Beauty Is a Verb

by Jennifer Bartlett

  the silver, a friend writes.

  The dining room chairs,

  Japanese vases,

  the dog’s water dish,

  my manuscripts

  turned to ashes.

  I wipe sweat off foreheads

  of wounded vets, brush dust

  from my wrinkled dress, and write

  in the beginning was the word,

  the potion against self-pity.

  She Loved Hot Dogs So Much

  Inhaling their sweat, licking their salt,

  was like kissing Peter on the night train

  as if only their tangy passion mattered,

  before her teacher’s protestations,

  her mother’s remonstrations,

  her brother’s gun-waving,

  against her deaf-blind,

  mouth-watering love

  ended their ride to what she’d

  always wanted, not fame or fortune,

  but the salted happily-ever-after,

  where kisses taste like mustard,

  embraces char on the grill, and love,

  like onions, makes the eyes water.

  The Sun is Warm: Nagasaki, 1948

  Standing with Mr. Nagai, a scientist,

  in the corpse of the medical college,

  I feel the bomb-blasted walls. Jagged

  pipes, twisted girders, timbers, flakes

  of smoked flesh cover this graveyard

  that once trained healers. Twenty-four

  teachers scorched, doctors decapitated,

  patients incinerated. And they say

  America won the War? I do not want

  peace that passes understanding; I want

  understanding that brings peace. Mr. Nagai,

  I touch your singed, nearly skinless face.

  I don’t have much time left, you say,

  but I am well, for the sun is warm.

  John Lee Clark

  TRANSLATING AND READING ASL POETRY

  I. ASL TO ENGLISH

  Some American Sign Language (ASL) poets remain skeptical of translation. After all, some do not know English well, let alone English poetry. The most beautiful English poem in the world may mean nothing. It can be hard for some to imagine how it is possible for all of those stupid fancy words to convey what they sign. Also, many of the pioneering ASL poets taught ASL and linguistics for a living and were engaged in academic battles against mainstream linguists who were not yet convinced of ASL’s status as an actual language. So they may have felt protective of their ASL poems, preferring that one know ASL first before having any access to their work.

  Now that ASL is widely recognized as a legitimate language, some ASL poets are growing more practical about their work and agreeing to have it voiced, glossed or translated. I am slowly working on getting more poets to allow me or others to translate their work. It may take five more years before we have a full-length collection of translations of ASL poetry.

  I think the way I approach translation is the same way most translators do: crumple the original poem into a tiny wad, chew it for a while, spit it out, unwrap it, try to pat it down as flat and neat as possible. Because ASL grammar is quite different though, the process may be more like translating between English and Chinese than between two Romance languages. ASL’s basic grammatical structure is topic-comment. Sometimes this means short, contained passages are object-subject-verb. Instead of “That’s a beautiful blue car” it is essential in ASL to start with the topic, which is the car, and then comment on it: CAR THERE BLUE THAT WOW BEAUTIFUL.

  The “there” is important for placing the car somewhere in the visual-spatial signing space. The next time the car is referred to, it will appear in the same “place” as would things and characters in movies. If the hero looks to the left of the screen and the heroine in the other direction, they stay that way throughout the scene if not the whole movie. This gives the viewer a sense of the space within the movie. We do the same in ASL. If I am recounting a conversation I had with my six-year-old son, I would look down to the right as if talking to my son, and when I quote my son, I’d be looking up to the left to reflect how he looked up to me during that conversation. In my recounting, I create a short film in which I play both myself and my son. The challenge in translating this is to create equally clear and consistent switches between people and things, what they are like or doing. Fortunately, there are nifty tricks in English that accomplish all these things, though not in a literally cinematic way.

  When translating from English to ASL, I often have to start with something later in the original poem because it offers the best point of entry, that is, the topic. Otherwise, the descriptions would mean nothing in ASL. The thunderstorm, the winds, the crashing sea would mean nothing without first knowing there’s a house on a cliff. In English, it may be all right to hold the house until later, but not in ASL. If the English depends too much on the house being held back, it is possible that the ASL version wouldn’t be a good poem. That can happen. Sometimes, it’s not worth it. But if the English poem has other sources of power, it shouldn’t be a problem to start with the house and make up for the radical rearrangement somewhere else.

