stevekuusisto

I was denied a cab ride because of my dog….

What if the adjectives in advertisements for movies were applied to the blind? “Sensational!” “Euphoric!” “Mesmerizing!” “Joyous!”

I’m not talking about inspiration pornography—the disabled as beacons of extravagant and sentimental overcoming—but I’ll take anything over the furrows of disapprobation and despond that the blind absorb daily.

As I write these words I’m awaiting a disciplinary hearing with the New York City Taxi and Limousine Commission because a driver refused me a ride because of my guide dog. The refusal was bad enough. It was against the law. No question. What stood out for me was the driver’s contempt.

Contempt is the act of despising what is considered vile and worthless.

What if that driver had said to himself, “here comes an interesting and creative human being, I might learn something from him.”

What if bigots of all kinds thought such things? Trump’s raging pink crowds know so little of the world. The solution rests with understanding the very people they imagine they hate.

Alright. I’m just waxing sentimental, utopic, foolish to the core. “Why can’t people just get along?”

Diverse societies depend on imagination. Daily I see Donald Trump and his racist, homophobic, ableist, misogynistic, xenophobic supporters assert that critical thinking is for losers.

Ain’t that the truth?

I Still Have Enough Money to Eat With….

The testimony of Robert Mueller this week highlighted the dubious and nauseating quality of post-factual American political life: facts matter less than vitriol and spit. The GOP won the day and the impoverished Democrats, stuck with truth have almost nowhere to go.

Amid corruption charges and political intrigue the Dems long standing failure to attract middle class voters has left them powerless. The GOP cares not a whit for election security so long as foreign influence can keep people of color out of Congress and the White House.

Unless facts make a resurgence (doubtful) Trump and his cronies will retain power in 2020.
I’ve come to believe thinly Democratic candidate who has the power of factual persuasion is Elizabeth Warren. She alone understands the debacle of the Dems complicity with Neo-liberalism.

In an era when celebrities and politicians are able to condition their interviewers speaking truth is nearly impossible unless one confronts inequality head on.

The 2020 election must be about inequality period.

These are my two cents on an otherwise lovely morning in Syracuse, New York. I still have enough money to eat with.

A Disability Take on Mueller’s Testimony Yesterday

Watching Robert Mueller’s testimony before the U.S. House of Representatives yesterday I couldn’t escape the sense that both disability and race were twin ghosts in the room. I cannot say with certainty that Mueller has hearing loss but I know when hostile speakers are making it impossible for people to hear them accurately. Several GOP representatives engaged in high speed barking. As a person with a disability I know something about this. As for race, let’s not forget that today’s Republican Party is filled with yesterday’s Democratic southerners—a matter that’s not unimportant because it answers the question so many are asking, namely, why would the GOP not care about the proven Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election and Trump’s role in securing it? The answer is simple: Republicans fear people of color entering the corridors of power and influence more than Vladimir Putin.

Yes there was a third ghost in that chamber: the spirit of illusion, best articulated by James Baldwin long ago: “And have brought humanity to the edge of oblivion: because they think they are white.”

When Donald Trump screams about fake news he’s telling us he knows he’s an illusory man.

Elegy

Everyone forgets that Odin could speak to the living and the dead
They remember his raven only. Lie on the ground
Press your face down by the roots
Ignore the neighbors. This is Odin’s day.
My mother and father dine in a garden
Where jonquils grow from broken promises
And Odin’s verses are on the wind.

Late September, Afternoon Thoughts or, Stuff I Think About in Meetings…

Attention to detail is to the unconscious like a starving mule–morsels of the day enhance darker hungers.

“Please,” says the mule, “hurry with the twilight.”

When sunset comes the sweet grass of dream feeding gets eaten at last.

Day night, our hooves prancing…

Per caputque pedesqu….

