Ms. Vandna Jerath's web site encourages those suffering from autism to write and publish their poetry electronically. After seeking and failing to find other media outlets for this art form, she received grant support to fill this niche herself. Her effort is audacious, akin to building an airplane while flying it. For over the centuries, philosophers and poets have debated the sources of poetry, its uses, its place in the larger society. Plato would have banished poets from his Republic, suspicious of their enthrallment by the shadows of reality: poetry "feeds and waters the passions," he said famously. Aristotle commented that tragedy rouses pity and fear in an audience, the better to purge them and restore a healing homeostasis to the psyche. Closer to our time, poets have both claimed and disclaimed the power of poetry. At one extreme, Percy Bysshe Shelley designated poets "the unacknowledged legislators of the world," while at the other, W. H. Auden announced wearily that "poetry makes nothing happen" (in "An Elegy for W. B. Yeats"). The truth may lie somewhere between. The conditions of their illness endow individuals with autism unique handicaps and advantages. Their symptoms, which commence early, include problems with socialization and language. Some are mute and quite withdrawn, although individuals with Asperger’s Syndrome often reveal unexplained linguistic gifts. Many individuals with autism are endowed with unusual thought processes indicated by Temple Grandin's book title, Thinking in Pictures. These unique visual perceptions of the world coincide nicely with poetry. Almost by definition this art form is first person, involves vivid sensory imagery, and is often expressed in highly-stylized conventions (like rhyme and meter).

Quite possibly, individuals with autism fulfill inner needs by writing poetry, perhaps breaking out of confining psychic shells or withdrawing in fantasy to comforting verbal cocoons. In providing them with a forum, Ms. Jerath hopes to provide individuals with autism an opportunity to express themselves as well as learn what motivates them to write poetry and their feelings during composition. What are their emotional reactions to completion of an art object and, then, to its exposure to a larger readership? More broadly, one wonders how this poetry will reshape ways readers perceive its writers. Finally, publication of poetry by individuals with autism and speculation regarding its roots and impact bear upon a murky controversy: is autism in its various manifestations a condition which should be cured? Or should it be considered a unique endowment helping individuals with autism to contribute to society in ways not available to more conventional thinkers? Ms. Jerath's endeavor should bear importantly on these and other yet unforeseen issues.