Reviewed by Michael Northen
Eighteen years ago, Jim Ferris*, one of the foundational theorists of disability poetry, proposed the following definition for the fledgling discipline: “Disability poetry can be characterized by several characteristics: a challenge to stereotypes and an insistence on self-definition; foregrounding of the perspective of people with disabilities; an emphasis on embodiment, especially atypical embodiment; and alternative techniques and poetics.”
While disability poetry has blossomed since that time, this definition still holds. The first three conditions of Ferris’s definition are on display in current poetry books and anthologies by disabled writers, but it is still relatively rare for a poet to concentrate on the final feature, that of alternative techniques and poetics. In his recent book, What’s Left is Tender, Travis Chi Wing Lau takes up that challenge.
Lau’s initial approach is a subtle one. The book’s first poem, “Ars Poetica,” seems like a straightforward enough apology that might even find a comfortable place on a tombstone. Style aside, it appears well in the standard tradition; however, there is something else at work here. A look at the first of six pages of notes that append the poems at the end of the book reads:
“Ars Poetica” reworks the language of parliamentarian and
man of letters, William Hay, in his Deformity: An Essay (R. and J.
Dodsley, 1754), one of the first personal essays in defense of
disability. (p. 101)
From the very beginning, Lau ties his poems to writers of the past. It is another way in which he builds on the work of Ferris, who in 2004 took a first step toward announcing a disability poetics. Ferris had been emphatic that disabled poets not divorce themselves from past poetic traditions but find ways to connect to and expand them. What’s Left is Tender takes this notion much deeper. It is not merely a recognition of other poets but a deep archaeology that rediscovers and makes use of past writings that are probably not familiar – and possibly unavailable – to most readers. Of the twenty-six poems in the first section of Lau’s book, eleven of them have a comment in the “Notes” related to their source. Lau uses these sources in a variety of ways. Some, such as the comment from William Hay above, dive many years back to uncover the words of early writing about disability. Others give credit to contemporary disabled writers like torrin a. greathouse (who invented the burning haibun form that Lau uses in “Rage”) or Alison Kafer (for the reference to crip time in Lau’s “Incantation for Access”).
One of my favorite examples of Lau’s exploration of form is the hypallogo, which he attributes to Lewis Turo. The form is a conversation between two poems where a writer takes an already known poem and answers it line by line with a poem of their own.
Hunchback
After Dylan Thomas
The hunchback in the park
with raucous curve
A solitary mister
on whom they turned their backs
Propped between trees and water
his only kin
From the opening of the garden lock
himself nature’s key
That lets the trees and water enter
like all permeable selves
Until the Sunday sombre bell at dark
steals what is left of his joy (p.25)
Having previously given us “Apostrophe to Kyphosis,” Lau has chosen a poem from a known poet that he feels relates to his condition upon which to comment. As the first few lines of “Hunchback” illustrate, Lau uses Italicized lines to comment on Thomas’s original. Not only does it help illustrate the ways that disability poetry can creatively add to the corpus of poetry, but it also provides an example of the ways that disability literary studies shine a light on how disability was represented in the past.
The “Notes” section of What’s Left is Tender is so valuable that one wishes it had been incorporated into the book as a foldout that readers could have beside them as they make their way through the poems. While poems such as “Ars Poetica” can certainly stand on their own, it is a bit like looking at an iceberg only from the surface level.
Nevertheless, it would be a mistake to think that the poems in What’s Left is Tender are simply an academic exercise or a vehicle for building up disability poetry. It is clear from the first few poems of the book – “Ars Poetica,” “Apostrophe to Kyphosis,” “Patient History” – that what Lau writes is grounded in his own personal experiences. Having made this clear, however, he is careful not to let the reader get too close. It is not only that he avoids the first person singular in poems like “Patient History,” but also that many of the poems are based upon documents or found material. An example of this is his poem “MRI Lumber Spine Without Contrast” that uses a medical report as its basis. This technique is fairly familiar to most readers of contemporary poetry.
HISTORY1: Back pain for many years,2 denies radiculopathy,3
idiopathic scoliosis4 and or kyphoscoliosis, other idiopathic
scoliosis, site unspecified (p. 10)
But Lau puts a slightly different spin on this in the expected footnotes that are part of the poem.
1 Cursory, enough to help with diagnosis, but I wish he had spared me the life story.
2 Great, a complainer.
3 I wonder if he even knows what this means.
4 Probably genetic—they always get it from their mothers.
In imagining what the doctor is thinking during the procedure, Lau is not only able to surprise the reader but also convey Lau’s attitude towards the medical establishment, while at the same time leaving few fingerprints on the poem.
The book’s second section changes direction – literally. Its first poem, “Listening to Incense,” is printed horizontally. Because it contains so many clues to what is to follow, it is worth righting the poem for those of us whose eyes are not aligned like shirt buttons.
