Deaf American Poetry: An Anthology

Deaf American Poetry is the book I've been reading the most this week, and it's been challenging my reading skills in several ways. I honestly had never realized how complicated the relationship between ASL and the English language is, how politicized it can become at times.

And I admit I (stupidly) never realized that deaf poets might be writing poems in ASL that were as difficult to translate into English as translating a Chinese poem into the English language. Actually, it might be more difficult, when one considers that ASL poems play upon the poetry inherent in gesture, in the unique ballet of hands signing (or singing?) ASL. That adds another serious, almost Promethean, challenge for the translator.

For instance, Raymond Luczak translates poems by Clayton Valli, a gay poet who died of complications of AIDS in 2003. These works had existed as celebrated poems, much circulated in the deaf community, but had heretofore not been available to English readers who do not know ASL.

I find this sort of thing fascinating--these worlds within worlds of which we know nothing until an anthology like this comes along.

The editor, John Lee Clark, does a stupendous job of contextualizing each poet, giving the reader backstory and insight without being condescending or limiting the possibilities of free interpretation of the works being tendered. I also appreciated his introductory essay.

I will review this in the near future in much greater detail, but I just wanted to mention this for those who might be interested in picking up a copy.

The earliest poet included was born in 1808 and the youngest poets included were born in 1979.

So I'm guessing this is the first time a tradition this long has been gathered into anthology form.

This is out from Gallaudet University Press and their website is...

This is a poetry anthology worth owning!

I was having a little trouble finding it there, but here it is on Amazon.com...

You can buy the anthology here.