AUTISM, POETRY, AND THE ART OF TRANSFORMATION by Chris Martin
Max and I had just finished our first writing session together, or were about to, when he stood up and declared in a firm voice, “Next week I want to write about Dwight D. Eisenhower.” Given that we’d spent our last hour writing poems about hockey and animated sheep, I was momentarily stunned by Max’s announcement. “Absolutely,” I said after I’d gathered myself, “I’ll write his name down on the next page, just so we remember.”
When Max arrived the following Monday, he made a beeline for the seat next to me and said, “I’m ready to write about Dwight D. Eisenhower.” I asked if he knew much about our former president. “I know that he was president from 1953 to 1961,” Max replied, “and I know he played hockey.” I said that was a fine start. Opening up my laptop, I suggested we get to know Ike a little better before we started to write our poem. We scoured several websites, cherry-picking facts here and there. Ike, like any human being, was quite interesting when you gave him a good look. I could tell Max was starting to get antsy, so I shifted to a discussion of form.
“Can I show you a poem?” I asked him. He nodded. I opened up Wallace Stevens’ classic poem, “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird.” We read through the poem once and I answered Max’s questions about the vocabulary: pantomime, innuendo, euphony, equipage. He liked how each section of the poem offered its own perspective on the blackbird. The ideas, though difficult to grasp, seemed to excite him. In preparing to write he took off his shoes, much like a character in a film takes off his shirt when preparing to fight.
The poem began in a plainly factual vein:
Thirteen Ways of Looking at Dwight D. Eisenhower
1.
He was an active boy.
He played hockey.
2.
He was president from 1953–1961.
He was a great president.
Here I stopped Max to ask if we might follow Wallace’s lead, reaching beyond the plainness of “great” to something more vibrant. Max smiled wide and said, “Deluxe.”
In the third section Max stated that Ike was liked. I asked Max why Ike was liked. He thought about it for a moment and his eyes brightened, as he seemed to catch something unexpected: “I think people liked him because of his smile. And also he made the interstates.” Despite the present-day debate around automobile use and carbon footprints, I agreed that these two things were eminently likeable. Section four covered his military career. Section five focused on his establishment of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration: “He created the NASA space company / that goes up into space.” I wondered aloud if that final line of section five might not desire some rewording. I pointed out the grammatical nuance, but also the flatness of the phrase “goes up into space.” Max erased the line, thought for a moment, and then wrote, “that blasts off past the stars.” What an improvement! I told him how much I admired the assonance of his new line, how “that,” “blasts,” and “past” all deftly echoed the central syllabic sound of “NASA.”
In section 6 he retired. Section 7 delved further into Ike’s likeability and social graces. Section 8 detailed his love of opera. To recap:
3.
People liked him
because they enjoyed his smile.
He came up with the idea
of interstates.
4.
He was a veteran
of the second World War.
I think he did a good job
serving as commander.
5.
He created
the NASA space company
that blasts off past the stars.
6.
He retired in 1961.
He lived in Gettysburg.
7.
I think he was attentive
and thought a lot
about people’s feelings.
8.
He cherished opera
because the singing is charming.
The ninth section began, “I think Ike liked tasty foods. . . .” For the past few sections I’d noticed Max’s eyes moving toward the far window of the room. Outside the clouds were accumulating, darkening. Even the light in the room was changing, growing dim and ominous. I attempted to refocus Max on the poem: “What kinds of tasty foods?” Without turning from the window he replied dreamily, “Hot dogs and snowflakes.” This is where it becomes clear why, to paraphrase Frank O’Hara, I am not a history teacher. I let Max continue to stare at the gathering storm while I added his answer and read the section out loud:
9.
I think Ike liked tasty foods
like hot dogs and snowflakes.
Max offered no corrections, so I asked him what the next section would be about. “Can we write a weather poem?” Max replied, standing to get a better view of the black-green sky. I told him I would love to write a weather poem. That, in fact, I had written a whole book of poems called Becoming Weather! Max lifted one of his eyebrows. But . . . I also felt strongly that Dwight D. Eisenhower deserved to know his final four ways. I could tell that Max wanted to please me, wanted to finish the poem, but that he also couldn’t tear himself away from the storm, which I had to admit was now a churning spectacle of monstrous proportions. Finally, he turned to me and said firmly, “I have to write a weather poem.” I could see there was no hope for Ike. Just as I was about to relent, my eyes returned to section 9. I had an idea. “Max, do you think it might be possible to combine our Dwight D. Eisenhower poem with a poem about weather? Section 9 already set the precedent.”
