Illness and the Corporeal Experience as a Source of Collective Healing in 21st-Century American Poetry

Abstract

Though 21st-century poetics is informed by protests and increasingly nuanced conversations about intersectional experiences, representations of chronic and acute illness are fairly rare. Even in the post-confessional era, with poets embracing vulnerability, ableism continues to dominate the genre. However, several poets have embraced their respective illnesses, centring their experiences not as wholly traumatic but as gracefully human. I argue that poets like Danez Smith, Andrea Gibson, Rachel McKibbens and others help insert acute and chronic illness into conversations about American poetics. American literature has long been complacent regarding the erasure of people living with illness, as well as its tendency to sensationalise trauma rather than centre the human experience in stories of illness. 21st-century poets are challenging this paradigm, effectively transforming their respective illnesses into a catalyst for activism and grounding their experiences in representations of the corporeal as flawed, vulnerable and yet miraculous.