tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5593764226213882767.post8634969914820636107..comments2024-02-22T15:48:50.427-08:00Comments on Poems and Poetics: Outsider Poems, a Mini-Anthology in Progress (39): From “Missing Larry: The Poetics of Disability in Larry Eigner” by Michael DavidsonJerome Rothenberghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14166931849293504537noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5593764226213882767.post-43480958134213435102012-06-10T08:54:09.494-07:002012-06-10T08:54:09.494-07:00Reading this is fascinating to me, as it speaks to...Reading this is fascinating to me, as it speaks to my own experience: I asked some of these same questions about Eigner's poetry, wondering what effect living within a disability has upon the perceptions and world one sees, and was roundly booed for asking. Then again, I'm just a non-aligned poet on the fringes with no big credentials. In the past year or so, though, now that I am myself dealing with a disability, I find the questions worth asking again. I find that it really does change how you perceive the world, and respond to it. Writing is not free of context and experience, no matter that many would like it to be so.Art Durkeehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07463180236975988432noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5593764226213882767.post-66112073256835932162012-05-31T10:40:12.952-07:002012-05-31T10:40:12.952-07:00This is an interesting theory, that Eigner’s erasu...This is an interesting theory, that Eigner’s erasure of his restricted environment made his poems leap away in their characteristic manner from the subject and predicate into pure being. The pride of people with Cerebral Palsy to not be perceived as different is something I’ve noticed in everyone I’ve known (sometimes closely) with that condition, but I never thought of Eigner (much as I love his work) quite in that way before. Thinking of his CP in terms of his poetry, I see how the greatness of his typographical spacing came at least partly out of the extreme physical challenges of using the typewriter. His intense focus came at least somewhat from the need to distract himself from the demands of his body, and out of that was created a special kind of controlled automatic writing. Eigner to me embodies the brain and senses moving faster than the hands, quicksilver against slow motion as a kind of dialectic – this too may be rooted in his condition.<br /><br />Still, I hate to credit his gifts to a physical state so many labor under. I remember a professor of mine, Hugh Kenner, whose deafness had a lot to do with his unique gift for explaining Joyce, Pound and Beckett, but it made him a challenging teacher. Challenges and gifts are usually flip sides of one another, and it’s hard to “factor in,” much less fully embrace the causality of disability, without delving uncomfortably into both the light and dark sides. Yet I appreciate the need to identify with Eigner, to be inspired by the way he transcended his physical circumstances. I identify with him too in a decidedly more minor key, having grown up in the town next to his, and knowing exactly (for example) what variety store he was talking about. It was the only place I knew that sold Moxie.<br /><br />With that, I’d just like to share a little thing I worked up in your neck of the woods, Gerry, a few years back, while <a href="http://billsigler.blogspot.com/2009/02/looking-out-car-window-thinking-of.html" rel="nofollow"> Looking Out Car Window, Thinking of Larry of Eigner</a>.WAShttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10403669322174979974noreply@blogger.com