Wordgathering

A Journal of Disability Poetry

Volume 6     Issue 3     September 2012

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Essays and Fiction in This Issue

The essays section of Wordgathering provides a chance to explore and reflect upon disability literature from a wide variety of angles. This time editors are extremely happy to be able to present new, exploratory work by Lisa Gill. Here in an essay, Gill sets out a form she has developed in memory of Delmore Schwartz called inaudible rhyme. After explaining how this form works, she illustrates it with ten original poems. In addition, to creating new forms, disability literature tries to draw on material from the past that can be reworked in ways that create greater awareness of disabilities issues. In her essay, Canadian writer Nancy Viva Davis Halifax, describes how she incorporated material from the Tracy Lynn Latimer death, well known in her country, into poetry. The final pair of essays perform another important function in disability literature, taking its contemporary poets seriously as writers to be analyzed and studied in an academic manner. Cheré M. Smith and Chelsea Fulk examine the writing of several poets in the recently published anthology, Beauty is a Verb: The New Poetry of Disability. Smith discusses a common approach in the work of Larry Eigner and Jennifer Bartlett, while Fulk takes a look at the way Danielle Pafunda and Hal Sirowitz deal with "the gaze."

• Chelsea Fulk, "Abject Poetics: Advocating Disability Rights in Pafunda and Sirowitz"
• Lisa Gill, "The Written Forms of This Myriad Body"
• Nancy Viva Davis Halifax, "Open Season - writing Tracy Latimer as a something-to-be-done"
• Cheré M. Smith, "The Frames of Creative Constraint in the Poetry of Larry Eigner and Jennifer Bartlett"

Quality short disability-related fiction by writers with disabilities is not easy to come by so Wordgathering is especially pleased to have two such stories in this issue. Anne Finger, known for her work in disability fiction and memoir, reaches back into literature of the past to present an alternative version of a classic story from the point of view of the character in the story with the disability. Ellen McGrath Smith offers a completely different style from a very contemporary point of view. Like Finger's, though, it that revolves around relationships.

• Anne Finger, "Convalescence"
• Ellen McGrath Smith, "Two Really Different Things"

Also in this issue are book reviews of two works of fiction. Check out the latest work by Floyd Skloot and J. L Powers. in the "Reviews" section.

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