This week, I wanted to share with you a peek into the world of being DeafBlind, with examples from the Deaf/Blind poet John Lee Clark and his book How to Communicate. This is a preliminary session to prepare for the very exciting BIG READ (Partnership between RIT’s School of the Deaf, NTID and the Monroe County Libraries) which will happen in April, when hopefully all Rochester will read Deaf Republic by Ilya Kaminsky, the selected book. Ilya will be coming on April 2 to the Gates branch of the library — more on that later, but do save the date. I will be sharing poems from Ilya’s book, as well as from another of his amazing books of poetry, Dancing in Odessa. You can imagine, themes related to Deaf Republic deal with political issues, Ukraine, the physical condition of being deaf, how it feels to be “otherized”, and more.
Geography of the Forehead by Ron Koertge
From How to Communicate by John Lee Clark (DeafBlind poet)
On My Return from a Business Trip by John Lee Clark
Trees
Knitting
Three Squared Cinquains
Cubist Statue
Solace by Rhonda Voight-Campbell[2]translated from the Protactile
Undivided Interest by Gwen Westerman (Poet Laureate of Minnesota
Nutshell:
Geography of the Forehead by Ron Koertge: Language play, truly addressing fun and mental in fundamental. Bernie verified the medical and biological truth of frontal, however, temporal is not a time keeper, although Hippocampal is where memory "camps. In answer to the query about why the poet wrote the poem, we concurred there might be no other reason than having fun with comparisons of what the brain does. Then again, the inequality of geographic location implied in the 3rd stanza is also commentary on what it is to be human. I asked how many immediately looked up Broca, mentioned in passing in the last couplet as off limits, with the final "if you know Broca, you know why". Clever and engaging, this poem reminded a lot of people of Oliver Sacks and his insistence that a doctor know the entire person, not just treat a symptom. How do we "see" others, and can we escape snap judgements and stereotyping?
This poem makes people want to share stories... or imagine scenarios for Rolando, that dark-skinned man with one gold earring lying around the fire playing guitar.
This set up the discussion for how to communicate with others who are labeled as "disabled", blind, deaf. There are degrees and nuances as diverse as 17,500 species of butterflies. What do we know about someone from labeling skin color, ethnicity, geographic origin, etc. How do we deal with preconceptions?
On my return from a business trip: This poem by BlindDeaf poet John Lee Clark will sensitize the reader to a better understanding of how to balance the desire to be a good samaritan, and also respect someone who is different. It's one thing to offer to help, but quite another to assume help is needed. We discussed the spectrum involved with the word "disability" and "handicapped-accessible". One suggestion to the would-be samaritans is to wait to be asked for assistance, which respects the dignity of the person who may look like they need help, but do not.
In How to Communicate part II, the poem "Knitting" helps explain the subtitle, "Pointing the Needle". How you point the needle through a loop will make all the difference... only knitting producing corrugations; alternating knit/purl a smooth surface. We wondered who "she" was... the story of what sounds like John Lee Clark's wife who left with their sons. Long, rich, apt metaphor for relationship which requires more than one way to do this. Choosing to "put the other needle" in "right". That doesn't mean when purling, to keep things smooth, the needle doesn't point towards the heart, reminding how it had been stabbed it, the ache still there row after row.
Trees: This poem stopped us in our tracks... "A limb/ that knocks my head because I didn't duck?" and the response: "That turns my heart into a chainsaw" which ends this short poem. We tried to imagine what it would be like not to be able to see that "limb". How one learns to navigate without one sight, hearing. I heard the story of a person born deaf who after retiring wanted to see what it was like to "hear" and had a cochlear implant. It wasn't the problem of "hearing words", but all the other sounds hearing people don't give a thought to (sound of dripping water, a siren, car horn, wind banging a shutter, etc.) that needed "translating". Again, Oliver Sacks came up, and his book The Mind's Eye.
Three Squared Cinquains: These syllabic-sensitive poems are laced with irony, but not bitter. They brought up so many stories, for instance, the man who was in a home, labeled as mute, but refused to communicate with anyone until someone brought him a puppy, and he started to speak German to it. It was like a magical key that reconnected him with wanting to connect with others. Or, giving a man with dementia headphones and playing jazz music, and suddenly he lights up and his body starts dancing. The book Being Mortal came up, and the often surprising variety of ways we express ourselves with the human body given.
Cubist Statue: Would this ekphrastic poem work if you didn't know about the Matador sculpture? We referenced the work at museums that give verbal descriptions of art work. It often helps sensitize a sighted person to notice a painting or sculpture in a much broader and different way. Elaine brought up Kurt Vonnegut, Bluebeard about an abstract artist and how abstract art isn't about something: it is. Do we ask music what it's about? Innate in all of us is a search for meaning, which reveals multiple facets to help us notice and wonder at what our senses perceive. It is not just "our inborn capacity to understand through the eyes that has been put to sleep, that needs to be re-awakened" to quote Rudolph Arnheim, but to go beyond eyesight to insights garnered through other senses.
This delightful 12-line poem starts with direct address: "You are the best one/in the museum." It is pithy, addressing the problem of appearances, pretense of who we are.
Solace: Translated from the Protactile, a touch-based communication. We were fortunate to have Rose Marie and Ken who both know sign language and imagine that Protactile uses ASL, as the poem works in the same manner, building up from noun to verb, to adjective to another noun and another verb. Judith with her background in dance immediately saw a choreography. Rose Marie's description of the creative use of language: that "allows a geometric layer, cantilevered as it intensifies". Bernie offered an interpretation of seeing a tree, not a person, because of the final "budding fingertips". We loved this "translation of something"-- something you don't understand, a thought that is much more than the words, perhaps like a Baudelairian correspondence.
Undivided Interest: Curious set up of letters and numbers, which you will indeed find if you look up "Tiyowastewin", and then Custer comes up and Tiyowastewin is followed by this in parentheses: (pretty or Nice in her Lodge.) The words pulled to the right hint at partitions and perhaps an "account" of the battles over land with the obvious monetary word play on "interest". I like how the final stanza is "left" of the stretched out stanza, and IA 708 just slightly left when repeated followed by saying the real name, and repeating the first word in the title as the last word.
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