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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.
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.
"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 new edition of Deaf writer Douglas Bullard's classic utopian
novel Islay, first published in 1986, promises to entertain
contemporary audiences with its bold vision of the Deaf American
Dream. Islay tells the story of Lyson Sulla, a Deaf man entirely
despondent of the feeling that "the hearing think deaf means dumb,"
who sets out to establish a sovereign Deaf state on an island
called Islay. The novel charts Sulla's quest across the nation to
rally support and recruit citizens, and his subsequent efforts to
become elected the new state's governor. Along the way, he
encounters a cast of colorful Deaf and hearing characters, among
them a rival who also has his sights set on the island, a minister,
a bowling alley owner, even a family of peddlers. Bullard paints
his characters, protagonists and antagonists alike, with humorous
but ever-honest strokes, showing the true nature of their
ambitions. This unapologetic frankness, set in a unique blend of
classic satire and direct, down-to-earth expression of ASL
ingeniously rendered on the page, is sure to challenge and amuse
all lovers of thought-provoking utopian fiction.
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