School for the Blind

"In his debut collection, School for the Blind, Daniel Simpson offers us a glimpse into the world of the blind with its attendant dangers, drop-offs, obstructions, cruelties and abandonments. Yet, here is also a world where kindnesses abound, where gestures of love by strangers and friends, alike, help to anchor the body and reconcile it to its place on earth. What is wholly surprising, as we read through the collection, is our confusion of who is blind and who is sighted. So many of the poems offer us an unusual sense of the world, a more intimate way of seeing it without the familiar visual signposts, a knowledge of it through heart and feel that the sighted can only imagine. 'Most people don't realize, ' Simpson declares in one poem, 'that I'm listening to them breathe, / that I hear body language.' What a subtle and crucial way of being in tandem with others! This is what Daniel Simpson's poetry schools us to do, connecting us in invisible yet palpable ways to one another, through a second sight, a deeper measure." -- Gregory Djanikian, Director of the Creative Writing Program, University of Pennsylvania, and author of six poetry collections, most recent ly, Dear Gravity
About the Author: Daniel Simpson and his identical twin brother, David, were born blind in Williamsport, Pennsylvania in 1952. After attending the Overbrook School for the Blind through eighth grade (1956-66), Dan became one of the first blind students in his county to go to a public school. He earned a Bachelor of Arts in English and music from Muhlenberg College, Allentown, PA, where he graduated Summa cum Laude and Class Salutatorian. After receiving a Master of Music in organ performance from Westminster Choir College, Princeton, NJ, where he had the opportunity to sing with major symphony orchestras, Dan traveled to Paris for a year of private study with the world-renowned, blind organist, Andre Marchal. Since then, Dan has worked as a church musician, computer programmer, and high school English teacher, earning a Master of Arts in English and a teaching certificate from the University of Pennsylvania along the way.

A recipient of a Fellowship in Literature from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, Dan has published poems in Prairie Schooner, The Cortland Review, Hampden Sydney Poetry Review, Passager, The Atlanta Review, The Louisville Review and Margie, among other literary journals. Cinquo Puntos Press, El Paso, Texas, published his essay "Line Breaks the Way I See Them" and four of his poems in Beauty Is A Verb: The New Poetry of Disability, a 2012 ALA Notable Poetry Book called "unusual and powerful" by Publisher's Weekly in a starred review.