Max immediately sat back down. “How?” he said simply. I thought for a moment and then asked if it would be possible to reverse-personify Ike, to choose a kind of weather to represent him. Max typed: “I think he would be a rain cloud.” I asked him what Ike’s voice sounded like. He smiled and typed: “Loud like thunder.” I asked him if there was any other kind of weather he resembled. He looked at his earlier answer and then typed and said simultaneously: “I think he would be a looming rain cloud.” I told him how much I admired the specificity of “looming.” Then his smile and eyes both widened. He pressed return and then typed: “I think he would be a downpour.” He read the line out loud with manic emphasis, his voice rising on downpour into an ecstatic squeal.
“Max,” I said, “I love this poem.”
Thirteen Ways of Looking at Dwight D. Eisenhower
1.
He was an active boy.
He played hockey.
2.
He was president from 1953‑1961.
He was a great president.
3.
People liked him
because they enjoyed his smile.
He came up with the idea
of interstates.
4.
He was a veteran
of the second World War.
I think he did a good job
serving as commander.
5.
He created
the NASA space company
that blasts off past the stars.
6.
He retired in 1961.
He lived in Gettysburg.
7.
I think he was attentive
and thought a lot
about people’s feelings.
8.
He cherished opera
because the singing is charming.
9.
I think Ike liked tasty foods
like hot dogs and snowflakes.
10.
I think he would be a rain cloud.
11.
Loud like thunder.
12.
I think he would be a looming rain cloud.
13.
I think he would be a downpour.
* * *
There is more than one paradox at the heart of autism. Or, as Melanie Yergeau wrote in Authoring Autism: “When it comes to stories of autism, paradoxes abound.”[1] The primary paradox, of course, is that autists may seem to be “in a world of their own,” when they are often paying far greater attention to the fullness of the world around them than anyone else in the room. But there is also the way autistic students habitually skew towards the literal, despite possessing undeniable gifts for figurative thought. Another paradox that is close to my own heart pertains to non-speaking autists, who, despite being physically unable to produce audible song, are some of the most lyrical writers I’ve known, autistic or otherwise. What I want to address in this essay, however, is the perceived autistic struggle for what researchers call “cognitive flexibility,” or the capacity to incorporate change, which is coupled, in so many of my students, with a fascination for transition and hybridity, a thrall for metamorphosis and transformation. Max is fascinated by the weather because of the way it changes, especially on a summer day in the Midwest like the one we spent writing about Dwight D. Eisenhower. His fascination forced us to transform Ike into a rainstorm. And perhaps that’s one of the most frightening things about transformation: change begets change.
It is widely claimed that those on the autism spectrum suffer from significant executive function impairment and professionals often zero in on cognitive flexibility as a unique challenge. While new research is complicating this idea[2], autistic behavior seems again and again to confirm it. I’ve seen the most soft-spoken and gentle student lash out with real violence when the changes in his schedule are too much to bear. But the flip side of this behavior is a desire to succeed. As Barry Prizant crucially points out in his book, Uniquely Human, many autistic behaviors stem from a desire to manage emotions and to communicate in the midst of a situation designed, often unknowingly, to threaten the success of that self-management: “Some professionals work hard to seize control from children with autism, but when they do, they’re not helping; they’re causing increased dysregulation by interfering with the children’s strategy to stay well-regulated.”[3]
By introducing the topic of transformation into my work with a student, I am partially attempting to restore some modicum of control. I am giving them a delineated space where they can write their way into a certain creative dominion over change. As writers, they can explore anxiety-causing ideas within a framework that allows them to process their mechanisms and implications. And, more than not, a student will eventually reveal a fascination with transformation, whether it has to do with werewolves, butterflies, or extreme home makeovers.
A student’s curiosity about transformation may also signal an understanding of how she is perceived by the larger world. I can’t tell you how many of my students are pulled toward the mysterious corners of cryptozoology, Brandon being a prime example. Where it concerns creatures like the various ape men – yeti, skunk ape, abominable snowman, sasquatch – the concept of something simultaneously human and not-human can be a source of deep and sustained inquiry. Despite claims that autism precludes a nuanced grasp of social relationships, many of my students see themselves as relegated to a not-quite-human status by a world that seeks constantly to alienate, examine, and explain them, more than not as a sort of sub- or extra-human freak that allows neurotypical society to appreciate by contrast how very “normal” it is. Even as I endeavor, in each of these essays, to emphasize the very humanness of those with autism, I am painfully aware of this freak show frame and how it threatens always to insert itself over my words.
