Beauty is a Verb: The New Poetry of Disability
Publisher
Cinco Puntos Press
Publication Year
2011
ISBN
9781935955054
Pages
383 pages
Genre
realism
Format
poetry
Item Type
Nonfiction
Annotation
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.
Grade Level
6-8; 9-12
Diversity Topics
Disability and Health; Physical disability; Developmental disability; hemophilia; cerebral palsy; hypophosphotemia; deaf; blind; stroke; paralysis; Gullian-Barre syndrome; multiple sclerosis; dystonia; arthritis; lamellar ichthyosis
Main Character
multiple
Race/Ethnicities
multiple
Keywords
personal stories; poetry anthology; identity; different abilities
Diversity Impact
direct
STARS Citation
Bartlett, Jennifer; Black, Sheila; and Northen, Michael, "Beauty is a Verb: The New Poetry of Disability" (2011). Diverse Families. 1523.
https://stars.library.ucf.edu/diversefamilies/1523