Journal of Autism and Childhood Schizophrenia, VoL 7, No. 4, 1977
Parents Speak
Poems on Autism: Beyond Research Data Ruth Christ Sullivan 1
Editor, Parents Speak Column
INTRODUCTION Though clinical descriptions and definitions abound, the effects of autism on parents, brothers and sisters, and the children themselves can perhaps best be described by those who live with it daily. Among us are those parents who have a special facility with written language, so it is not surprising that when faced with the intense, personal, and often dramatic experience of living with an autistic child their gift reflects itself in poetry. The following seven poems were chosen from many collected over the years. One is "imminent Disaster," by an autistic young man himself. Erik was 4 when his 11-year-old sister wrote "Alone." The three parent-poets whose poems appear here are Catherine Hildyard and E. Atherton from Britain and Benjamin Ladner, a professor at the University of North Carolina. The discussion of the poems comes from two parent-poets, Richard Wilbur, Professor of English, Smith College, and William P. Sullivan, Professor of English at Marshall University. The other discussant is Humphry Osmond, Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Alabama.
~306 31st Street, Huntington, West Virginia 25702. 397 T h i s j o u r n a l is c o p y r i g h t e d b y P l e n u m , Each article is available f o r $ 7 . 5 0 f r o m P l e n u m Publishing C o r p o r a t i o n , 2 2 7 West 1 7 t h Street, N e w Y o r k , N . Y . 1 0 0 1 1 .
398
Parents Speak
POEMS Imminent Disaster
Even now I still feel frightened. I was doomed ever since I can remember, An autistic child. Except at home. So I never liked leaving home. Everywhere I went I felt different, An autistic child. I hated everybody, Except at home. That is the truth. It was because I couldn't talk, I think, And other children could. I nearly ran away from home, Because I thought they were d o t t y - Dotty because they loved me.
Malcolm Gorst Loughborough, England Reprinted from Poems by Malcolm Gorst, privately published, 1973, and reprinted here by permission of the author and his mother, Sheila Gorst.
Parents Speak
399
Autistic Child Asleep
Intense, unfocused energy Arrested by uncompromising sleep, Stretched white knuckles Smoothed bare by repeated grips Collapse into wrinkled creases --dysfunctional, defective, d a m a g e d . .. b e h a v i o r . . , motor skills.., the brain Encapsulated in sleep He escapes the envelopment of consciousness Where I bed down with reasons, accounts And explanations for conditions and purposes Wide-eyed and awake I view myself viewing him: Tissues and membranes thick as steel wails Boundary his world of one Affording madness its own uncrowded habitat Am I outside or inside these walls? Are they his or mine? Do I wake or sleep? Pretend that sleep erupts at dead center of clear-polished consciousness And vigilant, wakened mind floats uncertain at the edges: Then could I dream we talked and I found out who you are?
Benjamin Ladner Professor of Religion University of North Carolina at Greensboro
400
Parents Speak
Collecting from (Normal) School Under m y red umbrella, Do I glare like a demon at you, strange m o t h e r s - Is there some threat In my H i m a l a y a n hat? It is because my dear one is different, Something outlandish about his gait A n d mine. Similars and sisters, H o w could you guess indeed, In the thrall of our own dear Snow Queen, What monstrous, what ecstatic landscapes we traverse. Blizzard--time now; But for you, m y friends, only the benison O f the d a y ' s flat, warm, too-well-known rain.
Cath erin e Hildyard Lewes, England Reprinted from the British NSAC Newsletter, December, 1973, with their kind permission.
Parents Speak
401
Song for a Refrigerator
My baby took me on a trip Because his eyes were blue; I hoped that ! might hold his hand But that was quite unheard-of and His small wrist had to do. My baby took me for a ride Because his hair was gold; But when he leapt excitedly And pointed wonders out to me They left me strangely cold. My baby took me on a spree Because of his Regular Features; What wastes, what wilds, My very own child's Untracked by mortal creatures. Our journeys are less far-flung now, We do not scale the peaks; We camp nearer the border-line As days flow into weeks. The rations in our knapsacks now Taste something like the known, And the ice-falls of the heart-lands Freeze on, and freeze alone. Click! Chug. Chug. Rattle.
