Deaf American Poetry: An Anthology

Raymond Luczak (1965-)

223  Raymond Luczak (1965– ) For those who went to public schools instead of schools for the Deaf, Raymond Luczak’s poems are overwhelmingly familiar. It is surreal how many of their experiences are the same, down to the smallest details and to each emotional wound inflicted by all manner of neglect and rejection. His long journey from being a walking island to his discovery of the Deaf world and self-awakening is also shared by many. Along the way, there are many pitfalls, setbacks , and wrong turns. Almost all deaf people get their first taste of the medical perspective of deafness at the audiologist’s office, and the message that something is wrong with them is immediate. Even though the audiologist is a rare personification of audism—most forms of audism are impossibly subtle—the medical professional in “The Audiologist” remains vague. Thus, the audiologist serves as a living metaphor for the difficulty in pointing out the foe, making the Deaf child’s “war” as much against himself as anyone else. The unaccommodating teacher and cruel hearing peers of “Spelling Bee 1978” are also the enemies, yet the Deaf boy is riddled with self-doubt and longing and is unable to assert himself without feeling shame. But then he glimpses a better future, a better self, when he learns how to sign in “Learning to Speak, Part I.” This poem displays Luczak’s artistic cunning in modifying the Sapphic stanza form with a dash of awkwardness, almost as if he is learning how to write the poem just as the narrator is learning a new language. After learning it, the boy in “Hummingbirds” “sat up and freed / [his] deaf voice” in the presence of hearing classmates . But when they mock him, he stops short. He needs more cultural grounding, and where better to start than with Laurent Clerc? When Clerc takes the place of Christ in the fantasy realm Raymond Luczak 224 of “The Crucifixion,” Luczak explores how the act of embracing Deaf culture resembles a religious conversion. Finally, the adult Luczak knows who he is as a Deaf person well enough to write, in “Instructions to Hearing Persons Desiring a Deaf Man,” not only a self-portrait but also a manual for how others should treat and understand him. RaymondLuczakwasborninMichiganandpresumablybecame deaf when he was seven months old due to double pneumonia. He attended oral programs for deaf children but learned the manual alphabet in secret in 1979. A year later, he was allowed to learn Signing Exact English. Luczak did not learn American Sign Language until he decided to enter Gallaudet University in 1984, instead of a local technical college. In 1988, he graduated magna cum laude with a degree in English. Then Luczak moved to New York City and worked for a dozen years in computer technology support until becoming a full-time writer. His books include St. Michael’s Fall: Poems, Silence Is a Four-Letter Word: On Art & Deafness, This Way to the Acorns: Poems, Snooty: A Comedy, and the novel Men with Their Hands, which won a prestigious award for gay fiction. More than a dozen of his plays have been produced, and some of them are collected in Playing It by Eye. He is also an accomplished filmmaker. ...