Sustaining Air The Life of Larry Eigner

"Readers of Larry Eigner have eagerly awaited Jennifer Bartlett's biography of the poet, and based on my reading, it was worth the wait. This is not a critical biography that attempts to justify Eigner to current literary and cultural theory, but one that hews closely to the poet's life story by drawing extensively on correspondence and interviews with fellow poets and family members. Although Sustaining Air is about a literary figure, it is also a disability narrative about a poet whose cerebral palsy exerted a powerful influence on his life and work. Bartlett's understanding of disability issues and her own personal experience of living with disability give her special insight into Eigner's capabilities-and difficulties." -Michael Davidson, author of Invalid Modernism: Disability and the Missing Body of the Aesthetic