Autism and Poetry

[Endymion]

Poetry (reading and writing it) is important to me and has been for as long as I can remember. Part of coming to grips with my recent diagnosis is revisiting old favourites and finding new meanings that seem to connect specifically with autistic experiences or that perhaps I found especially moving because of my experience with autism. Are there poems that speak to you or help you? E.g., this one from John Clare means a great deal to me:

I am—yet what I am none cares or knows;
My friends forsake me like a memory lost:
I am the self-consumer of my woes—
They rise and vanish in oblivious host,
Like shadows in love’s frenzied stifled throes
And yet I am, and live—like vapours tossed

Into the nothingness of scorn and noise,
Into the living sea of waking dreams,
Where there is neither sense of life or joys,
But the vast shipwreck of my life’s esteems;
Even the dearest that I loved the best
Are strange—nay, rather, stranger than the rest.

I long for scenes where man hath never trod
A place where woman never smiled or wept
There to abide with my Creator, God,
And sleep as I in childhood sweetly slept,
Untroubling and untroubled where I lie
The grass below—above the vaulted sky.

Remember not to post anything that's currently in copyright. Maybe just link to longer ones?

 

[FayetheADHDsquirrel]

I like writing some of my own at times.

 

[Misty Avich]

I don't like poetry because I never understand it. It just goes way over my head.

 

[Outdated]

Poetry (reading and writing it) is important to me and has been for as long as I can remember.

This seems to be common with a lot of autistic people, along with a fascination for word play games such as riddles, limmericks and words as double entendres. Different forms of dyslexia are also common amongst autistic people and I wonder if the two are related somehow, if our fascination stems from learning to read and write without mixing our words and letters.

Welcome to the forums, by the way.

 

[Jumpinbare]

I never liked non-ballad poetry. It's too imprecise to convey a precise meaning, and can therefore be ambiguous. In my mind, ambiguity is failed communication.

I love that several American Indian languages are so unambiguous that you can't mislead someone without outright blatantly lying. You can't say something with multiple interpretations.

 

[SusanLR]

This one speaks to me.

 

[Shevek]

I used to resent having to memorize the genders of French nouns but eventually, I realized that in a noisy environment, you could tell the gender of a word even if you couldn't hear it clearly. That reduced the possibilities by 50%. Poetry is far more self-correcting. If you are trying to recall an epic history and are not sure of a word, there are very few options to choose from, and so only one is likely to make sense. So, for most of human history, any information that had to be preserved was told in rhyme. I think we automatically trust it now, even though writing is even more permanent. That's why advertisers use jingles.

 

[chrism66]

I like a great deal of poetry and have a huge collection of mainly late or mid twentieth century books ; well over 8,000 at the last estimate and still growing . I'm currently re-reading Frank O'hara . I'm mainly interested in the musicality . The "meaning" of words is only a small part of poetry (but in most though not all cases still something of a part), and often I'm just going on how it looks on the page and how it sounds in the silent ear inside - just the general way it unfolds - at least to start. As I get older, and particularly after a stroke in 2018, my ability to read and understand words has declined ; which is frustrating, sometimes very . I try to write, too .

 

[Shevek]

I used to resent having to memorize the genders of French nouns but eventually, I realized that in a noisy environment, you could tell the gender of a word even if you couldn't hear it clearly. That reduced the possibilities by 50%. Poetry is far more self-correcting. If you are trying to recall an epic history and are not sure of a word, there are very few options to choose from, and so only one is likely to make sense. So, for most of human history, any information that had to be preserved was told in rhyme. I think we automatically trust it now, even though writing is even more permanent. That's why advertisers use jingles.

PS - It is very hard to find the right words to convey my thoughts in prose. If I limited myself to the vocabulary that would fit into a poetic structure, I don't think I'd have a chance at saying what I intended. Are there examples of poetry that becomes popular in more than one language without altering the story?

 

[Forest Cat]

I like it, one of my favorite poems is called "Om Hundrede Aar Er Alting Glemt". It means "In a hundred years all is forgotten". It was made by Knut Hamsun in 1904. It's impossible to translate it all into English and make it all rhyme and sound as good as the original, I have tried. But it begins like this:

I'm drifting this evening
I'm thinking and battling
I think I am like a capsized boat
And no matter how much I wail
No matter how much suffering
I can find no way out
But why should I be so worried and saddened
In a hundred years all is forgotten

This is the most beautiful rendition of it I think, this duet is A1 top shelf stuff. Almost brings a tear to my eye everytime.

Spoiler: In a hundred years..

 

[Tuffsy]

As a song writer my words are basically poetry. One of my latest songs was written due to the realisation of turning 67 which in Australia qualifies you for an Old Age Pension (OAP).
As a proud Baby Boomer, wanna be Hippie and rock&roll star, I'm feeling a little nostalgic and melancholic that I've become an Old Age Pensioner (OAP). There's 23 famous songs mentioned, well, 5 of them are mine and not so famous!

