Just One Thing with Allison Blevins

Allison Blevins’ September issue memoir “Notes for the Handbook for the Newly Disabled” has chapters full of juxtaposed colors and memories and references—all in less than 2,000 words. Here she shares just one thing about the piece:

"After my diagnosis with MS, most of my reading and writing focused on pain. Everything about having a body and experiencing that body as it interacts with the world is subjective. I'm obsessed with understanding and transcribing, but this drive is always at war with subjectivity. For me, poems and lyric prose create and define words that don't exist. When I lost the use of my legs, doctors asked over and over how it felt. I would say, ‘It feels like my legs have been frozen in blocks of ice, but they are also on fire.’ One young medical student, his clipboard trembling, once replied, ‘Would you say that is sharp or stabbing?’ I knew I needed a manual for myself. I needed something neat and square and contained, and that was the impetus for the form of this piece.”