at Temple University, he lives in Philadelphia, where he makes books by hand for his micropress, Albion Books.

  JILLIAN WEISE is the author of the poetry collection The Amputee’s Guide to Sex and the novel The Colony. Her work has appeared in The Atlantic Monthly, The New York Times and Tin House, among others. She was a poetry fellow at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown and a Fulbright fellow in Tierra del Fuego, Argentina, before joining the faculty at Clemson University. Weise is a cyborg.

  DAVID WOLACH is editor of Wheelhouse Magazine & Press and an active participant in Nonsite Collective. Wolach’s first full-length collection is Occultations (Black Radish Books 2011). Other books include the multi-media transliteration plus chapbook, Prefab Eulogies Volume 1: Nothings Houses (BlazeVox [books], 2010), the full-length Hospitalogy (chapbook forthcoming from Scantily Clad Press, 2012), and book alter(ed) (Ungovernable Press, 2009). Wolach is professor of text arts, poetics and aesthetics at The Evergreen State College, co-curating the PRESS Text Arts and Radical Politics Series there, and is visiting professor in Bard College’s Workshop In Language and Thinking.

  KATHI WOLFE was a finalist in the 2007 Pudding House Chapbook competition and her chapbook, Helen Takes The Stage: The Helen Keller Poems, was subsequently published by Pudding House. Wolfe has received a Puffin Foundation Grant and was a winner of the 2010 Moving Words Poetry Competition, a competition conducted by the Arlington County (Virginia) Office of Cultural Affairs and Metro, the Washington, D.C. area transit authority. Wolfe is legally blind.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  All work is reprinted with the permission of the authors unless otherwise noted.

  Tom Andrews’ poems—”The Hemophiliac’s Motorcycle” and the excerpts from “Codeine Diary”—are both from his collection The Hemophiliac’s Motorcycle (University of Iowa Press, 1994). All work is reprinted with the permission of the University of Iowa Press.

  Jennifer Bartlett’s essay “Exit Through the Gift Shop” originally published in a slightly different form as “Ethics, Poetry and the Identity of the Disabled Body” in Wordgathering (July 2010).

  Sheila Black’s poem “What You Mourn” first appeared in Dancing with Cecil (Inglis House Poetry, 2004) and “Reconstruction” in Mediphors. Both of these and the poems “Objects Waiting to be Dangerous,” and “Playing Dead” all appeared in House of Bone (CW Press, 2007). An earlier version of her essay “Waiting to be Dangerous” appeared in Prime Number Magazine, No. 7 (July 2011).

  John Lee Clark’s poem “Long Goodbyes” from Suddenly Slow (Handtype Press, 2008). “Deaf Blind: Three Squared Cinquian” originally appeared in She Asks for Slippers While Pointing at the Salt (Inglis House Poetry, 2009). “Beach Basketball” and “Clamor” originally appeared in Two Reviews (2111). His previous version of his essay, “Translating and Reading ASL Poetry” was published in Their Buoyant Bodies Respond (Inglis House Poetry, 2011).

  Norma Cole’s poem “Speech Production: Themes & Variations” from Collective Memory (Omnidawn, 2006). Her essay “Why I Am Not A Translator” previously published in To Be At Music: Selected Essays and Talks (Granary Press, 2010).

  Michael Davidson’s essay excerpted from “Missing Larry: The Poetics of Disability in the Work of Larry Eigner.” Originally published in Sagetrieb, 18 (1) 5-27, 1999. Reprinted in Concerto for My Left Hand (University of Michigan Press, 2008).

  Amber DiPietra’s poem, “bunny baby fast and slow” originally appeared in Tarpaulin Sky (Summer 2008), and “scars, a thread” in Monday Night (2010). My Notebook Has a Rigid Spine or How to Operate the Body in Writing was part of The Poetics of Healing Symposium, 2010.

