Author: stevekuusisto

Poet, Essayist, Blogger, Journalist, Memoirist, Disability Rights Advocate, Public Speaker, Professor, Syracuse University

Huffington Post: Clara Beatty, Girl With Treacher Collins Syndrome And Deformed Face, Learns To Navigate World

  "It was kind of strange sometimes with the doctors, some of whom I think really, really questioned why we had this baby," says Eric Beatty, Clara's dad.

Clara Beatty, Girl With Treacher Collins Syndrome And
Deformed Face, Learns To Navigate World

 

Wyn Newhouse Awards Exhibition, NYC

Last night I attended the New York City opening of the Wyn Newhouse Awards Exhibition at the Palitz Gallery at Syracuse University's Lubin House.

Here's the info from the exhibition's website:

Wynn Newhouse Awards Exhibition

The Palitz Gallery at Syracuse University's Lubin House is proud to host the Wynn Newhouse Awards Exhibition. The award exhibition was created to draw attention to the achievements of artists of excellence who happen to have disabilities.

The exhibition contains the works this year’s four grant winners: Barton Lidicé Beneš contributes two mixed media assemblages including Art Museum; Christine Sun Kim showcases three scores; Mark Parsons has four works from his “Figure from the Ground” series; and Sunaura Taylor has three works, two on paper and one on raw canvas, in the exhibition. There is also a video displaying the works of the runners-up.

The Wynn Newhouse Awards Exhibition runs through June 15, 2012. Exhibition hours are Monday to Friday, 10 a.m. – 6 p.m. and Saturday 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. It is free and open to the public. Contact 212-826-0320 or lubin@syr.edu for more information.

 

Lobster Girl, Sanaura Taylor

 

 

 

Believing in Ars Poetica

There's a breeze coming from the sea of my childhood. There is heat at mid-day and mail arrives. And I have chance meetings with the people I should know better. A live story is sung in my head. I am not certain about much else. Thinking of Tolstoi who said poetry should infect the reader, silly I think, a metaphor from the age when germs were new–but yes, there's something going around.

Essay: Disability Balloon Animals

I was in New York's Central Park and a very green man was twisting equally green balloons into animals. It was St. Patrick's Day and hundreds of green clad adults and children were about.

I didn't buy a balloon animal. I didn't even linger. I was in a hurry to cross Fifth Avenue before they closed it off.

Something happened to me over the course of the day. I thought of the balloon man as a kind of Pythagoras, who understood early in the morning just how the day would progress. All day, jammed in the crowds were wheelchair users, people with canes, elderly people. And their forms were struggling to unfold.

Essay: Disability and the Syllables

Hearing is a syllable, and gravity, balance–all fit inside words. Sight fits there like the string at the center of a ball, fits so tightly you'd think the ball is made of wood, like an old fashioned toy. And all the nerves are sparking in the hiccup of an instant–maybe not enough for a vowel, but a clotted thing at the back of the throat will do. Notice how crows land on the telephone line.

What Writers Will Tell You These Days

A friend of mine recently tried to invite Barbara Ehrenreich to speak at the college where he teaches and she demanded $25,000. This same friend reports that another writer demanded fresh cut flowers in his room. Yet another said he wouldn’t answer questions or meet with students. All asked for fat five figure honorariums.

I asked a novelist to come to Syracuse to help us brainstorm about developing a creative writing program for young people with disabilities. “Call my agent,” she said. We were standing about 14 inches from each other.

Something has happened in literary land–a predatory and mercenary cash cow entitlement scene has evolved and with it the erosion of genuine noblesse oblige.

I am not better than other people, but I’m not a highway robber. Not yet. Not yet.