Deaf American Poetry: An Anthology

Felix Kowalewski (1913–1989)

115  Felix Kowalewski (1913–1989) Aside from penning the obligatory tributes to his teachers and to leaders of the signing community of his time, Felix Kowalewski’s poetry is surprisingly negative and, at times, despairing. This is surprising because he graduated from a residential school for the Deaf and then from Gallaudet, where he had access to the positive cultural perspective of deafness. Perhaps the despondency in his work can be explained by the combination of factors exempli- fied by his three poems included here, which correspond with his experiences. Although Kowalewski met with rapid success as an artist when he was a young man—winning international recognition, no less— he struggled to continue in that trajectory and became bitter, disappointed , and, according to his students, angry. His long-time friend Eric Malzkuhn believed that “I Will Take My Dreams . . . ” was written during a time when Kowalewski seriously contemplated suicide. This brings up the possibility that he was depressed. However, his fixation on deafness as the cause of his sorrow and despair may have masked the true cause of his depression. In “Heart of Silence,” despite the use of the most beautiful visual description—literally painting with words—Kowalewski feels forsaken, as if what beauty he sees only reminds him of what he thinks he is missing. He also identifies himself with Victor Hugo’s deaf hunchback of Notre Dame in “Quasimodo May Not Dare.” Like the hunchback, the narrator of this poem is rejected by a woman. No doubt Kowalewksi was alert to any form of discrimination , but this very personal rejection may have served to reinforce his negative feelings about his deafness. If audism acts in the same way racism does, then what W. E. B. Du Bois and James Felix Kowalewski 116 Baldwin say applies: The real danger lies not in the white man hating the black man but in the black man hating himself. Felix Kowalewski was born to Polish immigrants in Brooklyn, New York. Deafened at six by spinal meningitis, he attended the New York School for the Deaf at Fanwood. There, he began his long and distinguished career as an artist, winning a national soap sculpture contest and studying at the New York School of Fine and Applied Art during his senior year. At Gallaudet College, President Percival Hall recognized Kowalewski’s talents and arranged for him to study watercoloring under David Kline. Before graduating from Gallaudet in 1937, he had already exhibited his artwork at numerous venues, including the International Exhibition of Fine and Applied Art by Deaf Artists of 1934. Between 1937 and 1955, Kowalewksi taught art at the West Virginia School for the Deaf, the Michigan School for the Deaf, and the California School for the Deaf at Berkeley before settling at the California School for the Deaf at Riverside (CSDR) until his retirement in 1977. In addition to his teaching, he worked in a wide variety of media, exhibited coast to coast, and published art criticism, biographies of other Deaf artists, and his own poetry. His collection of poems, You and I, is a classic example of a strictly Deaf publication venture. It was produced in 1983 by the printing department of CSDR, without distributorship but advertised and sold primarily to Deaf readers. ...