Catherine Hildyard Lewes, England Reprinted from the British NSAC Newsletter, March, 1974, with their kind permission.
402
Parents Speak
To P - - ~
From isolation you have turned to touch us now with your mind, breaking into speech you fling strange sentences our way and in delight we leap to snatch them and to toss them back! The pattern of your personality is moving and awakening to your opening world. Now you are walking in the shadow of normality. But yet it is our dream that one day you will dance a w a y - - and out into the glare of life.
E. A therton England Reprinted from the British NSAC Newsletter, March, 1975, with their kind permission.
Parents Speak
403
To D ~ - H o w graceful are your limbs when you move with delight in water! The ungainly walk is left behind on the land. Your head is lifted and your eyes glitter between your lilting arms in joy. And when the ponies come to set you free, to take them by the reins and lead them round has power to rest you. Where will your delicate looks and your dancing limbs take you? Where will you g o - - when there are no m o r e p o n i e s - - t o find your peace? We need to hope the world is holding other joys for you, that you can be both sheltered and alive.
E. A therton England Reprinted from the British NSAC Newsletter, March, 1975, with their kind permission.
404
Parents Speak
Alone Alone; how does it feel to be alone in a world that you don't understand yet only you are alone? All the people around you are talking, and you? You are alone. Is it fun? is it lonely? are you happy? are you sad? Don't you know? Only Erik knows how it feels to be alone. Or does he? I don't know. Alone. Alone. Author Unknown Reprinted from the U.S. NSAC Newsletter, January, 1971, with their kind permission.
DISCUSSION
Poems: Experience Expressed Truly and Well As so often in poetry of all kinds, these poems about autism are strongest when they turn upon themselves, endanger themselves, put themselves under special pressure to be honest or clear. The poem "Imminent Disaster," which is unfortunate only in its title, prepares nicely for its final twist with the protestation, "That is the truth." The whole truth, toward which the poem then moves, is that even those "at home," while not hated, seem odd to the autistic child by reason of their inexplicable love. Benjamin Ladner's poem suffers initially from a heavy wordiness which, however, turns out to contribute in some part to its meaning: when he crucially asks himself Keats' question, "Do I wake or sleep?," he is entertaining the thought that his mind is as encapsulated (by "reasons" and "explanations") as the sleeping child's, and that, given this likeness, there may yet be hope of communication with him. Mrs. Hildyard's remarkable poem, "Collecting from (Normal) School," expresses a parent's fierce loyalty to
Parents Speak
405
the "different" child, and accepts--despite the pain of it--a wholly different emotional "weather" from that which surrounds the normal. The imagery of this weather derives strikingly from the "Himalayan hat" of the fourth line. It is "monstrous," of course, and normality would be a "benison," but those words are contradicted or balanced by other words in such a way as to convey, with precision, the poet's attachment and defiance. By contrast, E. Atherton's poems are relaxed and prosaic, but they have their charged moments ("Now you are walking/in the shadow of normality"). I admire the phrasing of the lines beginning "And when the ponies come," as well as the happy paradox that what one leads can set one free. If the phrase "both sheltered and alive" is quiet to the ear, its meanings nonetheless effectively clash. Finally, the poem by Erik's sister is dramatically strong because it progressively shakes the content out of the word "alone." By the time the poem is over, the poet doesn't know whether "alone," as she understands it, corresponds to anything in her brother's feelings or awareness. And this realization of the extent of her separateness from Erik makes the final "Alones" apply in part to her. I have enjoyed all of these poems, and they illustrate a major function of art" to help us face what is hard to bear by expressing it truthfully and well.
