Deaf American Poetry: An Anthology

Howard L. Terry (1877–1964)

90  Howard L. Terry (1877–1964) Howard L. Terry’s “On My Deafness” is only one of the many instances of Deaf poets rephrasing Keats’s “melodies . . . unheard / Are sweeter” to explain how truth is found in silence. However, his long poem, “The Old Homestead,” demonstrates that one does not experience the world in a lesser way because of deafness. It is richly textured, imbued with a striking sense of nostalgia for someone only nineteen years old, which Terry was when he reflected on the setting he found so comforting after the loss of his mother and after he recovered from a serious illness and experienced decreasing hearing. His boyhood days may have haunted him particularly due to his poor eyesight, in that people with limited vision absorb what they do see in a more heightened way than do people who have full use of vision. The poem must have been dear to him, for he held onto it for thirty-nine years before publishing it in his finest collection, Sung in Silence: Selected Poems (1929). Howard L. Terry was born in St. Louis, Missouri, and experienced progressive deafness beginning in infancy. His mother died when he was eleven years old; he and his father then moved to Collinsville, Illinois. From a very young age, Terry wanted to be a writer, and he produced his first book at the age of fourteen. Although he attended public school and then a private academy, Terry described his education as “sadly neglected and misguided,” especially in the English language. He did not learn sign language until he went to Gallaudet College in 1895. Because the college lacked accommodations for low-vision and blind students, however , he could not complete his studies. In 1901, Terry married Alice Taylor, a Deaf woman he had known at Gallaudet, and they bought a farm in Missouri. Eight years later, they moved to California, where Alice blossomed as Howard L. Terry 91 an activist in Deaf organizations. Terry wrote voluminously and published widely enough to be invited to become the editor of Poetry World, but he declined the offer, citing his eyesight. One of his novels, A Voice from the Silence, was successful enough to be optioned by a Hollywood film studio and to be reissued. He was responsible for the founding of the Guild of Deaf Writers, and he edited Poems by the Deaf: An Anthology (1942) with J. H. MacFarlane and Kate Shibley. In 1938, Gallaudet College awarded this “dean of deaf letters” an honorary degree. ...