Deaf American Poetry: An Anthology

Willy Conley (1958– )

190  Willy Conley (1958– ) “A Deaf Baptism,” Willy Conley’s clever miniature parable, pays respects to Hans Christian Andersen’s famous ugly duckling, here representing someone who is plunged into the Deaf world. The poem is a member of a long line of works in Deaf literature and artwork featuring birds. One needs only to look elsewhere in this book to find other examples, including Raymond Luczak’s “Hummingbirds ” and Christopher Jon Heuer’s “Bone Bird.” Birds lend themselves well to metaphor and symbolism in general, but what makes them more attractive for literary use by Deaf artists is the imagery of wings, which represents hands flying in the air. “The Miller of Moments” is another almost purely photographic snapshot of a poem. It is more layered and it fairly sings in its appreciation of the miracle of Deaf theater’s existence, remarkable not only for what is performed but also for being performed at all. Given that the business of theater is already difficult, it is even more challenging for such a small community. “Salt in the Basement” is among a growing body of literature written in “ASL style,” following American Sign Language grammar instead of English. Deaf writers have long been experimenting with how to represent ASL dialogue, especially since the publication in 1986 of the first novel by a Deaf writer starring Deaf characters, Islay by Douglass Bullard. David Anthony published in 1992 a widely read article in The Deaf American written entirely in this manner. While other items, such as Luczak’s short story “Poster Child” and Sara Stallard’s series of flash memoirs “OJ & PJ,” are in “prose” ASL gloss, Conley is the first, after Loy E. Golladay ’s two mediocre attempts, to succeed in doing this in a poem. Willy Conley was born profoundly deaf in Baltimore, where he attended public schools, always the only deaf student. In 1976, Willy Conley 191 he entered Rochester Institute of Technology where he received his bachelor’s degree in biomedical photography. It was there that he first learned ASL, began writing, and fell in love with theater. After graduation, he worked for seven years in medical centers at Yale, Johns Hopkins, the University of Texas, and Cedars-Sinai in Los Angeles as a medical photographer. Then he left the medical profession, though not photography, and performed with several touring theater companies, most notably the National Theatre of the Deaf (NTD). Upon learning that most of the plays that NTD produced were written by hearing playwrights, Conley decided to study playwriting at Boston University, with Nobel laureate Derek Walcott, and at Towson University, where he earned his master of fine arts degree. Since then, over a dozen of his plays have been produced, and many of them have been published in Vignettes of the Deaf Character and Other Plays (2009). Conley is the chair of the Theater Arts Department at Gallaudet University and lives in Hanover, Maryland , with his wife Stella and their son, Clayton Lee. ...