ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the work of contemporary poets who write autobiographically about disability, comparing their perspectives and approaches. Michele Leggott, like Lucia Perillo, provides a first-person account of disability in many of her poems, and engages with its everyday effects upon body and mind. Perillo investigates the degradation of the human body with the same curiosity she dedicates to many of the wildlife studies in her poetry. The Body Mutinies features many poems which deal with her condition, describing primarily what sociologist Carol Thomas refers to as “impairment effects”. The imagery of impairment shifts disturbingly in the last line as the speaker’s gratitude is drawn to the things that may well be taken away from her as her disease progresses: using her hand to feed herself and being able to swallow. The turning point of the poem comes next; the scene changes to the “news” reaching the speaker on his phone as he sits in a Brooklyn cafe.
