”A Very Kind Note to Machine Poets, Though It May Seem Rude” Being a machine poet is different than being a cyborg poet. Not all machine poets are cyborgs. Some machine poets are abled poets who work with machines. Abled poets have bodies that are entirely meat. There is no machine inside the abled poet. I will give you time to check and see if there is a machine inside your body … poem continues in The Rialto.
Borg Diem. Dictionary for disabled people, by disabled people. First edition published exclusively in Braille. New words wanted and hashtag #BorgDiem
A Kim Deal Party. Directions to the party are not publicly available. IYKYK.
Author Photo: Graphic with large rectangular black square and black circle over face. Distant ellipses at bottom of frame. Text on image reads: “Just be yourself / so our white cis men / can violate you.”
Syllabus for the Liberation of Disabled People from Non-Disabled People’s Books. I’m looking at you Peter Singer & JoJo Moyes & Anthony Doerr & Judith Newman & R. J. Palacio: Your fame is tethered to time. Your time has passed. —Cy. Weise
“Science Magazine said a couple weeks ago that The Egyptians revered disabilities. I told this to a woman I was on a panel with who has something called Dwarfism. The Egyptians buried Dwarfs like Kings. An African psychiatrist told me that, in some so-called African tribes, people with schizophrenia are considered prophets. I said well maybe Moses was one. You know, hearing voices. So you belong to a great tradition.” —Ishmael Reed, All Access Cafe, April 26, 2019. Link to video: https://youtu.be/lUWPx-c14g4?t=340
Literature by Disabled People
ENGL or LIT or CRW XXXX
Future Semester: You’re the Teacher
Your Email Address Goes Here
Class Days+Times Will Be Accessible to All
Course Objectives
Read & interpret prose & poetry by disabled people
Compose creative & critical responses
Collaborate through workshop
Apprentice with the work of one disabled writer
Course Description
Literature by disabled people begins, sustains and innovates nearly all literature. Homer, Sappho and Epictetus were disabled. So let’s start there. We will move through time – though time is tryborg fiction (e.g. crip time, sick time, quantum time) – and arrive at Patty Berne’s “Disability Justice” and Alice Wong’s Disability Visibility. Along the way we will ask:
— Who is a disabled writer?
— Why have disabled writers been hidden from us?
— Who benefits from the suppression of literature by disabled people?
— How do we reclaim disabled writers from non-disabled imaginaries?
In the second half of the course, apprentice with the work of one disabled writer you have never read before. Read your writer’s fragments, tweets, blogs, live journals, discord posts, notes from the caucus or the protest or the minutes of a meeting where your writer was present, scraps left behind by your writer in an archive you’ll probably have to find, open the cardboard box, open the external hard drive, open the email, g-chat, FB direct message, IG direct message, Snapchat, screenshot saved by someone who got your writers consent to preserve your writers everything, also interviews, book reviews, Tumblrs, TikTok videos, your writers’ comments on videos or posts by others: anything your disabled writer has written? Whether in a book or not? Read that. Turn in something. Anything you want. In convo with the disabled writer you selected to read. This is called an apprenticeship.
Required Reading
None of it is required if you don't consent to read it. Your consent comes first. The texts are impaired by having been in books only. There are many other kinds of writing by disabled people. Not everything is a book. But here are the books. Excerpted & available for free on Canvas. We will not read all of them. That would be impossible. We will probably only read from 4-6 of these books. We will purposefully slow-read because that goes against the nondisabled way and because I am disabled. Very disabled. If someone asks, “What does your teacher have?” Tell the person: “Audacity and pride. Those are her conditions.” The list below is in-progress and incomplete. A list of all the books by disabled people would be over 1000 pages of a syllabus.
Sappho, select fragments
Homer, excerpt from The Iliad
Epictetus, excerpt from The Handbook
Milton, sonnet 19
Joachim du Bellay, excerpt from Les Regrets
Harriet Tubman, excerpt from Scenes from the Life of Harriet Tubman
Emily Dickinson, #745
Charles Darwin, excerpt from The Red Notebook
Randolph Bourne, “The Handicapped”
H.D. “Notes on Thought & Vision”
Zelda Fitzgerald, “A Millionaire’s Girl”
Dorothea Buck, TBD
Jean Toomer, excerpt from Cane
Hazel Hall, excerpt from Walkers
Jorge Borges (& more from Ultraists?)
Josephine Miles, Teaching Poet (needs reprint)
Muriel Rukeyser, excerpt The Life of Poetry
Robert Creeley, “Histoire de Florida”
Hannah Weiner, the clairvoyant poems
Pat Parker, select poems
Richard Brautigan, excerpt from Trout Fishing
Laura Hershey, just go to the archive at Denver Public Library
Khadijah Queen, excerpts from Anodyne
Yomi S. Wrong, transcript of interview at Hastings
Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, excerpt from Conversations
Shahd Alshammari, excerpt from Notes on the Flesh
Tremain & Hall, Biopolitical Philosophy website
Corbett OToole, excerpt from Fading Scars
John Lee Clark, anything
Patty Berne, “Disability Justice”
Alice Wong, Disability Visibility
Tzynya Pinchback, excerpt from How to Make Pink Confetti
A. A. Vincent, excerpt from Person, Perceived Girl
Poet, not yet disclosed as disabled
Short Story writer, not yet disclosed as disabled
Essayist, not yet disclosed as disabled
Novelist, not yet disclosed as disabled
Playwright, not yet disclosed as disabled
Intermedia, not yet disclosed as disabled
Anonymous
Anonymous
Anonymous x 1000