Deaf American Poetry: An Anthology

John Carlin (1813–1891)

38  John Carlin (1813–1891) John Carlin is a baffling question mark in the history of Deaf leaders. He was a successful artist, was responsible for great strides in organizing Deaf people, and, as his lovely writing attests, was an embodiment of English literacy through a sign-based education . Yet he supported oralism, the method by which deaf children are taught to speak and read lips, and he seems to have harbored some bitterness about his deafness for all of his long and illustrious life. Ironically, this may have been because he wanted very much to write poetry; never mind that he did and was widely acclaimed and published. He, however, did not feel that he could write “proper verse.” One wonders if he would have felt better if the standard rules of versification in his day were not so tightly regulated. Carlin’s insecurities about his writing notwithstanding, he labored over his poems, and “The Mute’s Lament” is a credit to his efforts. It is a catalog of lovely sounds that Carlin “hears not,” and it ends with his hope for becoming hearing and able to speak in heaven. The poem is contradictory in that most of the things he regrets not hearing are also visual, and Carlin describes them in visual terms, but he is ultimately disappointed in his being deaf to these sounds. Other Deaf poets followed Carlin and Nack in writing of becoming hearing in heaven, but this viewpoint grew to be increasingly unacceptable to the cultural discourse of Deaf Americans. Angeline Fuller Fischer writes in her 1883 poem “Closing Hymn for the Sunday Services of a Deaf-Mute Convention” of Deaf people’s ears unstopping and their tongues unloosing in heaven, but she asks God to hear their “voiceless song” of praise, for Him to accept sign language. Breaking away from this entirely, an anonymous poet John Carlin 39 wrote a piece virtually opposite of “The Mute’s Lament” called “The Sign-Language of Heaven,” in which only visual things are described and credited as God’s signing. This last poem was published in 1891, the year Carlin died. John Carlin was born deaf to a poor Philadelphia cobbler. As a child, he roamed the city with a group of deaf street urchins who eventually came under the care and instruction of the crockery merchant David Seixas. This “school” became the Pennsylvania Institution for the Deaf, from which Carlin graduated in 1825. He apprenticed himself to several artists and even studied painting in Europe from 1838 to 1841. When Carlin returned to the United States, he established a studio, where he painted miniature portraits on ivory. In 1843, he married Mary Wayland, an alumna of the New York Institution, with whom he had five children. Carlin was deeply involved in the signing community. He wrote about its issues, raised funds for the first Deaf church in America and a home for elderly Deaf people, and founded the Manhattan Literary Association of the Deaf, the first of its kind. An accomplished signing stylist, he gave the main address at the opening of the National Deaf-Mute College in 1864. During the commencement ceremony, the college awarded its first honorary degree to Carlin. After the advent of photography, Carlin turned to painting landscapes; he wrote extensively on Deaf-related and mainstream topics and, in 1868, he published a children’s book, The Scratchsides Family. ...