Too Close to Text: How Writing Revives a Blind Poet
At 6 p.m. on Tuesday night, I sit at a small rickety desk in the front row of a bright, crowded classroom. The room is musty, and there is no braille sign outside the door. This solitary classroom in the English building has played host to several of my previous classes: Victorian Gothic, Literary Interpretation, Principles of Linguistics. So I’m used to cramming myself into the student desk and balancing my enlarged texts on its scanty surface. My messenger bag is tucked under my legs, and my folded white cane rests beneath my left foot.
The room is filled with chattering students, but as I’m in the front row, I don’t engage my classmates. I take out three fresh sheets of paper (college ruled, extra dark lines) and my favorite black pen. I angle my copy of The Pelican Shakespeare so that it will give me room to write. I need more room than most students: I have to lean close to my paper to read anything written there. I can’t read the 2000-page Pelican at all, but I know how picky English professors are about their editions.
When I discovered that the print in the Pelican was far too small for me to read, I emailed the professor and asked whether I could use a more legible edition. His response was brief, uncapitalized, and unpunctuated: “use whatever edition you need.” Though I was not yet a teacher of rhetoric and composition, I interpreted his inattention to standard grammar as a lofty dismissal—he couldn’t be bothered to capitalize or punctuate for someone as insignificant as me.
I don’t want to appear slouchy when the professor walks in, I sit with upright posture—the payoff from years of classical singing. The professor enters the room—“enters” is too mild a word. He doesn’t storm in, yet he makes his presence known. He wears a dress shirt and tie: I can see the tie dark and crisp against the white shirt. A pale silhouette in front of the blackboard—a globe with thick arms. The room slides into silence. He unpacks a few papers.
He passes out a two-page syllabus and takes a swig from a plastic water bottle. The thin plastic crinkles in the silent room. Rather than welcome us to the class or introduce himself, he barrels through a list of mandates with the refrain, “This will NOT happen in my classroom!” When he has scared us out of our wits, he sets the syllabus aside and fires off a series of questions:
“Who here is a freshman? sophomore? junior? senior?”
I raise my hand for senior.
“Who is an English major?”
I raise my hand.
“And who has read Shakespeare before?”
My hand goes up again, along with several others in the class. The professor moves around, asking how many plays we’ve read—five, ten, fifteen. My hand stays up for all three rounds.
“So how many have you read?”
I count in my head. “About twenty-three.”
“Hmmph.” He doesn’t sound impressed. He addresses the class: “Well, in this course, we will read nine plays, and I want you to read each of them three times. Turn to page 452 in your book.”
I am surrounded by the susurration of thousands of thin pages being turned. Students quickly flip to the desired section and sit ready to receive instruction. I lean over my book, squinting at the spidery numbers in the upper corner of each page. I am in the 600s, the 500s, 466…455…452. I’m there, but unable to follow the professor’s rapid line references. We linger on 452 for what feels like twenty seconds before he insists on page 978. I’m flipping again, bringing my book an inch from my face. I’m still searching for the page when the professor slams his own book on the table.
He stomps around the lectern and grips the edges of my desk. “You’re the student who emailed me about a large print edition.”
I lift my head from the book, “Yes, that’s me.”
“Did you find one?”
“I did, but it’s a thousand dollars.”
He grunts in disgust, picks up my book, and flips to the correct page—placing his finger on the stanza we will read. For every example in the remaining two hours of class, he walks to my desk and turns my book to the right page. No fuss, just uncomplicated assistance.
I never found a print copy of Shakespeare to work with. I downloaded free versions of the plays to my computer and had my screen reader read them aloud. I made notes as I read, but the mechanized voice hardly glorified the bard’s work. The process was incredibly time-consuming, and I was unable to read each play three times. I had no sense of the plays’ textual presence on the page, and I did not feel comfortable analyzing the literary technique of individual passages, though I loved the experience of reading each play. I understood now why I felt more confident analyzing poetry: one poem could be enlarged to a bold 18-pt font without distorting the form too much. But working closely with hundreds of enlarged pages—even printing hundreds of enlarged pages—was thoroughly daunting.
