Book Review: Landscapes: The Poetry of Paul Kahn (Paul Kahn)Reviewed by Michael NorthenThe booth sponsored by the Disability Literature Consortium at this year's Associated Writers and Writing Programs Conference (AWP), offered the work of over forty writers working in the field of disability literature. While some such as Eileen Cronin's Mermaid or Rachel Simon's Riding the Bus with My Sister were well-marketed books put out by major publishers, the vast majority of the books were from writers working with small presses whose work is not available in most book stores. Even among these, however, there was one book that set itself apart. It was a wire-bound book called Landscapes: The Poetry of Paul Kahn. The book was created specifically to be available at this event by Kahn's widow Ruth, and to date, the consortium is the only place where it can be found. Playwright, poet and artist Paul Kahn died in January of 2010 without leaving behind a published book, so the appearance of Landscapes is significant. While the book contains some exceptionally moving poems, such as "In Katherine's Room"and "In the Mirror," Kahn's work as a whole does not have the nuanced experimentation of poets like Sheila Black and Jillian Weise, nor does this volume show the sophisticated structural integration of Rusty Morrison or Kobus Moolman. What it does contain, however, are touchstones of the development of one of the first poets with a physical disability to openly strike out on his own and explore the many issues that confronted men living with disabilities. To read Kahn's work is to relive those issues before the development of much of the work that is available as a result of scholars and thinkers in disability studies today. It is to return to a landscape before answers that sometimes sound "politically correct"were automatically provided. The volume, though slim, provides a nice balance of the subjects Kahn that occupied Kahn and of the various moods in which he responded to them. Ruth Kahn has ordered these poems in a way that generally progress from some simpler poems that seem first efforts to the final poem "Sacrament,"her husband's eulogy for himself. There is an anger and an unsettledness in many of the poems, but Kahn is also capable of humor, too. One of the nicest surprises is "Ode to My Electric Toothbrush"with lines like "Toothbrush, you are sly,/ pretending to be an innocuous tool for oral hygiene." Another is "My Reincarnation"in which he imagines himself reborn as a bar of bath soap in a woman's shower. Clearly Kahn is deeply in love with his wife and several of the poems celebrate that happiness of his life with her. It his poems about living with disability and society's reaction to him as a disabled man, however, that are the real gold for those interested in understanding the trajectory of disability poetry. In "The Clinic in the 50s"Kahn pre-dates many of the more recent descriptions of mid-twentieth century medical attitudes towards children with disabilities with lines like: We were the hopeless ones, who never showed out gratitude by getting any better. and
We played our part … Writing at the edge of a time in which writers and others with disabilities were just beginning to claim disability as an identity, Kahn reveals the struggle that individuals went through in making – and frequently rejecting –that identity. "In the Mirror"expresses this dilemma:
Body, gruff husband, At the same time, he also recognizes the possibility of his body as a source of joy. Perhaps his most beautiful stanza comes from, "In Katharine's Room." In Katharine's room I do not hate my body anymore. It is fortunate that Paul Kahn's wife has saved these poems from possible obscurity by making them available to readers who may not have been familiar with his work. It would be wonderful to think that through groups like the Disability Literature Consortium, Kahn's poems will continue to be read and appreciated.
Title: Landscapes: The Poetry of Paul Kahn
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