Richard Wilbur Professor of English Smith College Northampton, Massachusetts
Poetic Insanity
Poems about a bizarre mental condition? Who writes them? Kin. Why? to reach out or to memorialize reaching out, usually with a sense of failure. Erik's 11-year-old sister in "Alone" writes three stanzas to Erik, and in the fourth withdraws from Erik (who cannot answer) to speak to someone else, perhaps herself, about Erik before writing a fifth stanza consisting of only one word (repeated) that isolates Erik's central trait, isolation. Benjamin Ladner's "Autistic Child Asleep" moves in the opposite direction, from a withdrawn, superior, objective view through subjective involvement to an imagined reaching in to the core of the mysterious autistic identity. Ladner's poem quivers with concern, though it begins clinically enough. The second stanza contrasts the freed child with the observer bound to his rational explanations. Subjectivity awakens in the third stanza; the observer views himself outside the membranous walls within which madness moves uncrowdedly with dignity. In the fourth stanza he has left
406
Parents Speak
behind rationality for a burst of poetic madness which culminates in the fine insanity of the imagination which reaches out to communicate with the isolated child through sleep that "erupts at dead center of clear-polished consciousness." E. Atherton's two poems, with little of the lift of imagination beyond the first, rather delighted descriptions (e.g., sentences like balls to be tossed in " T o P - - - - " ) settle for endings that are wishful thinking. Catherine Hildyard's poems are already far beyond the ordinary pieties and rationalities when they begin. "Song for a Refrigerator" makes statements that have nothing to do with reason ("My baby took me on a trip/Because his eyes were blue") but everything to do with our impression that this is a faery child, an elfin child whom one must follow into trackless wastes and "ice-falls of the heart-lands" (the parents'). Some of this tone comes from her fine gift for phrasing, the reminiscence of Yeats' faery poems dwelling in such phrases as begin the stanzas. Hildyard's "Collecting from (Normal) School" seems to illustrate Dr. Johnson's remark that "all power of fancy over reason is a degree of insanity." The mother of the strange child seems mad as a demon in her "Himalayan hat" and matching her child's "outlandish gait." She has so identified with her mod child that she seems mad herself or at least accepts the imputation of madness from ordinary mothers who cannot know "What monstrous, what ecstatic landscapes we traverse," who cannot from their experience of gentle warm rain imagine the blizzard in which the strange pair move. Who writes them? Even the victim. Malcolm Gorst's poem seems the most rational of the lot. Like the man who wouldn't belong to any club which would accept him, the autistic child nearly ran away from a home where people loved him because they must be " d o t t y . " Yet, we must remember to look at the first line again.
William P. Sullivan Professor of English Marshall University Huntington, West Virginia
Poems Enlarge Our Comprehension As you will see, I have found the poems very enjoyable; the little girl's comment about her brother, Erik, and Malcolm Gorst's poem about himself are particularly attractive. These seven poems are touching and useful. Poets condense and crystallize meaning and feeling so that we are forced to attend to what they
Parents Speak
407
have written and spoken. It is difficult to skim a p o e m - - y o u may refuse to read it, but if you read it, phrases will stick like burrs. It is always possible to slither across the surface of a case history, and I fear we often do. Six o f these poems express the bafflement and uncertainty that many of us experience when meeting an autistic person. I recall such feelings well over 50 years ago when my little sister and I spent a wonderful summer on the cliffs at Pett, near Dover by the English Channel. Our hostess' son was red-haired, freckled Owen, who lived in a jerky, speeded-up universe, far away from our h u m d r u m place. Erik's 11-year-old sister addresses him very much as we would have questioned Owen had we been a little older than 6 and 4 at the time. "Is it fun? Is it lonely? Are you happy? Are you sad? Do you k n o w ? " Those who want to study the feelings induced in others by the Owens of this world will find them in this poem. Malcolm Gorst's " I m m i n e n t Disaster" gives us an insider's view o f an autistic world. It is as the title suggests--a place in which anything that could happen does happen and might do so at any moment. Malcolm Gorst describes a bleak and frightening existence. Each of the other five poems is a gallant attempt to span the great gulf separating autistic worlds from those everyday places which most of us inhabit most of the time. I hope that this collection will be extended and made available for those who wish to understand autism better. It may be that for some of us the study of a poem such as " I m m i n e n t Disaster" will enlarge our comprehension more than lectures or texts, and that something will seep through the minds o f all o f us, leaving us a little more open and a little less selfassured.