Our little systems bear
the days and cease to beso the curls of smoke
may attend their risingtheir claims of other
palaces made of air,while we learn to
listen not the ashen trace
of two
of residues,
mute and grey.White plum
and joss moneyfired into other lives
as we come to bowour heads upon
the unforgivinglonging for a
father and his land.One stick
struck,lit and
extinguished. (p. 50)
If section 1 focuses on the body in its multiple variations, “Listening to Incense” puts that emphasis behind us. It is a meditation on our ephemerality. Rather than centering on the body, it relegates the body to the “ashen trace,” the residue of corporeal existence, and reaches back to ancestral ways of understanding that, at the same time, connect the poet to his own family roots. The image of the rising and dissipating incense introduces a concept of flux that pervades the poems in this part of the book. It also gives Lau permission to look at his own family and its influence on him. This is also one of the first poems the reader encounters that does not rely on an academic vocabulary or allusions to works by other writers, making it one of the most lyrical and accessible. It is bookended by the final poem in this section, which begins:
I summon ghosts not
to expel them but to be haunted
over a cup of tea,
because I only have
as long as the stick burns its white
peony across the divide,
a gossamer
incision toward meaning
that will close itself. (p. 72)
If the archaeological and experimental aspects of Lau’s work appeal to our intellect, it is these more lyrical poems striking at universal longings that make a reader want to return to them to read again.
This lyricism continues in Part III, the final group of poems in the book. As in the first two sections, the initial poem, “a carrying,” sets the reader up for the poems that follow. In this instance, it is about personal relationships, both emotional and physical.
collateral damage
of two objects
mercifully
collided (p. 74)
These lines encapsulate the viewpoint expressed in the poems that follow and provide the image for the book’s title. In “When did we learn that hitting things made them more tender,” Lau compares love to meat. While we may wish for it to be tender, it is only by beating it with a mallet and bruising it that we are able to achieve a sort of tenderness. These poems are a kind of “songs of innocence and of experience.” For those who are young or have an idealistic view of the world, it is a rather bleak philosophy. It is only by being hurt, whether by one’s partner or by a society that conspires to prevent love, that we are able to experience love at all.
we together
praise the blows that ache us
towards each other. (p. 80)
While these poems are clearly personal and derived from the poet’s own experiences, they, for the most part, skim above specific detail. In one sense, this universalizes them, but they also leave the reader wondering what it is about this world that makes love so difficult. Given the poems in the first section of the book, one is inclined to think that Lau’s disillusionment relates to disability, but digging once again into the “Notes,” one realizes that the bigger discrimination is toward the LGBTQ+ community and what Lau has experienced as a gay man. As with the poems in the previous sections, Lau makes the reader work. Hints come from his invocation of poets like Walt Whitman and Ocean Vuong in the epigraphs to his poems, but the larger evidence is indicated by places where Lau’s poems have been previously published: fourteen poems: a queer poetry anthology, Raymond Luczak’s Lovejets: Queer Male Poets on 200 Years of Walt Whitman, Moist Poetry Journal, and others. Though many of the poems work without this knowledge provided in the “Notes,” knowing that Lau is speaking of and perhaps to queer men brings many poems such as “Found Wanting” and “Afterglow” into much sharper focus.
Every attempt at experimentation or pushing the envelope risks potential issues. This is particularly true in the case of disability poetry. Formatting and other visual aspects of poetry on the page can be problematic, and much of the appreciation of the poetry in What’s Left is Tender is dependent upon being a sighted reader. In some instances, such as “Portrait of a Coal Miner,” where meaning is housed in the poem’s rhythm, this issue can be ameliorated by a well-read audio book, but there are other cases, such as the poem “Autodefenistration” where not being able to see the poem dismantles the intention. And many poems fall between these two, making this a difficult book for blind or low-vision readers. This may be a major drawback for some readers who would otherwise be interested in experiencing Lau’s work.
What’s Left is Tender assumes a sophisticated and educated audience. Lau is not Billy Collins. Not everyone will be prepared to work as hard as the poet expects. Nevertheless, What’s Left is Tender is an important contribution to disability literature. One might even say that it is an essential book for those writing disability poetry today. A quarter of the way through the twenty-first century, it is no longer sufficient for a disabled person to describe the physical and societal conditions that they live with in formal stanzas as it was when Ferris began theorizing the genre. That mission has largely been accomplished. To command respect as a disabled poet now requires a writer to ask, what can I say that has not already been said? What do I have to add? In What’s Left is Tender, Travis Lau shows us a possible path.
*Ferris, Jim. “The Enjambed Body: A Step Towards a Crippled Poet.” Georgia Review, vol. 58, issue 2, 2004, pp. 219-233.
Title: What’s Left is Tender
Author: Travis Chi Wing Lau
Publisher: Small Harbor Publishing
Date: 2025
Read Michael Northen’s review of Raging Grace: Australian Writers Speak Out on Disability in this issue of Wordgathering.
Back to Top of Page | Back to Book Reviews | Back to Volume 19, Issue 2 – Winter 2025-2026
About the Reviewer
Michael Northen was the facilitator of the Inglis House Poetry Workshop from 1997-2010 and the editor of Wordgathering from 2007-2019. He was also an editor of the anthology, Beauty is a Verb: The New Poetry of Disability and the anthology of disability short fiction, The Right Way to Be Crippled and Naked (both from Cinco Puntos Press). Additionally, Michael co-edited Every Place on the Map is Disabled, an anthology of disability poetry published by Northwestern University Press in early 2026.