After I finished the course, the English department chair shared how my professor petitioned the department to purchase the enlarged edition of Shakespeare, but the budget wouldn’t stretch. My professor never shared this with me, even when I took a graduate course with him.
* * *
I call myself conditionally literate, though I can read, just as I call myself blind, though I can see. I have some usable vision, but I can’t navigate a room without a cane or guide dog, and I can’t drive a car. I can read beautifully only under the right circumstances: large print, dim lighting, and fonts with serifs. These conditions also apply to writing, yet I chose six years of study—and thirteen years of teaching, writing, and editing—knowing these limitations are a source of routine and fierce frustration.
As I completed my two English degrees, I relied on audiobooks. I played the audio of a novel while I squinted at the standard print and placed flags along the margins to annotate the work. Large print was scarce, and audiobooks were only available for literary works, so I often grappled with the grungy photocopies professors provided—or the thousand-page theoretical textbooks they insisted we have. At every stage of my coursework, I asked myself, why am I doing this? I didn’t struggle to understand the work; I struggled to read it.
Though I found ways to read modern texts, I quailed before any visual assessment of a medieval manuscript or text from the archives. Perhaps my inability to see and assess these texts first-hand made them more interesting to me: I routinely enrolled in courses on medieval and renaissance literature. I threw myself into a course on Old English knowing that I’d never be able to observe the Beowulf manuscript in any real way. And the graduate Research Methods course found me in the archive, taking notes as my friend and classmate guided me through handwritten letters from World War I. I couldn’t read the handwriting for myself, and we couldn’t lift the letters from their plastic coverings, so she read aloud and described the writer’s style. We smiled over the tenderness of a soldier writing to his sweetheart, especially his repetitive use of “S.W.A.K.” and his coded symbols for “a cuddle in the old armchair.” I felt the sharp disappointment of being at a visual remove, unable to observe his handwriting for myself. At the same time, I was grateful for my scholarly friend, who wanted us to share the experience. I’m also thankful that so many handwritten records are being digitized for worldwide access. I may never be able to decipher Henry VIII’s frantic letters to Anne Boleyn, but I can access some dedicated scholar’s transcription of the work.
Reading aloud—or being read to—is the blind scholar’s bread and butter, whether it’s the work of an automated voice, a dedicated friend, or a hesitant student. As a teacher unable to read my students’ dubious penmanship, I ask them to read their work to me. They read exercises, formal writing, poetry, and class texts—both privately at my desk and publicly before the class. And I like to think that my dependence on their reading voices motivates them to own their writing; even the quietest student must learn to read aloud because I need them to.
While I exhort my students to read their work aloud, I adamantly refused to perform my own poetry in public for many years. Because I’ve spent most of my life struggling with illegible standard print, I never felt confident about my skill in public reading. A mentor finally insisted that I face my fears and learn to read my work aloud. She placed before me the dilemma of a professional author: “As your reputation grows, people will want to hear you read your work.” Together we rehearsed the process at each venue, first with my poems printed in bold 24-pt font and then with digital copies on an iPad with inverted colors. For each public reading, I had to modify the form of the poem; as the text got bigger, the poem’s form fell out of shape. I had to delineate each poem into new, brief lines that worked with my limited vision, thinking of the lines as a musical score, telling me where to breathe. The process is still a visual battle, but I have found that audiences are receptive and kind. The anxiety I feel is my own imposter syndrome—my desire to be flawless and capable before others.
Writing has helped me to confront the pressure of perfectionism and accept the different shades of vulnerability I experience daily. As I prepared to graduate with my Master’s in English in 2012, I wrestled with the next stage of my life. I had been a student and scholar. I knew I wanted to teach. But the path forward was unclear.
On the advice of another professor, I began to write publicly for the first time. I started a blog and published brief essays on aspects of my blind experience—how I shop, how I cook, how I navigate with my cane. I also joined scholarly communities for my research interests and began submitting pieces for publication. The very first essay I submitted was accepted—and it appeared in a textbook six years later.