Humphry Osmond Professor of Psychiatry University of Alabama Tuscaloosa, Alabama
Parents Speak
Poems on Autism: Beyond Research Data Ruth Christ Sullivan 1
Editor, Parents Speak Column
INTRODUCTION Though clinical descriptions and definitions abound, the effects of autism on parents, brothers and sisters, and the children themselves can perhaps best be described by those who live with it daily. Among us are those parents who have a special facility with written language, so it is not surprising that when faced with the intense, personal, and often dramatic experience of living with an autistic child their gift reflects itself in poetry. The following seven poems were chosen from many collected over the years. One is "imminent Disaster," by an autistic young man himself. Erik was 4 when his 11-year-old sister wrote "Alone." The three parent-poets whose poems appear here are Catherine Hildyard and E. Atherton from Britain and Benjamin Ladner, a professor at the University of North Carolina. The discussion of the poems comes from two parent-poets, Richard Wilbur, Professor of English, Smith College, and William P. Sullivan, Professor of English at Marshall University. The other discussant is Humphry Osmond, Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Alabama.
~306 31st Street, Huntington, West Virginia 25702. 397 T h i s j o u r n a l is c o p y r i g h t e d b y P l e n u m , Each article is available f o r $ 7 . 5 0 f r o m P l e n u m Publishing C o r p o r a t i o n , 2 2 7 West 1 7 t h Street, N e w Y o r k , N . Y . 1 0 0 1 1 .
398
Parents Speak
POEMS Imminent Disaster
Even now I still feel frightened. I was doomed ever since I can remember, An autistic child. Except at home. So I never liked leaving home. Everywhere I went I felt different, An autistic child. I hated everybody, Except at home. That is the truth. It was because I couldn't talk, I think, And other children could. I nearly ran away from home, Because I thought they were d o t t y - Dotty because they loved me.
Malcolm Gorst Loughborough, England Reprinted from Poems by Malcolm Gorst, privately published, 1973, and reprinted here by permission of the author and his mother, Sheila Gorst.
Parents Speak
399
Autistic Child Asleep
Intense, unfocused energy Arrested by uncompromising sleep, Stretched white knuckles Smoothed bare by repeated grips Collapse into wrinkled creases --dysfunctional, defective, d a m a g e d . .. b e h a v i o r . . , motor skills.., the brain Encapsulated in sleep He escapes the envelopment of consciousness Where I bed down with reasons, accounts And explanations for conditions and purposes Wide-eyed and awake I view myself viewing him: Tissues and membranes thick as steel wails Boundary his world of one Affording madness its own uncrowded habitat Am I outside or inside these walls? Are they his or mine? Do I wake or sleep? Pretend that sleep erupts at dead center of clear-polished consciousness And vigilant, wakened mind floats uncertain at the edges: Then could I dream we talked and I found out who you are?
Benjamin Ladner Professor of Religion University of North Carolina at Greensboro
400
Parents Speak
Collecting from (Normal) School Under m y red umbrella, Do I glare like a demon at you, strange m o t h e r s - Is there some threat In my H i m a l a y a n hat? It is because my dear one is different, Something outlandish about his gait A n d mine. Similars and sisters, H o w could you guess indeed, In the thrall of our own dear Snow Queen, What monstrous, what ecstatic landscapes we traverse. Blizzard--time now; But for you, m y friends, only the benison O f the d a y ' s flat, warm, too-well-known rain.
Cath erin e Hildyard Lewes, England Reprinted from the British NSAC Newsletter, December, 1973, with their kind permission.
Parents Speak
401
Song for a Refrigerator
My baby took me on a trip Because his eyes were blue; I hoped that ! might hold his hand But that was quite unheard-of and His small wrist had to do. My baby took me for a ride Because his hair was gold; But when he leapt excitedly And pointed wonders out to me They left me strangely cold. My baby took me on a spree Because of his Regular Features; What wastes, what wilds, My very own child's Untracked by mortal creatures. Our journeys are less far-flung now, We do not scale the peaks; We camp nearer the border-line As days flow into weeks. The rations in our knapsacks now Taste something like the known, And the ice-falls of the heart-lands Freeze on, and freeze alone. Click! Chug. Chug. Rattle.