Please dear book bring me consolation
Tall windows of hospitals can’t do it
And the sunset is thin

Catullus: O this age! How tasteless and ill-bred it is!
Thanks old boy you’re of little use

The darkness is knocking…

Today is not a day for writing…

Today is not a day for writing
And yet this comes anyway
Like my friend’s goat
Amiable enough

If you know goats
You’ll understand
The rank odor of poems
Appetites running to sweat

Mushrooms grew last night
While I slept
A garden snake
Sleeps underfoot

Morning is for the unwashed child in us

ABOUT: Stephen Kuusisto is the author of the memoirs Have Dog, Will Travel; Planet of the Blind (a New York Times “Notable Book of the Year”); and Eavesdropping: A Memoir of Blindness and Listening and of the poetry collections Only Bread, Only Light and Letters to Borges. A graduate of the Iowa Writer’s Workshop and a Fulbright Scholar, he has taught at the University of Iowa, Hobart and William Smith Colleges, and Ohio State University. He currently teaches at Syracuse University where he holds a University Professorship in Disability Studies. He is a frequent speaker in the US and abroad. His website is StephenKuusisto.com.

Have Dog, Will Travel: A Poet’s Journey is now available for pre-order:
Amazon
Barnes and Noble
IndieBound.org

(Photo picturing the cover of Stephen Kuusisto’s new memoir “Have Dog, Will Travel” along with his former guide dogs Nira (top) and Corky, bottom.) Bottom photo by Marion Ettlinger

Poetry comes and goes….

Poetry comes and goes
Like melody or rain
I miss you father

**
Horse weed grows by the house
Seeds fly
Little eye travelers

Grass blades
High summer clouds
Far off a car starts

Where are the books I loved as a child
Are they buried in the earth
I think so

I remember as a boy
The first time
I clung to a dog’s fur

Old Notebook department….

I remember a poet who disliked people.
He was always well dressed.
When alone he lived under a bush.
He had a beard. Even “it” didn’t like him.
He wore Italian cowboy boots.
To be charitable: he had grim memories
That leaned beside him at every podium.

Prose Poem

I cannot see the great blue heron.

Looking into a Tide Pool

Even the blind can do it.

May Sarton was one mean woman.
While visiting a small college
I heard her tell a young woman
Who said she loved uniting poetry and dance,
“You my dear are a fraud!”
I’ve never forgotten it.

The old guru eats a chocolate brownie.
Soon all the adepts are eating brownies.
I saw it happen.

Sometimes when I think of my childhood all I can remember is frost on windowpanes.

Sonia in Crime and Punishment is Dostoevsky when alone.

Have Dog, Will Travel: A Poet’s Journey is now available for pre-order:
Amazon
Barnes and Noble
IndieBound.org

(Photo picturing the cover of Stephen Kuusisto’s new memoir “Have Dog, Will Travel” along with his former guide dogs Nira (top) and Corky, bottom.) Bottom photo by Marion Ettlinger

Disability and the Ableist’s Wall

With the recent passing of a close friend whose disability was central to his daily life, I seem to be leaning against walls. Let me clarify: they’re not visible walls. No, these are the walls of social containment. Let me further clarify: if you want to put someone “up against a wall” you must take for granted that the wall is either neutral or on your side. The obliging wall is a central truth when it comes to ableism.

You require medical care. You’re a wheelchair user. You’re shoved against the ableist’s obliging wall even though you’ve insurance. They push you against that wall and then you slip slowly out of your chair and onto the floor.

There are plenty of visible walls—the college auditorum with steps leading to the speaker’s platform. No disabled person would ever be a professor. There are conferences about disability where no effort is made to provide accommodations. My friend saw these things, endured them.

How they roll their eyes whe you point out their attitudinal walls. How they carry on about inconvenience and expense, as though designing things for human beings is a vast burden. (Making things accessible is often cheaper than making them inaccessible but the ableists are addi ted to their walls.)

Sometimes I think of ableism as being like an addiction to cigaettes. They know its bad for them but its such a daily ritual.