  Kara Dorris’ poem “Fairytale: How Spring Comes to the Land of Snow and Icicles/ (Dream Map)” has been published in a radically different form in Thirteen Myna Birds (2009).

  Robert Fagan’s poems “Proem” and “Siege” originally appeared in Stepping Out (Red Moon Press, 2007). His essay is from Pieces (Red Moon Press, 2009).

  Jim Ferris’ poem “Poet of Cripples” from The Hospital Poems (Main Stret Rag Publishing, 2004). “Lost Hyoid” from Slouching Towards Guantanamo (Main Street Rag Publishing, 2011). “Poems with Disabilities” originally appeared in Ragged Edge 21.2 (March/April 2000). “From the Surgeons: Drs. Sofield, Louis, Hark, Alfini, Millar, Baehr, Bevan-Thomas, Tsatsos, Ericson, and Bennan” originally appeared in Ragged Edge (March/April 1998).

  Kenny Fries’ poems “Excavation,”“Body Language,” and “Beauty and Variations” from Anesthesia: Poems (1996, The Advocado Press). His essay is adapted from the introduction to Staring Back: The Disability Experience from the Inside Out (Plume, 1997).

  Lisa Gill’s poem “Wicker-work: A Sestina for Zukofsky” originally appeared 1913: A Journal of Forms (2009). The excerpt is from The Relenting: A Play of Sorts (New Rivers Press, 2010).

  C.S. Giscombe’s poem “Northern Road, 2” was originally published in Giscome Road (Dalkay Archive Press, 1998.) “Vernacular Examples,” and “The Old Northwest” are from Prairie Style (Dalkay Archive Press, 2008). Reprinted by permission of Dalkay Archive Press.

  Ona Gritz’ poems “No” and “Prologue” originally appeared in Wordgathering (July 2010). “Hemiplegia” first appeared in Bellevue Literary Review (Spring 2009). Her essay “A Conscious Decision,” is constructed from several of her columns in Literary Mama.

  Gretchen E. Henderson’s poem “Exhibit U” originally published in Double Room (2009).

  Laura Hershey’s poem “Thousand Island” originally published in Wordgathering (March 2011). Reprinted by permission. “Working Together,” “Morning,” and “Telling” are all from her book Spark Before Dark (Finishing Line Press, 2011). Reprinted by permission of Finishing Line Press.

  Cynthia Hogue’s poems “Green surrounds the mind of summer,” “In a Mute Season,” “Radical Optimism” from The Incognito Body by Cynthia Hogue. Copyright © 2006 by Cynthia Hogue. Reprinted by permission of the author and Red Hen Press. Her essay “The Creature Within: On Poetry and Dis/Ability,” originally appeared as a guest blog on writing practice in Her Circle Ezine on 29 September (2010).

  Petra Kuppers’ poem “The Origin of My Wheelchair” originally appeared in Wordgathering (June, 2007). “Crip Music” is from Cripple Poetics: A Love Story (Homofactus Press, 2008). Spherical Song Cycles: performance script, fragments published in Disability Studies Quarterly, Poets for Living Waters website, Humanities Epistemologies Journal, and performed as part of Bare Bones Butoh (SF) and various Olimpias actions. A version of her essay “Sound of the Bones” was published in Disability Studies Quarterly (26.4).

  Stephen Kuusisto’s poem “Only Bread, Only Light” from Only Bread, Only Light (Copper Canyon Press, 2000). Reprinted by permission of Copper Canyon Press. His poems “Borges, they are kicking the wind out of me in Iowa City” and “Letter to Borges from Houston, Texas” both originally appeared in The Red Wheelbarrow (Spring 2010).

  Laurie Clements Lambeth’s poem “Seizure, or Seduction of Persephone” from Veil and Burn (University of Illinois Press, 2008).

  Alex Lemon’s poems “Mosquito,” “Other Good,” and “Cocoon” all from Mosquito (Tin House Books, 2006). “And No More May I Be” from Hallelujah Blackout (Milkweed Editions, 2008).

