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230 Deafness as Culture individual and cultural identities formed by those available means are put into question (i.e., are argued over). Ifwe are hearing and among the audience of a sign poem-performance, we come to question the will to speech we have always thought mattered most in our culture; we witness the long-dormant canon of delivery come alive-and become strong; we participate in the power of presence, the very embodiment of language right there before us. Moreover, if we are deaf and among that audience, we also are likely to undergo the four conceptual transformations described above via the hands of the sign language poet. The potential (the possibilizing power) of the sign language poet and his or her poem in changing deaf persons' own ideas about what they can do, what their (sign) language can do, what poetry can be, and how persuasive they can be is anything but slight. Peter Cook, as we--have already noted, knows how the Deaf community "will look to him [the Deaf poet] strongly because they use ASL (the strongest product of Deaf culture) as a weapon or tool [here rhetoric enters ] for building self-esteem, pride, strengths, and independence in the community." What the Deafpoet takes to share with the hearing world at large, she also gives back, twofold, to her own community. Perhaps the largest part of this giving grows from the circular, selfnurturing connection between a culture and its art: a culture grows, its art flourishes; its art flourishes, the culture grows. Little surprise then that most Deaf poets I know (Valli, Lentz, and Cook among them) have stories of beginning their artistic work principally in creating or translating English poetry into sign language-and then, at some near-epiphanic moment , realizing that sign language is a language in and ofitself: capable of fashioning a literature and a poetry for itself Ella Mae Lentz even chronicles the development among Deafpoets at large ofa native, culturally selfdesigned sign for "poetry": Deaf poets who play creatively with their language, who explore and expand their language' capabilities, and who use ASL to share their poems view the traditional sign for poetry [she gives the "English" sign here, which is a version of the sign for MUSIC done with a p handshape] as an inappropriate sign when referring to this new body of work. This group ofpoets selected a new sign [which she gives here: the hand placed on the chest area, then opening and moving out from there, as if throwing out feelings, from the heart] because the sign is indicative ofthe expression of "WOrth Another mzy 231 feelings and experiences that come from within. The traditional sign for poetry now refers to English poetry, and the new sign to ASL poetry.46 What sign poetry does for deaf people and Deaf culture differs little from what any poetry or literature or art generally is capable of doing for and within its culture, for and with its individuals: sign poetry strengthens Deaf community, articulates and advances Deafculture, makes deafness less alien and other (even among its own), reconfirms values, offers pride in identity, encourages linguistic play, wields persuasive power. In Spreading the Word: Poetry andthe SurvivalofCommunity in America, Ross Talarico takes up some ofthese same community-forming powers for poetry as he strives "once and for all, to take poetry out of the hands of elitists and into the working vocabularies of the social arts."47 In just such a working vocabulary, a "deafpoetics"-for sign poetryraises provocative possibilities, especially from a postmodern and rhetorical perspective. Sign language poetry not only can develop a further sense of cultural and cognitive solidarity among deaf people through its emphasis on the image but can also transcend print- and speech-centered notions oflanguage and rhetoric, transcend (instead offilling up or battling) silence, and restore the sense of an artist's presence in the creation of a piece: these are but a few ofits more potent possibilities. And maybe, too, through the embodied, present-tense images offered by sign poetry, the "energy ofAmerican poetry," which contemporary poet-critic Dana Gioia laments "was once directed outward, [but] is now increasingly focused inward ," can be redirected.48 But this time, that energy might be redirected inward andoutward simultaneously, becoming both universal and particular , both political and aesthetic as it reaches toward audiences of both dominant hearing culture and "home" Deaf culture. In this double but not necessarily deceptive stance, sign poetry directs not only that...

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