Deaf American Poetry: An Anthology

Introduction

1 Introduction The Deaf poet is no oxymoron, but one might think so, given the popular understanding that poetry has sound and voice at its heart. Add to this the popular philosophy that says deafness reduces human experience. As a result of such ideas, Deaf poets are often objects of amazement or dismissal, their work rarely judged for its merit beyond the context of their deafness. Deaf poets in America always have had to contend with sound, not only as a major factor in why mainstream culture considers Deaf people a lesser variety of the human race, but also as it relates to their chosen art. This marginalization was especially acute in the nineteenth century , when demands for metrical verse were in force. Such requirements so discouraged Deaf poet John Carlin that he considered giving up on poetry. “I was convinced,” he wrote, “that I could never be what I so ardently desired—a correct writer of verses.”1 Fortunately, the perceptive hearing poet William Cullen Bryant pressed Carlin to continue writing poetry, recommending that he rely on rhyming dictionaries. Carlin eventually published many poems, including “The Mute’s Lament” in the first issue of American Annals of the Deaf and Dumb in 1847. However, the hearing editor could not resist adding a note to the poem, marveling How shall he who has not now and who never has had the sense of hearing, who is totally without what the musicians call an ear, succeed in preserving all the niceties of accent, measure, and rhythm? We should almost as soon expect a man born blind to become a landscape painter as one born deaf to produce poetry of even tolerable merit.2 In addition to this kind of treatment, Deaf poet Laura C. Redden experienced the opposite. That the acclaimed “Howard Glyndon ,” Redden’s nom de plume, was a woman was well known, but few people knew that she was Deaf. When critics did learn Introduction 2 of the fact, however, many of them lowered their earlier opinion of Redden’s poetry. Infuriated, Redden responded with her 1870 autobiographical allegory “Down Low” (later retitled “The Realm of Singing”), in which she portrays herself as a bird with a crippled wing trying to make a place for herself in the fabled Realm of Singing. After some attempts, the bird wins an audience of soldiers passing through the forest on their way home. But when the soldiers discover that the bird is crippled, they abandon her, saying , as did Redden’s critics, What have we here? A crippled bird that tries to sing? Such a thing was never heard of before. It is impossible for her to sing correctly under such circumstances and we were certainly mistaken in thinking that there was anything in such songs. Our ears have deceived us.3 Any reader will agree that a crippled wing has nothing to do with a bird’s ability to sing. Yet many will pause before applying this same logic to deafness and poetry. Even some Deaf poets themselves were plagued by doubts about their ability to write poetry, or at least “good” poetry that would be respected in the mainstream. Such doubts were, and still are, linked with audism, that is, the belief—imposed by hearing society and internalized by many Deaf people—that people with “hearing loss” are inferior . One such troubled poet, Howard L. Terry, wrote in the foreword to his 1929 book Sung in Silence, “In offering these poems to the public I feel as if I were throwing a snowball into a red-hot furnace!”4 Terry anticipated that he would not find many appreciative readers because his poems savored of old formalism. In defense, Terry explained what he thought was the problem of the Deaf poet. Deafness retards daily mental growth. The deaf man slowly falls behind his hearing brother. He moves with the slower shore current , while his fortunate brother is hurrying along with the stronger , middle current. . . . Equally gifted, the hearing poet is doing better work at thirty-five than the deaf poet. Beyond that age the Introduction 3 deaf writer does less work than the other; he has lost his grip, he is growing less sure of his way as times change, and he is less able to grasp and comprehend the new order of things.5 In contrast, many Deaf poets valued their deafness. They had long known that there...