‘Make No Apologies for Yourself’

Thank you. You reduced artists to their disabilities. They are artists. Just their art should have been discussed, not any disability. You demeaned them.

Ruchir’s observations are spot On! Big economic reforms, land reforms, educational reforms and making the bureaucracy accountable and lean are so simple yet difficult to implement for our politicians. Jobs have disappeared, and most companies are not making much profits! Hope Mr Modi understands and changes gears in his second term!

Reading these entries elicits an aching beauty. Poignant and sometimes raw truths about life. I don't know the artists but feel incredibly grateful for their work.

Curated? You cannot curate a poem. You can only reprint it, or not. You can curate a physical object, or a collection of them. That's why museums have curators. Collections of poetry have compilers or editors.

The shortest form of point blank truth.

I call your attention to Erez Biton known as the founding father of Mizrahi poetry in Israel, blind since age 10 who also lost his left hand to a stray hand grenade he found. He has degrees in social work and psychology and worked and works in these fields, all the time pursuing his poetry which has been received with critical acclaim. See: https://www.academia.edu/8856624/The_Poetry_of_Erez_Biton_between_East_and_West Almog Behar brings translations of Biton's poetry into English: https://almogbehar.wordpress.com/2015/09/08/on-erez-bittons-poetry/

Some beautiful poetry, but admittedly I'm not smart enough to understand all of it. Every one of us begins this life almost completely disabled. We cannot feed ourselves, quench our thirst, walk, talk, read, write or take care of our hygienic needs. At the end of life, we again are even more disabled, absolutely, utterly completely so - we all die. In between each and every one of us has myriad forms of disability, whether we outwardly display those or not. I am classified by doctors and our government as a disabled person, but if you are reading this or just alive, you are, too. If we all recognized the truth of our own disabilities, life could be far better for all of us. It's when people do not recognize or acknowledge their own inherent disabilities that we all suffer. Sure, those with obvious disabilities are not infrequently mocked, sometimes ridiculed, demeaned, excluded and diminished. But those who do those things, to me, just have an inability to see their own selves with any true clarity. They don't bother me at all. They are just disabled.

A very new form of poets that I am totally unfamiliar with. Don't know how to appreciate their beauties. May be the curator can give us some introductory notes that help us to appreciate ?

i always thought poetry was written to be understood, which means it requires a common understanding, which means it is based on shared experience -- the human experience. if you are disabled, and i am not, then that experience must be metaphorically projected into a shared experience of liberation or confinement or joy or frustration that we both can understand in similar terms. this is why all good poetry is not really autobiographical or idiopathic. i don't really care about keats's tuberculosis, or chaucer's diplomacy, or carlos williams's patients, or eliot's banking. i don't care about you, the poet, in any individualistic terms. i only care about what we share.

The last two, it seemed to me, and the TSA were poetry. The others seemed to be what we now call poetry because it’s not well written prose and we don’t have another convenient category. Making your prose thought hard to read by eliminating punctuation and adding random line breaks doesn’t make it poetry.

Meg Day - Wonderful poem! True, and with a sense of humor to boot. My daughter, who happens to be deaf, will be sent a copy pronto.

Thanks you for a front-page placement or I would have missed these. Read them slow and read them again. Printed out the 'View from Mattress' for my memoir group. I wish stuff like this earned the volume of eyeballs equivalent to so much hopeless & helpless political news.

To inhale poetry and enjoy new art was absolutely wonderful...we need more of this - we do, we do...not just a poem a week. The poetry's variety was superb, some challenging and some delightfully simple. I read and re-read. And even as I read I kept wondering if knowing about "disability" was relevant - the poems convey their messages and to introduce them as being part of some sort of drum rolling "cause" (as in first para) I found disturbing...and somewhat patronising. I repeat, I loved the poetry and the art. I did not need the framework. PS now time to go and check out more of their work!

A poet says in one paragraph, what takes a novelist one hundred pages. Thanks for the inspirational poetry and art-work.

Thank you NYT for the opportunity to read some up- an coming poets not unwilling to be featured as disabled in some sense. Most have Youtube videos. I have a few favorites here and one moved me whereas as others reached me in a different way. I see a little problem with the concluding paragraph of the introduction, possibly through a my peculiar point of view. 'we disabled people do not just deserve or ask for the right to exist in this world with the same dignity and respect nondisabled people receive. We demand it.' It seems to set the bar too low. I'm not impressed with the level of dignity and respect non-disabled people receive. And people who identify as non-disabled face difficulties impossible to appreciate as well, and face a world that does not appear at all sympathetic. Maybe common cause against the oppressors might go down better with all sorts of people, but demands in an of themselves can be hot air and effectively ignored. Poetry doing the work of the human heart is good medicine. Demands seem to go with the art of the possible. Political poetry? If you wish.

Seeing this art and reading these poems has made my day.

Fantastic art and poetry. And on the 'front page', even more fantastic. Bravo to all artists.

Fantastic read! It is astounding to understand the beauty beyond the infirmity and the creativity that exudes through the shadows.

Great read.... we know so little about others, we tend to move away, uncomfortably unable to see beyond ones disability.