“In their compelling and moving collaboration, Aby Kaupang and Matthew Cooperman chronicle the challenges and occasional triumphs of raising a child with autism. The three letters of the book’s title, NOS, embody the reduction—the negation—of individuals and bodies to medical and psychoanalytic acronyms. The poets realize, however, that the designation of autism to describe their daughter is only a placeholder for a disorder “Not Otherwise Specified,” one which impels them into the vagaries of evaluation, diagnosis, and intervention. Nor does the designation describe the affective challenges of dealing with behavioral anomalies, silences, screaming fits, sleeplessness and trauma. At its core, the work celebrates a child’s life, however difficult, in passages that testify to the family’s resilience. Its rich formal complexity combines lyrical testimony with documentary objectivity. NOS is a vital contribution to disability poetics but also to a critical poetics of embodiment. It is a remarkable book.”
—Michael Davidson