Verse 1:
I'm a proud Boomer and I just want to say
It's been a long and winding road, to the dock of the bay.
There's been a few times, in this Wild World
I've been Knockin'-on-Heaven's door, feelin' Homeward Bound.

Verse 2:
So Have I Told You Lately, now listen easy,
There may be Tears in Heaven when this gets out,
I'm a Lookin' out my back door, down a Country Road,
I'm Seein' Fire and Rain in that Harvest Moon.

Chorus:
I'm an O.A.P. and that's no lie,
My brain and body don't see eye to eye,
A child of the sixties in my grandpa's skin.
I'm gonna let my hair down while I still have some,
This pensioner still likes to rock and roll
I'm An OAP like Mick and Keef,
Satisfaction guaranteed,
I'm movin' like Jagger, my guitar at my side.

Verse 3:
I'm a Guitar Man, lookin' for his next gig,
I'm happy when you sing along, it's you I dig,
A Sultan of Swing, gettin' Money for nothin',
So Maybe Baby, you'll love me some day.

Verse 4:
I can sing a Few Bars about a Lover of Words
And the Vibe is Cool, Miles down the track,
I write the songs, but the world doesn't cry,
So Stand Up and Dance and show me why.

Bridge:
These days I seem to sit at home
And wonder where the world has gone so wrong.
And all the time I play my music, for so long.

Chorus:
I'm an O.A.P. and that's no lie,
My brain and body don't see eye to eye,
A child of the sixties in my grandpa's skin.
I'm gonna let my hair down while I still have some,
This pensioner still likes to rock and roll
I'm An OAP like Mick and Keef,
Satisfaction guaranteed,
I'm movin' like Jagger, my guitar at my side.

Here's a link if you want to here it:

 

[SusanLR]

One from 1817 that my dad read to me.
I lived this country way of life age 5-7 in the Ozarks, MO

No electric, no plumbing, an outhouse, a well,
Kerosine lanterns, wood stoves for cooking and heating,
A root cellar and true ice box, and I found it all was perfectly swell.

My little intro.

I've written a lot of poetry and songs in my life also.
And yes, the songs are poems of their own.

 

[velociraptor]

I can't connect with 95% of the poetry out there and I resented the poetry unit each year in school as nothing more than a waste of my time. There is the odd poem I can connect with (e.g. The Gods of the Copybook Headings) but they are few and far between. I generally like my poetry in the form of musical lyrics.

 

[Binary_Bark]

Found that writing poetry is a big help, especially my ASD and ADHD coupled with alexithmia. It seems to work like a "Hack" a way around it. One that I've been working on the last few days:

Padded Walls

They said:
"Pray harder."
"Take the pills."

“Take some more
"Talk to someone."



But I did.
I did all of it.

All I found were cages
Cages with velvet words
Cages with padded walls
meant to silence
what never needed silencing.

They gave me crosses and catechisms,
told me “Truth” came wrapped in robes,
but all I saw
were men who feared
what burned in me.

They told me I was wrong for asking,
wrong for knowing,
wrong for feeling
like an open nerve in a numb world.

So, I took the pills.
“Stabilize,” they said.
"Balance the brain."

But no mention
of the price.

Didn’t mention
the slow decay of self,
till, even autopilot
bailed with a scream and a parachute
into oblivion of the land below.

Then came therapy.
The great hope.
But even there,
I played the game.

The Masking Game.
The Please-Like-Me Game.
The Don’t-Scare-The-Normal Game.

I’ve worn the mask so long,
it’s grown teeth.
It bites when I try to take it off.

I don’t know who I am without it.

But I know this

The resistance you see in me?
That fire?
That pushback?
That’s not defiance.
That’s a lifetime of camouflage
that never worked.

Because I was never built
to blend in.

I was made to burn.

You call me broken,
but I’ve felt everything.

While you walked past pain like it was fog,
I breathed it in.
While you laughed at sarcasm,
I searched for the dagger behind it.
I don’t get the joke,
because I am the punchline.

But here's the prophecy:

When the last glass tower falls,
when the polite world crumbles
under its own weight,
when conformity dies
with a whimper, not a bang

We rise.

The misunderstood.
The too-much-feelers.
The misfits with fractured halos.
The neurodivergent kings and queens
of the new age.

We rule.
Not with fear
with flame.

And the world will finally
be honest enough
to burn with us.​

 

[SusanLR]

One of mine published in the spring 1992 CFIDS Chronicle Journal.
Written in a time of depression.

There's a gap in my mind
In space and in time,
A bridge to re-connect.
But where do I start, to find all the parts
My mind cannot recollect.

Suspended between, my goals and my means,
I haven't the strength to start,
For how can you find
A path through your mind,
When you're lost from your spirit and heart.

The threads that are bared, cannot be compared
To anything I've ever known,
Lost in the dark-- in limbo-- I park,
Waiting the way to be shown.

Trying to find, the way to rewind
The thread that has fallen apart,
But how do you find
That path through your mind
When the flame inside has gone dark?