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Beauty Is a Verb
Contributor(s): Black, Sheila (Editor), Bartlett, Jennifer (Editor), Northen, Michael (Editor)
ISBN: 1935955055     ISBN-13: 9781935955054
Publisher: Cinco Puntos Press
OUR PRICE:   $19.76  
Product Type: Paperback - Other Formats
Published: October 2011
Qty:
Temporarily out of stock - Will ship within 2 to 5 weeks
Additional Information
BISAC Categories:
- Poetry | Anthologies (multiple Authors)
- Literary Collections | American - General
- Social Science | People With Disabilities
Dewey: 811.608
LCCN: 2011022269
Physical Information: 1.2" H x 6" W x 8.9" (1.20 lbs) 384 pages
Themes:
- Topical - Physically Challenged
- Chronological Period - 21st Century
- Chronological Period - 20th Century
 
Descriptions, Reviews, Etc.
Publisher Description:
Chosen by the American Library Association as a 2012 Notable Book in Poetry.

Beauty is a Verb is a ground-breaking anthology of disability poetry, essays on disability, and writings on the poetics of both. Crip Poetry. Disability Poetry. Poems with Disabilities. This is where poetry and disability intersect, overlap, collide and make peace.

BEAUTY IS A VERB] is going to be one of the defining collections of the 21st century...the discourse between ability, identity & poetry will never be the same. --Ron Silliman, author of In The American Tree

This powerful anthology succeeds at intimately showing...disability through the lenses of poetry. What emerges from the book as a whole is a stunningly diverse array of conceptions of self and other."--Publishers Weekly, starred review


From Beauty and Variations by Kenny Fries:


How else can I quench this thirst? My lips
travel down your spine, drink the smoothness

of your skin. I am searching for the core:
What is beautiful? Who decides? Can the laws

of nature be defied? Your body tells me: come
close. But beauty distances even as it draws

me near. What does my body want from yours?
My twisted legs around your neck. You bend

me back. Even though you can't give the bones
at birth I wasn't given, I let you deep inside.

You give me--what? Peeling back my skin, you
expose my missing bones. And my heart, long

before you came, just as broken. I don't know who
to blame. So each night, naked on the bed, my body

doesn't want repair, but longs for innocence. If
innocent, despite the flaws I wear, I am beautiful.

Sheila Black is a poet and children's book writer. In 2012, Poet Laureate Philip Levine chose her as a recipient of the Witter Bynner Fellowship.

Disability activist Jennifer Bartlett is a poet and critic with roots in the Language school.

Michael Northen is a poet and the editor of Wordgathering: A Journal of Poetics and Disability.

Contributor Bio(s): Black, Sheila: - Sheila Black is the author of over 40 books for children and young adults as well as the author of two poetry collections and two chapbooks. She was born with X-Linked Hypophosphotema (XLH), a rare genetic bone condition, often called Vitamin D Resistent Rickets. Two of her three children also have XLH.Bartlett, Jennifer: - Jennifer Bartlett was a 2005 New York Foundation for the Arts Fellow. Her publications include Derivative of the Moving Image (UNM Press 2005), (a) lullaby without any music (Chax 2011), and Anti-Autobiography (Saint Elizabeth Street/ Youth-in-Asia Press 2010).Northen, Michael: - Michael Northen edits Wordgathering, A Journal of Disability and Poetry and coordinates the annual Inglis House Poetry Contest for disability-related poetry. For over 40 years, he has taught adults with physical disabilities, women on public assistance, prisoners, and rural and inner city children.