Language Association’s forthcoming volume, The Futures of Neurodiversity, encourages poetry submissions. There is much more work to be done, but these examples and other developments provide a stellar foundation from which to continue to build and grow. 3. The point is thatNeurodivergent,Disability,Deaf,Mad, andCrip poetics are here to stay; their beautiful and excitingmultiplicity is wellrepresented by the poems in this issue. The poems of Emily K. Michael and Daniel Simpson speak directly to the kinds of questions (typically, sighted) people seem to feel free to ask Blind folks. The irony and style in Michael’s “Strangers at the Coffeeshop” and Simpson’s “Sure You Can Ask Me a Personal Question” each comment in honest and critical ways on the daily vicissitudes ofbeing “othered,” without losing one’s sense of humor, and likewise not being unfamiliar with intrusion. Howwe choose toperceive ourselves, as compared tohowothers think about us, threads through many of the poems. In “Body Language,”Kenny Fries says/asks, “The skin has healed but the scars grow deeper —/ When you touch them what do they tell you about my life?” Ona Gritz writes in “Vestige”: My husband has a new theory. He tells me I don’t have to have cerebral palsy, that it’s my choice. What do you say to something like that? Gritz’s description of watching the “other mothers” (“Perched on a Park Bench, I Watch the Other Mothers”) is rich with emotion that may resonate for many people—with and without disabilities— but will likely be especially compelling for those who have parented and/or experienced longing and dislocation. Sheila Black describes disability poetics in terms of its potential for liberation; Jim Ferris’s aesthetic statement serves as a kind of manifesto on disability poetics, and could easily have been used as the Volume 7 - Page 25
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