* * *
My students, for whom change is frightening, seem miraculously to thrive when facing change head‑on in their poems. It’s as if imagination works as a leavening force against the real, causing its cold sharp edges to soften and warm. Within the safe, circumscribed, and playful field of the poem, transformation can be a territory that is explored, lightened, and, somehow, transformed itself.
When I first delved directly into this territory with Will, the poet laureate of all things Courteney Cox, it was our last writing session before the winter holidays. Snow had settled over the roofs here in Minneapolis and was falling in great fresh piles all over Denver, where Will lived. Knowing Will had an affinity for the concept of metamorphosis – the word itself felt like a sort of talisman for him – I suggested that the snow was reminiscent of a cocoon, softly wrapping itself around both our worlds. He liked this image very much and, sensing his enthusiasm, I wondered aloud what cocoons the other seasons might make. Will understood this challenge immediately and we leapt into writing. Here is Will’s poem, “Metamorphoses”:
A caterpillar makes a cocoon
and morphs into a butterfly.
Winter makes a cocoon of white snow
and morphs into spring.
Spring makes a cocoon of flowers
and morphs into summer.
Summer makes a cocoon of sun
and morphs into fall.
Fall makes a cocoon of colorful leaves
and morphs into winter.
Everything will change in the new year:
the seats in the classroom will be different,
the leaves will grow back on the trees,
I will have new soft cold weather clothes,
I will learn to make new stories,
and I hope to stay at the Brown Palace Hotel.
I love how the first stanza works to normalize change, to tame time’s passing. Will’s various cocoons are not frightening at all; they protect and insulate as the effects of metamorphosis take place: snow, flowers, sun, leaves. The world defends and adorns itself simultaneously: bright white, parti-colored petals, yellow-gold, falling finally in soft orange and rich red. But like Will says, “Everything will change in the new year.” No matter how much we attempt to brace against change – in fact, no matter how much we attempt to embrace change – it will always feel a little like being pried from our own skin, even if that means emerging with something like wings.
The leaves, the clothes, the stories: these are all cocoons we forge against the tide of new seats and new calendars. This poem itself is a story, or even the rehearsal of a story, made more powerful by its metaphors and music. I hope writing it brought Will a little closer to his own powers of protection, the folded wings of his imagination forming a snug, vibrant buffer against the days to come.
* * *
In Minnesota we have the same four seasons as everyone else, they just occur with different proportions. The Dakota, who have known Minnesota (or Mni Sóta) the longest, break down the year as follows: five months of winter, followed by one month of spring, followed by five months of summer, followed by one month of fall.[4] I often teach twin residencies in the fall and spring and inevitably the students are drawn toward poems that chronicle or reflect Minnesota’s rapidly transforming landscape, which reaches a nearly untenable acceleration during the months of October and April. The world is suddenly beyond recognition, sometimes overnight.
Something special happens when I bring a poem from one of my students into a new classroom. Eyes perk up, heads subconsciously calculating how long it will take for the poem they write to travel into further classrooms, obtaining a brand of academic notoriety. When I entered Stephanie’s classroom and announced my writing idea for that day, she thanked me for finding a way to dovetail with the science curriculum. I was confused. She informed me that the class had been studying metamorphosis earlier that day! Zach, Stephanie’s most outspoken student, chimed in, “Yeah, that poem is wrong.” I raised my eyebrows. “Butterflies make a chrysalis, not a cocoon,” he continued. “Only moths make cocoons.” While another teacher may have bristled at the correction, I claim no intellectual authority outside poetry[5], and thus was thrilled to learn something new, and thanked Zach for filling me in.
Zach and three of his classmate – Dylan, Tarin, and Daqwhan – took turns trying the form out:
Winter makes a chrysalis
Of snow as it turns into spring
Spring makes a chrysalis
Of butterflies as it turns into summer
Summer makes a cocoon
Of flowers as it turns into fall
Fall makes a cocoon
Of scary costumes as it turns into winter
I love the meta-metamorphosis of spring, as it forges its chrysalis from countless chrysalis-forming insects. And while winter and summer were somewhat predictable, fall also offered a novel take on transformation. It was late October and we were nearing Halloween. The special night of sanctioned if temporary metamorphosis was on everyone’s minds. Each student returned to the poem, imagining a cocoon or chrysalis uniquely tailored to help him make his idiosyncratic transformation.