My poetry had a much quicker path to publication, but I still couldn’t believe that people actually admired my work. When my first poems were accepted, I remember thinking the editor needed to fill space in the journal. But it was a digital journal. There was no need to fill space. I had to repeat this line of reasoning to myself to really understand that the editor had appreciated my poems. I enjoyed and valued my own work, but I had been a private writer for so long, I never expected my work to gain such a positive public reception. Writing was something I did for myself and for close friends. Suddenly, strangers were saying they liked it, they learned from it. Even friends shared how my blog posts had revealed something new about blindness that they never considered. I recognized that my perspective was needed and honored.
* * *
My drive toward a writing life comes from the intense relief, restoration, and community that writing brings. To write effectively, I must be honest about my feelings and experiences. When I build a world the reader can step into, I am forced to acknowledge, confront, and accommodate the experiences that I’ve had.
I find in my work a relentless commitment to joy and healing. After one public reading, a woman in the audience asked, “Where are your angry poems?” I took some time to think about the question, and I realized, I don’t have any “angry” poems. I have written about situations that made me angry, but in the act of making and revising the poem, I performed an emotional alchemy—spinning rage and hurt feelings into humor. The anger simmers beneath the poem’s surface, but it’s not what I want to force on the reader. “I’m hurt” or “I’m angry” is not enough to create literary art; I want the reader to go on their own journey to these feelings. So I write the poem that helps me handle the feelings—and models a similar transformation for the reader.
In seeking a healing emotional arc, I am leaning on the work of other blind writers, who share a realistic, but hopeful portrayal of their experience. While the market abounds with tragic stories of disability or saccharine episodes of overcoming, I return to the writers who describe their circumstances with authenticity and candor—finding a hope that reads as sustainable and flexible. I give myself permission to feel anger and write anger, but I don’t want to stay angry. I want my poetry to be on the side of balance and health, a joy to craft and a relief to revisit.
I find value in the work of disabled writers not just for their capable style, but for a shared experience. Representations of disability are still so rare; in popular media, disabled characters are often novelties or superheroes. It’s easy to find the blind woman who solves crimes with her prophetic insights or the autistic man whose pattern-focused mind makes him a superhuman doctor. But where is the deaf barista or the blind receptionist just filing her nails?
Disability is still rendered in magical terms, because viewers want to believe in divine compensation for physical impairment. When my first book of poetry was published, I participated in a series of radio and TV interviews. One news anchor began the interview by asking me, “Don’t you think you’re an inspiration?” and a radio host said, “Isn’t your blindness a superpower?” My answer in both cases was the same: poetry, not blindness, is the superpower.
My blindness, like my brown hair, is always with me. I live with it. I cope with it. I get frustrated by it, and I celebrate it. But blindness, even with its unique way of shaping my experience, is not what restores me. The intense, focused attention of poetry heals me. The solitude of composing, the collaboration of editing, the shared joy of public reading and discussion, these are the rewards of a literary life.
The thoughtful work of other blind and disabled writers reassures me and guides me toward self-acceptance. Unlike the tragic victims and improbable heroes of popular media, blind and disabled writers speak about the everyday challenges I face—from obnoxious strangers trying to pet their guide dog to intrusive salespeople giving unsolicited fashion tips. Because these authors are committed to an authentic portrayal of disability, they, too, celebrate the little victories that I treasure—the student who guides me to safety during a fire drill without being asked, the barista who brings me my cappuccino because the restaurant is crowded, the stranger who actually says, “I’m holding the door on the right for you.” Having a disability doesn’t make someone a hero. The power reposes in a life of communication that renders experience for the author to reflect on—and welcomes readers to the conversation.
Read poetry by Emily K. Michael published in this issue of Wordgathering.
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About the Author
Emily K. Michael is a blind poet, musician, and writing teacher from Jacksonville, FL. Since 2016, she has edited poetry for Wordgathering. Her poetry and essays have appeared in Wordgathering, The Hopper, Artemis Journal, The South Carolina Review, Nine Mile Magazine, Narrative Inquiry in Bioethics, BREVITY’s Nonfiction Blog, Barriers and Belonging, Welcome to the Resistance, and AWP Writer’s Notebook. Her first book, Neoteny: Poems (Finishing Line Press, 2019), includes a finalist for The Atlantis Award as well as a nominee for The Pushcart Prize. Emily’s work centers on ecology, disability, and music. Emily is passionate about grammar, singing, birding, and guide dogs. Find more of her work at http://emilykmichael.com.