  Raymond Luczak’s poem “Hummingbirds” from St. Michael’s Fall (Deaf Life Press, 1995). “Instructions to Hearing Persons Desiring a Deaf Man” first appeared in the journal Van Gogh’s Ear (2004).

  Josephine Miles’ poems “Doll,” “Album,” “Before,” “Intensives,” and “Payment” are from Collected Poems,1930-83 (University of Illinois Press, 1984). Copyright 1983 by Josephine Miles. Used with permissio
n of the poet and the University of Illinois Press.

  Vassar Miller’s poem “The Common Core” from Wage War on Silence (Weslyean Press, 1960) and “Subterfuge” from Selected and New Poems 1950-1980 (Latitude Press, 1981). Those and “If I had Wheels or Love” and “Dramatic Monologue in the Speaker’s Own Voice” are included in If I had Wheels or Love (Southern Methodist University Press, 1991). Reprinted by permission of Southern Methodist University Press.

  Michael Northen’s essay “A Short History of American Disability Poetry” appeared in a somewhat different version in Wordgathering (March 2008).

  Danielle Pafunda’s “In This Plate My Illness is Visible” and “In This Plate My Illness is a Wire That Can Easily Cut Meat and Bone” first appeared in Bone Bouquet (2009). “In This Plate I Receive My First Diagnosis” first appeared in Court Green (2010).

  Susan Schweik’s essay “The Voice of ‘Reason’” first appeared in Public Culture. (13 (3), pp.485-505). Reprinted by permission of Duke University Press.

  Daniel Simpson’s poem “A Few Things” originally published in Cortland Review (November 2001), “Broken Reverie” in Disabilities Studies Quarterly (Fall 2008), and “School for the Blind” in Word-gathering (September 2009). His essay “Line Breaks the Way I See Them” appeared in slightly different form in On the Outskirts (Inglis House, 2006). “About Chester Kowalski I Don’t Know Much” is from his Audio Chapbook (2008).

  Ellen McGrath Smith’s poem “Theodore Eslin: Poet of Maine” first appeared in Wordgathering (June 2010). Her essay “‘Hearing a Pear’: The Poetry Reading on a New Frequency” is from a paper presented at the 2010 Associated Writers Convention and first printed in Wordgathering (June 2007).

  Hal Sirowitz’s poem “A Step Above Cows” first appeared in Apple Valley Review: A Journal of Contemporary Literature (Spring 2010) and “Avoiding Rigidity” was published in Bellevue Literary Review: A Journal of Humanity and Human Experience (Fall 2009) “A Famous Ball Player” first appeared in Hanging Loose 95 (2009).

  Jillian Weise presented her essay “The Disability Rights Movement and the Legacy of Poets with Disabilities” as a lecture at The Poetry of the 1970s Conference in 2008. It was also published that same year in National Poetry Foundation’s online Mesh. Her poems “The Amputee’s Guide to Sex,” “The Body in Pain” and “The Old Questions” are from The Amputee’s Guide To Sex (Soft Skull Press, 2007).

  David Wolach’s poem “corporeal self-punishment” originally appeared in Cannot Exist, (Issue No. 6) and is from the full-length Occultations (Black Radish Books, 2010). “Costuming/Marked in Holiday Complex” first appeared in Elective Affinities (2009). Parts of his essay “Body Maps & Distraction Zones,” stem from the process note for Occultations, and from his talk, “The Common Body,” for The Nonsite Collective’s Summer Suite: Curriculum on the Commons (2010).

  Kathi Wolfe’s poems “On the Subway,” “Ashes: Rome, 1946,” “She Loved Hot Dogs So Much” and “The Sun is Warm: Nagasaki 1948” are from Helen Keller Takes the Stage: The Helen Keller Poems (Pudding House Press, 2008). “Helen Keller: Obsession and Muse” was published in a slightly different form in Wordgathering (June 2007).

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