Catherine Hildyard Lewes, England Reprinted from the British NSAC Newsletter, March, 1974, with their kind permission.
402
Parents Speak
To P - - ~
From isolation you have turned to touch us now with your mind, breaking into speech you fling strange sentences our way and in delight we leap to snatch them and to toss them back! The pattern of your personality is moving and awakening to your opening world. Now you are walking in the shadow of normality. But yet it is our dream that one day you will dance a w a y - - and out into the glare of life.
E. A therton England Reprinted from the British NSAC Newsletter, March, 1975, with their kind permission.
Parents Speak
403
To D ~ - H o w graceful are your limbs when you move with delight in water! The ungainly walk is left behind on the land. Your head is lifted and your eyes glitter between your lilting arms in joy. And when the ponies come to set you free, to take them by the reins and lead them round has power to rest you. Where will your delicate looks and your dancing limbs take you? Where will you g o - - when there are no m o r e p o n i e s - - t o find your peace? We need to hope the world is holding other joys for you, that you can be both sheltered and alive.
E. A therton England Reprinted from the British NSAC Newsletter, March, 1975, with their kind permission.
404
Parents Speak
Alone Alone; how does it feel to be alone in a world that you don't understand yet only you are alone? All the people around you are talking, and you? You are alone. Is it fun? is it lonely? are you happy? are you sad? Don't you know? Only Erik knows how it feels to be alone. Or does he? I don't know. Alone. Alone. Author Unknown Reprinted from the U.S. NSAC Newsletter, January, 1971, with their kind permission.
DISCUSSION
Poems: Experience Expressed Truly and Well As so often in poetry of all kinds, these poems about autism are strongest when they turn upon themselves, endanger themselves, put themselves under special pressure to be honest or clear. The poem "Imminent Disaster," which is unfortunate only in its title, prepares nicely for its final twist with the protestation, "That is the truth." The whole truth, toward which the poem then moves, is that even those "at home," while not hated, seem odd to the autistic child by reason of their inexplicable love. Benjamin Ladner's poem suffers initially from a heavy wordiness which, however, turns out to contribute in some part to its meaning: when he crucially asks himself Keats' question, "Do I wake or sleep?," he is entertaining the thought that his mind is as encapsulated (by "reasons" and "explanations") as the sleeping child's, and that, given this likeness, there may yet be hope of communication with him. Mrs. Hildyard's remarkable poem, "Collecting from (Normal) School," expresses a parent's fierce loyalty to
Parents Speak
405
the "different" child, and accepts--despite the pain of it--a wholly different emotional "weather" from that which surrounds the normal. The imagery of this weather derives strikingly from the "Himalayan hat" of the fourth line. It is "monstrous," of course, and normality would be a "benison," but those words are contradicted or balanced by other words in such a way as to convey, with precision, the poet's attachment and defiance. By contrast, E. Atherton's poems are relaxed and prosaic, but they have their charged moments ("Now you are walking/in the shadow of normality"). I admire the phrasing of the lines beginning "And when the ponies come," as well as the happy paradox that what one leads can set one free. If the phrase "both sheltered and alive" is quiet to the ear, its meanings nonetheless effectively clash. Finally, the poem by Erik's sister is dramatically strong because it progressively shakes the content out of the word "alone." By the time the poem is over, the poet doesn't know whether "alone," as she understands it, corresponds to anything in her brother's feelings or awareness. And this realization of the extent of her separateness from Erik makes the final "Alones" apply in part to her. I have enjoyed all of these poems, and they illustrate a major function of art" to help us face what is hard to bear by expressing it truthfully and well.