Zach was first and announced that he wanted to transform into an airplane. When I asked him how he would accomplish this miraculous metamorphosis, he looked at me with a piteous expression and said, “Dreams!” When I asked him what dreams are made of, he gave me the same disappointed look, as if I was asking the most sophomoric questions possible. “Sleep!” So Zach’s cocoon of sleep would help him dream his way into airplane mode.
Next was Dylan, quiet yin to Zach’s loud yang. Dylan spent all our sessions together assiduously drawing with cheap markers on cut pieces of recycled paper. Often, at the completion of a poem, he would hand me a drawing to keep. I asked Dylan whether he wanted a chrysalis or cocoon. After repeating the question a couple times he chose chrysalis. When I asked him what he would like to transform into, he stopped drawing for a short moment and said, “Caterpillar.” I smiled at the reversal. When I was halfway through asking him what kind of chrysalis he would need, Dylan suddenly blurted out, “Wiggles!” I told him how much I admired the assonance those short “i” sounds engendered: chrysalis, wiggles, caterpillar. And so Dylan’s chrysalis of wiggles would let him reverse his way from butterfly to caterpillar.
Next was Tarin, who very rarely uttered even a single word during our sessions, but was always, much like Dylan, bending over his small white board with a dry erase marker. Instead of relying on Tarin to tell us the answers, we could often refer directly to his board, on which he was always writing carefully lettered words. When I asked Tarin what he might want to become, he was laboriously forming the letters of a prospective movie title: “Mr. Incredible 2.” I asked if it would be okay to use that for the poem. He grunted. Then I asked him what kind of cocoon he would need to make the transformation. He didn’t respond. Tarin’s aide Maria repeated the question a few times before giving him some choices. When she offered muscles, he broke his silent concentration to repeat the word, “Muscles.” And so Tarin’s cocoon of muscles would seamlessly morph him into Mr. Incredible 2.
Finally, it was Daqwhan’s turn. Daqwhan was feeling disregulated by something, possibly the content of the poem we were writing. He was mumbling insults under his breath toward Zach and giving him a sidelong glare. Stephanie asked Daqwhan if he needed his putty and he nodded his head. Putty in hand, kneading the dark blue blob into shape, he seemed to gather himself. I asked him when he would make a chrysalis or cocoon. “Cocoon,” he said shortly. I asked him what the cocoon would be made of and after repeating the question a few times he answered, “Daqwhan.” I told him how much I liked the idea that we could make a cocoon of ourselves. It was an act of self-sufficiency or self-reliance, as Emerson would have it. When I asked what transformation this cocoon of himself would occasion, he said, “I would turn into a werewolf.”
Our poem was nearly complete. As I was about to ask the class what we should title our poem, Dylan handed me the piece of paper on which he’d been drawing. On the left side of the page was a yellow caterpillar and on the right side was an orange butterfly. At the top of the page a sign hung down, emblazoned with the words, “A Brand New Outfit.” And so it was. I added the title and we read the poem aloud, amid lots of laughter:
A Brand New Outfit
Winter makes a chrysalis
Of snow as it turns into spring
Spring makes a chrysalis
Of butterflies as it turns into summer
Summer makes a cocoon
Of flowers as it turns into fall
Fall makes a cocoon
Of scary costumes as it turns into winter
Zach makes a cocoon of sleep
As he turns into an airplane
Dylan makes a chrysalis of wiggles
As he turns into a caterpillar
Tarin makes a cocoon of muscle
As he turns into Mr. Incredible 2
Daqwhan makes a cocoon of Daqwhan
As he turns into a werewolf
[1]. Yergeau, Melanie. Authoring Autism: On Rhetoric and Neurological Queerness. Duke University Press, Durham: 2018. 43.
[2]. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5538880/
[3]. Prizant, Barry. Uniquely Human. Simon & Schuster, New York: 2015. 84.
[4]. Eds. Gwen Westerman and Bruce White. Mni Sota Makoce. Minnesota Historical Society Press: St. Paul, 2012.
[5]. The truth is I claim very little intellectual authority within poetry either. That’s one of poetry’s greatest gifts: every cared-after poem can be right in accordance with its own goals. Breaking rules is almost a prerequisite.
Chris Martin is the author of four poetry collections: Things to Do in Hell (Coffee House Press, 2020), The Falling Down Dance (Coffee House Press, 2015), Becoming Weather (Coffee House Press, 2011), and American Music (Copper Canyon Press, 2007).