Michael Northen

Jennifer Bartlett

Sheila Fiona Black

"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 context. 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"--

The New Poetry of Disability

Beauty is a Verb

Sheila Black

Chosen by the American Library Association as a 2012 Notable Book in Poetry. Beauty is a Verb is a ground-breaking anthology of disability poetry, essays on disability, and writings on the poetics of both. Crip Poetry. Disability Poetry. Poems with Disabilities. This is where poetry and disability intersect, overlap, collide and make peace. "[BEAUTY IS A VERB] is going to be one of the defining collections of the 21st century...the discourse between ability, identity & poetry will never be the same." —Ron Silliman, author of In The American Tree "This powerful anthology succeeds at intimately showing...disability through the lenses of poetry. What emerges from the book as a whole is a stunningly diverse array of conceptions of self and other.”“br />—Publishers Weekly, starred review From "Beauty and Variations" by Kenny Fries: How else can I quench this thirst? My lips travel down your spine, drink the smoothness of your skin. I am searching for the core: What is beautiful? Who decides? Can the laws of nature be defied? Your body tells me: come close. But beauty distances even as it draws me near. What does my body want from yours? My twisted legs around your neck. You bend me back. Even though you can't give the bones at birth I wasn't given, I let you deep inside. You give me—what? Peeling back my skin, you expose my missing bones. And my heart, long before you came, just as broken. I don't know who to blame. So each night, naked on the bed, my body doesn't want repair, but longs for innocence. If innocent, despite the flaws I wear, I am beautiful. Sheila Black is a poet and children's book writer. In 2012, Poet Laureate Philip Levine chose her as a recipient of the Witter Bynner Fellowship. Disability activist Jennifer Bartlett is a poet and critic with roots in the Language school. Michael Northen is a poet and the editor of Wordgathering: A Journal of Poetics and Disability.

Michael Northen

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