Richard Wilbur Professor of English Smith College Northampton, Massachusetts
Poetic Insanity
Poems about a bizarre mental condition? Who writes them? Kin. Why? to reach out or to memorialize reaching out, usually with a sense of failure. Erik's 11-year-old sister in "Alone" writes three stanzas to Erik, and in the fourth withdraws from Erik (who cannot answer) to speak to someone else, perhaps herself, about Erik before writing a fifth stanza consisting of only one word (repeated) that isolates Erik's central trait, isolation. Benjamin Ladner's "Autistic Child Asleep" moves in the opposite direction, from a withdrawn, superior, objective view through subjective involvement to an imagined reaching in to the core of the mysterious autistic identity. Ladner's poem quivers with concern, though it begins clinically enough. The second stanza contrasts the freed child with the observer bound to his rational explanations. Subjectivity awakens in the third stanza; the observer views himself outside the membranous walls within which madness moves uncrowdedly with dignity. In the fourth stanza he has left
406
Parents Speak
behind rationality for a burst of poetic madness which culminates in the fine insanity of the imagination which reaches out to communicate with the isolated child through sleep that "erupts at dead center of clear-polished consciousness." E. Atherton's two poems, with little of the lift of imagination beyond the first, rather delighted descriptions (e.g., sentences like balls to be tossed in " T o P - - - - " ) settle for endings that are wishful thinking. Catherine Hildyard's poems are already far beyond the ordinary pieties and rationalities when they begin. "Song for a Refrigerator" makes statements that have nothing to do with reason ("My baby took me on a trip/Because his eyes were blue") but everything to do with our impression that this is a faery child, an elfin child whom one must follow into trackless wastes and "ice-falls of the heart-lands" (the parents'). Some of this tone comes from her fine gift for phrasing, the reminiscence of Yeats' faery poems dwelling in such phrases as begin the stanzas. Hildyard's "Collecting from (Normal) School" seems to illustrate Dr. Johnson's remark that "all power of fancy over reason is a degree of insanity." The mother of the strange child seems mad as a demon in her "Himalayan hat" and matching her child's "outlandish gait." She has so identified with her mod child that she seems mad herself or at least accepts the imputation of madness from ordinary mothers who cannot know "What monstrous, what ecstatic landscapes we traverse," who cannot from their experience of gentle warm rain imagine the blizzard in which the strange pair move. Who writes them? Even the victim. Malcolm Gorst's poem seems the most rational of the lot. Like the man who wouldn't belong to any club which would accept him, the autistic child nearly ran away from a home where people loved him because they must be " d o t t y . " Yet, we must remember to look at the first line again.
William P. Sullivan Professor of English Marshall University Huntington, West Virginia
Poems Enlarge Our Comprehension As you will see, I have found the poems very enjoyable; the little girl's comment about her brother, Erik, and Malcolm Gorst's poem about himself are particularly attractive. These seven poems are touching and useful. Poets condense and crystallize meaning and feeling so that we are forced to attend to what they
Parents Speak
407
have written and spoken. It is difficult to skim a p o e m - - y o u may refuse to read it, but if you read it, phrases will stick like burrs. It is always possible to slither across the surface of a case history, and I fear we often do. Six o f these poems express the bafflement and uncertainty that many of us experience when meeting an autistic person. I recall such feelings well over 50 years ago when my little sister and I spent a wonderful summer on the cliffs at Pett, near Dover by the English Channel. Our hostess' son was red-haired, freckled Owen, who lived in a jerky, speeded-up universe, far away from our h u m d r u m place. Erik's 11-year-old sister addresses him very much as we would have questioned Owen had we been a little older than 6 and 4 at the time. "Is it fun? Is it lonely? Are you happy? Are you sad? Do you k n o w ? " Those who want to study the feelings induced in others by the Owens of this world will find them in this poem. Malcolm Gorst's " I m m i n e n t Disaster" gives us an insider's view o f an autistic world. It is as the title suggests--a place in which anything that could happen does happen and might do so at any moment. Malcolm Gorst describes a bleak and frightening existence. Each of the other five poems is a gallant attempt to span the great gulf separating autistic worlds from those everyday places which most of us inhabit most of the time. I hope that this collection will be extended and made available for those who wish to understand autism better. It may be that for some of us the study of a poem such as " I m m i n e n t Disaster" will enlarge our comprehension more than lectures or texts, and that something will seep through the minds o f all o f us, leaving us a little more open and a little less selfassured.
Humphry Osmond Professor of Psychiatry University of Alabama Tuscaloosa, Alabama
