Today I would like to talk about the things
which my Asperger’s Syndrome interferes with regarding my life as a poet. Last time I discussed the positives of my AS,
and it felt good to talk about a few of those things. However, some of you probably already know
that some of the things which are positives can also work against me. For example, being single minded is an
advantage, but it can also be a deficit if I am not careful, or if I have gone
too far down the path and I am not able to readjust to see the big
picture. What I am going to talk about
today are not those sort of things. I
know it is already going to be a real tough thing for me to discuss, and I want
as little ambiguity as possible.
Therefore, the disadvantages I am going to talk about today, are in my
mind, unable to be listed as advantages.
1. Alexithymia. One of the downsides to Autism and/or
Asperger’s Syndrome is these conditions are often accompanied by secondary
conditions which complicate both diagnosis and treatment/handling of the issues
caused alone or in combination. While it
is true I have some secondary issues related to my AS, it is Alexithymia which
causes me the most problems as a poet.
Simply defined, it is condition where a
person seems devoid of emotion because they are functionally unaware of their
emotions. By extension, alexithymics are also unable to appreciate the
emotional motivation of others, and generally find emotions of others to be
perplexing and irrational. Wikipedia has a definition more closely related
to my issues as a poet. It states:
alexithymia is a personality construct characterized by the sub-clinical inability
to identify and describe emotions in the self. The core characteristics of
alexithymia are marked dysfunction in emotional awareness, social attachment,
and interpersonal relating. As it applies to me, I have a limited ability
to read the emotions of others and I have a pronounced difficulty expressing my
own emotions. If you read my poetry, I
am very much a poet who writes in the first person. Not being able to express my emotions means
that my poetry lacks the linguistic depth of my peers. One of the fundamental aspects of poetry is
figurative language which connects with a wide audience. Not being able to express my emotions as easily
as other poets puts me at a disadvantage when it comes to writing effective
poetry. Don’t get me wrong, I have been
very successful as a poet, but there are marked differences in the actual
language I use and the way I express my emotional self. Different is good, but different can
interfere with adhering to certain expectations. Not understanding the conventions of
emotional expressions in poetry affects how I see line, line-breaks, constructing
progressive ideas and themes, and many other requirements for writing poetry.
2. Alienation. I spoke of the ‘Alien Planet’ explanation as
to how people with Asperger’s feel.
Well, I desperately want to belong.
I mean I want to be a part of the group, one of the gang, a member of
the club. I have specific, personal
experiences which amplify this need, but that is not where I am going with
this. I want to belong, and that means I
spent a lot of time trying to belong rather than focusing on being a better
poet. I did not learn as quickly as I
should that if I would have worked on being a better poet, I would have been
accepted more readily into the world of poetry.
As it is, I pushed way too hard, and the result was alienating a lot of
fine poets by being the equivalent of the annoying little brother your mother
made you take everywhere you went with your other, older and much cooler
friends. I wore out my welcome on so
many fronts, that when I became relatively isolated in the pursuit of a
teaching career (I teach high school) it was both necessary and it probably
became the best thing that could have happened to me. I still push too hard, and I lose out on a
great deal of friendships and working relationships with other poets because
they have simply had their fill. It’s a
struggle to know that in my pursuit to be a member of a community, and to do so
within an art which is reliant on the communal, I behave in a way which is
counter-intuitive to my goals and that I will always do so.
3. Single Path Orientation. Because of my AS, I get locked into one way
to do something, and I can rarely find another way, even when my original plans
fall apart. Because I imitate, I have
conditioned myself to find the one pathway which will give me the desired
effect. I have one process for writing,
one process for editing, and any attempts to change that are met with an aggressive,
internal opposition. When I was
undergoing an evaluation for possible vocational rehabilitation services from
the VA, I was told by the occupational therapist he was surprised I
successfully navigated the armed services because of my “pronounced difficulty
with authority.” My difficulty with
authority extends to even myself, when I try to affect change in my writing
habits I know will benefit me. Still, I
find one way to write a poem, or one way to conceptualize a book, or even one
way to draft my poems, and that is all I have patience for. For what would end up being my second full
length book, and the third book length manuscript I had written, I took more
than a year to accept that the structure I had created could in no way
work. I knew it and I kept trying for so
long, and only accepted the truth after a lot of unnecessary struggle and
internal fighting. Many of my poems which have been published are revised and edited
as I go along, meaning my first draft is what most poets would consider a third
draft. Unfortunately, once I have
finished the draft, the poem has a 99% chance of staying exactly as it is, with
not even a comma changed. I know that
thoughtful editing and consideration can make my poems stronger, allow me to
see different ways to express the poem, and allow for different directions to
emerge, but none of that matters. I sit
down to write a poem, and that poem gets written right there, or there is a
good chance---I’d say 75%, it is not going to ever get written. It’s one of the reasons most of my longer
poems have sections. They are really
shorter poems written about the same thing, as opposed to poems composed over
the course of several days, weeks, or months.
I marvel at the long poem like Allen Ginsberg’s Howl, or Frank Stanford’s The
Battlefield Where the Moon Says I Love You, not only because of the scope
and depth of such poems, but because I know they went through a process I am
entirely incapable of incorporating in my own writing life. Not being able to vary the way I write also comes
out in my expressions. I am overly fond
of alliteration and assonance. My
metaphors are constructed within very strict parameters, and I have difficulty understanding
the purpose behind the decision to have a line break here or there.
4. The
Stars must be aligned. I do not write
poetry when I want to, I write poetry when I need to. Oh, I can draft any day of the week, but most
of my attempts go no farther than a line or two. Most poets know what I am talking about, but
what I mean by this is that everything has to be perfect for me. Everything.
I keep dozens of notebooks around my home and classroom, and they are
full of false starts because I have a predilection to a clean, presentable
notebook for me to write in. The page
needs to be immaculate. If the journal
is too worn, even though only half filled---it is rejected. If the page itself doesn’t look right, I turn
the page until I see a page I can accept.
If I write too small, too big, too messy, too neat, then I have to
scribble and start over. I am definitely
a writer for the computer age. With word
processing programs, I can save a file and open a new one with only a few
clicks. I can go into an existing file
and delete and start over (with the 25% of poems which might see an attempt at
revision past my first draft), and I can edit my poem ten different times with
ten different sets of line breaks, experimenting every time. I also go long periods of time between
writing anything I find of worth. My
longest window is about three years, but I hope next time won’t be so
long. When I do write poems I am excited
about, it’s a flurry of action, and a mad rush to get it out of my system.
5. This
last one I am not certain how to classify.
When I am about 90% finished with a project, and I have to do that last
10% of work, which is to edit and make certain I have all of my punctuation,
spelling, grammar, and the like correct, I lose interest in the project. I want to write something else. Unfortunately, I am plagued with the
single-mindedness I spoke of earlier, and I cannot dismiss my work until I am
satisfied it has had closure, which most often comes in the form of
publication. Basically, I cannot work on
another manuscript or project until the current project has been disposed of,
and I will do anything I can to avoid finishing a project because of the kind
of work it demands. Writing in most
other areas/realms I can edit and polish and be fine with it, but not with
poetry. Somewhere in my head, and I do
not know what that might be, I am fighting against some prejudice against the
refinement of my own work.
Next time, for my
last installment, I will try to answer the question of what is to be done for
the artist who is autistic. How can you
support the Autistic artist, and how can you best interact with those artists who
identify on the Autism Spectrum?
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