Born Deaf into an ASL-speaking family and blind by adolescence, John Lee Clark learned to embrace the possibilities of his tactile world. He is on the frontlines of the Protactile movement, which gave birth to an unprecedented tactile language and a way of life based on physical connection. In a series of paradigm-shifting essays, Clark reports on seismic developments within the DeafBlind community. In “Against Access�, he interrogates the prevailing advocacy for “accessibility� that re-creates a shadow of a hearing-sighted experience. In the National Magazine Award–winning “Tactile Art�, he describes his relationship to visual art and encounters with tactile sculpture. He advocates for “Co-Navigation�, a new way of guiding that respects DeafBlind agency, and offers a brief history of the term “DeafBlind�. As warm and witty as he is radical and inspiring, Clark welcomes readers into the exciting Protactile landscape and celebrates the hidden knowledge that can be gained through touch.

Formally restless and relentlessly instructive, How to Communicate is a dynamic journey through language, community, and the unfolding of an identity. Poet John Lee Clark pivots from inventive forms inspired by the Braille slate to sensuous prose poems to incisive erasures that find new narratives in nineteenth-century poetry. Calling out the limitations of the literary canon, Clark includes pathbreaking translations from American Sign Language and Protactile, a language built on touch. How to Communicate embraces new linguistic possibilities that emanate from Clark’s unique perspective and his connection to an expanding, inclusive activist community. Amid the astonishing task of constructing a new canon, the poet reveals a radically commonplace life. He explores grief and the vagaries of family, celebrates the small delights of knitting and visiting a museum, and, once, encounters a ghost in a gas station. Counteracting the assumptions of the sighted and hearing world with humor and grace, Clark finds beauty in the revelations of communicating through touch: “All things living and dead cry out to me / when I touch them.� A rare work of transformation and necessary discovery, How to Communicate is a brilliant debut that insists on the power of poetry.

"The Deaf poet is no oxymoron," declares editor John Lee Clark in his introduction to "Deaf American Poetry: An Anthology." The 95 poems by 35 Deaf American poets in this volume more than confirm his point. From James Nack's early metered narrative poem "The Minstrel Boy" to the free association of Kristi Merriweather's contemporary "It Was His Movin' Hands Be Tellin' Me," these Deaf poets display mastery of all forms prevalent during the past two centuries. Beyond that, E. Lynn Jacobowitz's "In Memoriam: Stephen Michael Ryan" exemplifies a form unique to Deaf American poets, the transliteration of verse originally created in American Sign Language.
This anthology showcases for the first time the best works of Deaf poets throughout the nation's history -- John R. Burnet, Laura C. Redden, George M. Teegarden, Agatha Tiegel Hanson, Loy E. Golladay, Robert F. Panara, Mervin D. Garretson, Clayton Valli, Willy Conley, Raymond Luczak, Christopher Jon Heuer, Pamela Wright-Meinhardt, and many others. Each of their poems reflects the sensibilities of their times, and the progression of their work marks the changes that deaf Americans have witnessed through the years. In "The Mute's Lament," John Carlin mourns the wonderful things that he cannot hear, and looks forward to heaven where "replete with purest joys/My ears shall be unsealed, and I shall hear." In sharp contrast, Mary Toles Peet, who benefitted from being taught by Deaf teachers, wrote "Thoughts on Music" with an entirely different attitude. She concludes her account of the purported beauty of music with the realization that "the music of my inward ear/Brings joy far more intense."
Clark tracks these subtle shifts in awareness through telling, brief biographies of each poet. By doing so, he reveals in "Deaf American Poetry" how "the work of Deaf poets serves as a prism through which Deaf people can know themselves better and through which the rest of the world can see life in a new light."

This celebration of short stories, poems, and essays gives us a glimpse into the Deaf signing community, something that literature by hearing authors featuring deaf characters has rarely done. Between these covers, a Deaf couple fights over their son's language use, an Australian woman joins the community as an adult, a Deaf woman's body is fished out a dumpster, and a British Deaf poet wants to keep "zombies"-hearing people-out. The range of perspectives is astonishing, including opposing views. In one story, a hearing journalist tells us about the infamous Milan congress of educators who banned sign language in 1880, while in another story, a Deaf woman tells us what it's like to have a hearing journalist interview her and her husband for a "human interest" story. Even in pieces that are about just one Deaf person, readers get a powerful sense of life in one of the most vibrant and least understood communities.