I thoroughly enjoyed this poem because I feel like in a way it acts as a kind of “full circle” moment for our class. The poem itself is assigned reading on the last day of our class meeting and it touches on the topics we talked about and discussed all the way back in week one. The poem itself obviously touches on how our society makes individuals with a disability feel isolated or like the “other” and it also touches on labels associated with disabilities. (another thing we talked about in the first few weeks of class) The poem itself not only talks about these topics and provides commentary on them eloquently, but it’s also acting as a test for oursleves and our class as a whole. When we first started taking part in this course, we (or at least I) knew very little about disabilities and the way our society responds to and reacts to them but now we (again maybe it’s just myself) are fully able to pick apart and understand what the author is talking about. We are able to show how we ourselves have grown and gained knowledge on the subject and that’s a beautiful thing.
It has been great getting the chance to share my thoughts with you all while we’ve been in this class together. I’ve not only received a lot of helpful feedback on my posts, but you all made great posts on here as well and it’s been really fun getting the chance to hear your thoughts on the readings we’ve done. I hope you all have a great break and here’s hoping we’ll get another class together.
Until next time 🙂
Hello Zachary!
I really like your response to Romkems’s “Perspectives” because I had similar thoughts as I read through the poem. I agree that this poem is a great one to end the class with because it encompasses some of the main themes that we’ve talked about throughout the semester. For example, the cure or kill theme is alluded to in the stanza talking about the different ways that different people such as psychologists and optometrists try to “cure” the fluttering of the fingers. Also, it portrays the theme that people with autism or disability are “different” and not “normal,” which is a major topic we have discussed in the class. I think it is important to end with a poem that includes topics that have been discussed by the class so many times in order to really engrain the ideologies that we have been discussing all semester.