Hypermobilities by Ellen Samuels

Hypermobilities Reviews

• 
  Punk

  Two decades ago, I was reading an article on CFS/ME and one of the people being interviewed said something that so closely mirrored my own experience with chronic illness that I immediately closed the tab. I didn't decide to do it. I just did it. These days I wish I could find that article and finish reading it.
  
  Ellen Samuels has EDS and composed these haiku in the midst of her own medical uncertainty. They don't perfectly reflect my own life, but I can see myself in them. Instead of that feeling like a violation, it's a warm spark of recognition, a welcome sameness, a shared familiarity with being ill and unknown—the wrench in the medical machinery that's meant to diagnose and treat you but ultimately leaves you the same inconvenient mystery you were and are and will perhaps remain.
  
  Accordingly, here's my favorite:
  
  
  

  At the Doctor's Offices
  
  Tell me who I am.
  What day I was born. Don't ask.
  Tell me why I'm here.

  
  
  
  I also enjoyed the three "Hypermobility of the Large Joints" poems, here's the first:
  
  
  

  If your legs were wings
  they'd need to swing this far out.
  And feathers. And sky.

  
  
  
  Most of the poems are about bodies: subluxation, gastroparesis; and tests: DNA, MRI; and the uncertainty involved in both. The last section, with its focus on gardening, has a decided shift in tone. Samuels has called this a memoir in verse so maybe that's how she experienced it, but it's a bit of a departure from the content of the first five sections, and on a first reading there isn't enough of it to pick out how it relates to the rest of the collection, to discover patterns that reflect back themes from the medical poems, or even to find it a relief from their pain. There is no relief. The carrots she pulls from the ground don't want to go either.
  
  You can read an interview with Samuels at Medium,
  WELCOME, I WANT TO KNOW YOU. It's included at the back of this volume.
  
  Contains: bodily functions, medical procedures, chronic illness, pain, a potentially fatal medical condition. If you're feeling fragile about your health, this book may amplify it.
• 
  Jessie

  I read the entire book, then after I read “Notes on Writing Hypermobilities,” I went back and reread the poetry. I think you should read it too. I’ve always thought Ellen Samuels is such an incredible writer, but the haiku is even more remarkable once you’ve read that part.
  
  This book of haiku is about Ellen Samuels’s experience with Ehler-Danlos Syndrome. She describes it as poetry that began at her first MRI and continued throughout her journey with chronic illness. It’s such a valuable piece of art and I wish more people wrote poetry about disability.
• 
  cait

  3.75/5
  
  As someone with hEDS/HSD, I was so excited to see myself represented in a book like this. It is sooooo rare to see EDS anywhere and that in itself is amazing. I have had bouts of amateur writing to cope with similar experiences to Samuels and it was interesting to compare her thoughts and writing style to my own. Since the author has vEDS and cEDS traits, there was a lot in the book that I did not relate to. It was interesting to read about, but the connection just wasn’t quite as there for some of it as it was for others. The poems are pretty cool and almost abstract on their own, but connecting them to the author’s explanation at the end of the book really is what makes it great. I’m a good bit younger than the author, so I think this will be a source of comfort as my EDS progresses, and having a published form of comfort like this is really cool.
• 
  Erik Brown

  Unknown Mutation of BRCA-1
  
  No one knows yet how
  to carve skin from scars, to live
  knife-backwards to now.