Deaf American Poetry: An Anthology

Rex Lowman (1918–2001)

133  Rex Lowman (1918–2001) Treating deafness as a source of alienation, being strange and even not of the earth, Rex Lowman’s poetry has a strong taste for deliberate metaphors and a brooding language. In “Bitterweed,” bitterness is a foreigner’s tool for survival as a foreigner, where the only means for securing respect is through answering hate with hate. “Beethoven” has history’s most famous deaf man, a “cold angel hurled / From sound to silence,” a wounded creature working on a kind of revenge, not unlike the bitterweed in the first poem here. While the third poem obliquely praises the majesty of signing, Lowman imbues it with ambiguous, otherworldly qualities that serve to set it apart from ordinary life down on earth to the signing community. Whatever feelings Lowman harbored about his deafness early in his creative work, his poems became mellow in later years. But he retained some bitterness, according to his one-time student and Deaf poet Raymond Luczak, bitterness not against deafness but against poetry. He was apparently disappointed in his career as a poet and advised Luczak against pursuing a vocation in the art both of them so clearly excelled in. Rex Lowman was born in Prattsville, Arkansas. He became deaf at three following a tonsillectomy. After graduating from the Arkansas School for the Deaf in 1936, Lowman made a name for himself at Gallaudet College by winning three straight first prizes in an intercollegiate poetry competition sponsored by the American Association of University Women. He graduated from Gallaudet in 1940 and earned his master’s degree in economics from American University. Lowman married in 1943 and had two children. Rex Lowman 134 He taught at the Georgia and Virginia Schools for the Deaf and worked for the U.S. Census Bureau; the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare; and the Brookings Institution before beginning his long career at Gallaudet in 1954. Lowman retired as chair of the economics department in 1989. He published in 1964 a collection of poems, Bitterweed, and until his death, continued to publish his poetry, especially in Deaf publications. ...