CONTRIBUTOR SPOTLIGHT:
Interview with J.M.C. Kane

Rappahannock Review Poetry Editors: The title of the piece “Atmosphere Spectrum Disorder” immediately creates a connection with Autism Spectrum Disorder. That connection is continued through the poem’s depiction of three states of weather: high pressure, low pressure and unresolved energy. How do you see the neurodivergent experience working in this poem?

J.M.C Kane: The title is doing real work before the first line arrives. ASD—Atmospheric Spectrum Disorder—is an invitation to read what follows not as metaphor but as phenomenology. The three pressure systems are not decorative; they are states. Low pressure is the interior collapse, the weight of unprocessed input, the skull as a barometer reading its own anxiety. High pressure is masking—the tight-fist sky, the shallow breath, the forecast that says clear when the body knows otherwise. Heat lightning is the unresolved charge: the idea that fires without completing, the almost-joy, the brightness rehearsing its entrance. What I wanted to resist was the poetic convention that treats the neurodivergent interior as strange or alien. Weather is not strange. Weather is simply the atmosphere doing what atmospheres do. The poem asks whether that reframing—your inner life as meteorological rather than pathological—changes what it feels like to inhabit it. I think it does, at least for me.

RR: The poem ends on an uneasy note. The last section is only one line, “conditions may change without warning.” Why leave on this measure of uncertainty?

J.K: Because it is the truest line in the poem. “Conditions may change without warning” is what neurotypical forecast culture says when it has exhausted its models. For the neurodivergent reader, that is not a caveat—it is the operating condition. Dysregulation does not announce itself. The bad morning does not send advance notice. I wanted the poem to end without the false resolution of clearing skies, because that resolution would betray everything the three sections had been honest about. There is also something I find clarifying, rather than distressing, in the statement. The warning is the warning that there is no warning. That is its own form of accuracy. The poem earns the right to say that because it has not looked away from what came before it.

RR: This piece plays a lot with stanza breaks and spacing. The lines are short and thoughts get split up between line breaks. This can be especially seen in lines like “sink / slow / and in place” and “drop / by / drop.” Why did you choose this format to tell this poem?

JK: The form is the argument. The neurodivergent mind, at least mine, does not always process in continuous streams. It processes in discrete units—a word, a pause, another word—and meaning assembles at intervals rather than arriving whole. The line break is the processing gap made visible. When “drop / by / drop” descends the page, or “sink / slow / and in place” breaks apart across three lines, the reader is asked to experience the interval rather than skip over it. That slowing is not decorative difficulty. It is the weight of a moment that is actually heavy. I also wanted the white space to do work—to hold what hasn’t been said, the way the neurodivergent interior often holds more than it releases. The poem breathes in a particular way because that is how that kind of pressure breathes.

Moreover, as I will discuss in my answers to questions 4 and 5 below, I wanted the piece to be legible to others diagnosed with ASD. If you have ever watched one of us—not listened, but watched—you will see that we can process an entire room in under a minute, but our eyes light briefly on every detail we are designed to see, process one, and move to the next. For many, not all, ASD-2s and ASD-3s, this translates into a speech pattern that follows this same mechanism. Now that I have pointed this out, you will likely never be able to unsee it or unhear it again.

RR: Your book Quiet Brilliance, which explores the neurodivergent experience in the workplace, will be coming out soon! Are there any similarities, thematic or otherwise, between this poem and your new book?

JK: Yes, but there is a distinction with a difference. Quiet Brilliance was written primarily (emphasis mine) for the neurotypical leaders, supervisors, and hiring managers that have trouble navigating the relationship with the neurodivergent professional. This navigation usually ends up going over the falls, and the relationship is severed. Now, the follow-on book, which is in search of representation, Less Quietly: How Neurodivergent Minds Can Reshape the Systems That Define Work, is actually written for the neurodivergent worker, him- or herself. It is a field manual for navigating a neurotypical professional—and, to a lesser degree, personal—relationship. The similarity to works such as “Atmospheric Spectrum disorder” lies in the same vein of trying to make the autistic mind more legible to neurotypical readers. The added benefit—probably because it is intended—is to give the neurodivergent a way to recognize themselves in a way they can use to self-actualize or -affirm.

RR: As an environmental attorney, do you often find a lot of inspiration in weather and nature?

JK: That is an excellent question made more so by the fact that I have never been asked it before. I processed this before responding, as is my wont. But that which you are circling finds some reality in the fact that the preponderance of my writing which does not deal with neurodivergence or the metabolism of grief, is environmental, ecological, or eco-theo in nature. I have a collection of nearly forty essay pieces in this register, and, yes, many deal with weather. To really answer the question, though, I would change only the direction from which it comes: Did your interest in environmental law grow out of, or was it inspired by, your attachment to weather and nature? Yes, without doubt.