Tell your wife she should be referring you to the words "precocious",
"formidably intellectual", "generous-to-a-fault", and "ready for the beach".
[She may need and enjoy a holiday from therapising other folks' speech]
Judy
2008/9/17 Max Richards <[log in to unmask]>
> Yes, Jim, I run the risk of sounding offensive.
>
> It relates to my wife the speech therapist saying I show aspy symptoms, and
> that
> it explains the twodimensionality of what I write; and her disappointment
> generally in contemporary poetry.
>
> Casting round I see Mark Haddon, whose novel I have yet to read about an
> aspy
> boy, saying in an interview
>
>
> http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2005/sep/24/poetry.booksforchildrenandteenagers
>
> how his own poetry has been helped by reading Ashbery:
>
> Haddon's Swindon-based detective story
> [The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time],
> narrated by 15-year-old, low-spectrum Asperger's sufferer Christopher
> Boone,
> whose literal interpretation of the world around him lent the book such a
> distinctive voice, should have given the writer such confidence. In the
> first
> three months of publication it sold more than a million copies and went on
> to
> win a hatful of prizes, including the Whitbread book of the year. "When I
> finished it I knew it had worked," he says. "But I also thought it was a
> very
> dark book which might have put people off. However, I've now been told so
> many
> times by readers that it is a hugely uplifting story that I've come to
> accept
> it. I think a lot of that comes from the last line in the book - 'I can do
> anything'. That always struck me as profoundly ambiguous. Is he deceiving
> himself? Or is he on his way to a sparkling career at university? One of
> the
> ways the book works is because it is so spare, people write at least half
> of it
> themselves. And if they've decided it is to be a happy book, that's how
> they
> will read the last line."
>
> Although the book has almost universally been garlanded with praise and
> prizes,
> Haddon has received some complaints, some from Asperger's sufferers,
> essentially
> questioning his right to write about them. "But I've also had letters from
> people with Asperger's saying they have shown the book to their families
> and
> friends to explain how they feel, which is obviously been very gratifying
> even
> though I didn't set out to write about Asperger's in those terms."
> Of contemporary poets he cites John Ashbery as a liberating influence: "He
> offers people the chance to not make sense in the normal way. One of the
> things
> that stimulates me to write poetry is stumbling on bits of language that
> are
> unlike normal language." But his favourite contemporary poets are Don
> Paterson -
> his editor at Picador - and Paul Farley. "Don's poetry is muscular and
> intelligent and has an accessible surface but very many layers underneath,"
> he
> says. "Paul Farley is really resonant without being at all flashy. There
> are
> strong ideas threaded through it and lines that go into your head that you
> know
> will stick with you for a really, really long time. But I also think if you
> can
> pinpoint what you admire in someone's poetry then what you are looking at
> is
> something simple and shallow. I like poetry when I don't quite understand
> why I
> like it. Poetry isn't just a question of wrapping something up and giving
> it to
> someone else to unwrap. It just doesn't work like that."
>
> At present I am wandering in circles. My wife has just suggested I look up
> hyperlexia. No doubt I will be get more confused.
>
> Max
>
> Quoting Jim Bennett <[log in to unmask]>:
>
> > Well I suppose there is some truth in the proposition that Asperger's
> > Syndrome
> > is associated with the arts. I have a number of acquaintances who,
> like
> > me,
> > have Asperger's, (I should explain that we do not suffer with anything,
> but
> > our
> > families tend to suffer with our AS), and who write poetry. As for
> it
> > becoming a "humorous polemic" well that jolts a little. Perhaps you
> could
> > focus a polemic on "crips", if perhaps you had a limp once.
> >
> > Jim
>
>
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> This email was sent from Netspace Webmail: http://www.netspace.net.au
>
|