  II. ENGLISH TO ASL

  Some of my poems in English I have not bothered translating. It COULD be done, but the best possible result in ASL wouldn’t be worth performing to a Deaf audience. The best translations come from poems that lend themselves readily to sets of similar handshapes or a visual space that has a pattern in it that distinguishes it as ASL poetry. For example, my poem “Long Goodbyes” plays with the idea of time and is about Deaf people talking around the table in the kitchen, which is the most important place in Deaf culture. When Deaf friends come, they stay forever around the table, chatting for hours and hours before anyone stands up to go. When everyone stands up, it will take hours yet before they actually leave. The sign for “hour” is the hour hand going around the face of an imaginary clock, and the table is round too, and the Deaf people, whether they are sitting or standing, stay in a constant circle. So a pattern emerges for the ASL version in which the circle as a shape plays a prominent role. This influences how I choose to sign other things, all toward the circular motion of signing hands and the passing of time.

  Are the versions completely different? No. But that one is on paper and the other signed would give the illusion that they are. But if someone translated my ASL version back into English, the skeleton should be there, maybe some meat. But the skin and hair and the clothes would probably be different. For example, I doubt that the line “light to light bright in the night” would reappear because this is more of an English flourish that disappears in the ASL version. In its stead is an ASL flourish in which the two hands signing the flashing of light segues into an innovative doubled sign for “night” that happens to be circular in shape. As different as the two flourishes are, they don’t alter the skeleton at all. They’re just flourishes.

  III. ASL POETRY READINGS

  For Deaf poets, giving a reading presents a peculiar mixture of problems. Aesthetically, there is the question of how to read their poems in public. Although some can speak, many don’t feel comfortable using their nasal, broken speech in public. Others, like me, do not speak at all. Signing, then, is a strong preference. However, as I’ve mentioned, translating written poems into ASL doesn’t guarantee that they will be good ASL poems. A Deaf poet is not necessarily an ASL poet. Many are not even native signers and would feel equally awkward signing poems in public. If they can only sign pidgin versions that would not be very pleasing to Deaf audience members and if the hearing audience members are listening to an interpreter reading the written poems while they gape at the signing Deaf poet, what’s the artistic point of the reading?

  Still, I am sure that Deaf poets would be able to resolve such aesthetic issues if they had more opportunities. They could, for example, enlist the help of an ASL poet in producing rich, full translations and be coached in the art of sign performance. But there’s a
practical problem that has long limited Deaf poets’ opportunities to do readings: interpreting costs. This same issue also means there are very few literary events that are accessible to Deaf people. In most parts of the country, interpreting services start at $120, which covers the first two hours and is required even if you only need one hour or fifteen minutes. So it’s automatically $120, and sixty dollars per hour after the first two hours. This effectively excludes bookstores, for the costs would blow away any sales. The great bulk of other readings are hosted by small organizations with little or no money. This leaves the larger organizations and colleges, which could handle the costs, in theory if not in practice.

  It’s no wonder only two Deaf poets in my anthology have given more than one reading. A few, myself included, have given just one. The rest have never had the privilege.

  Deaf Blind: Three Squared Cinquain

  BARBARA WALTERS IS IN AWE

  of a deaf-blind man

  who cooks without burning himself!

  Helen Keller is to blame.

  Can’t I pick my nose

  without it being a miracle?

  AM I A NOBODY, TOO?

  I am sorry to disappoint,

  but I am. But nobody

  would let me be one,

  not even when I catch

  a bus stinking of Nobodies.

  ONE AFTERNOON, I FOUND MYSELF

  walking with my cane dragging

  behind me but still knowing

  the way. There was nothing

  to see. Everything saw me

  first and stayed in place.

  Clamor

  All things living and dead cry out to me

  when I touch them. The dog, gasping for air,

  is drowning in ecstasy, its neck shouting

  Dig in, dig in. Slam me, slam me,

  demands one door while another asks to remain

  open. In bed afterwards she asks me

  how did I know just where and how

  to caress her. I can be too eager to listen:

  The scar here on my thumb is a gift

  from a cracked bowl that begged to be broken.

  Beach Baseball

  Even when I fold my white cane in half

  to double my chances, my batting average is a joke.

  I am much better at knowing which smooth stones

  the ocean wants back from the shore.

  But when there is a metallic crack and a rainbow

  cleaves my mental sky, I see something

  falling from one blue into another and then a gasp

  of what I like to think of as pure white.

  Long Goodbyes

  I miss all of the long goodbyes

  of my parents’ guests

  taking their leave by not leaving

  when it was time to go. Someone would sign

  Better go home we but hours would pass

  around our round kitchen table

  before anyone stands up.

  Then others, sighing, would stand up

  slowly and slowly walk

  through our house, pausing

  where the walls offered stories,

  reasons to stay longer

  and touch more things with our hands.

  I remember how long,

  how wonderfully they stood

  unwilling to open the front door,

  signing away with warm faces

  and hugging goodbye again

  before going gently into the night.

  My family would huddle to watch

  their cars’ headlights roll away

  but pause to flash in the Deaf way,

  waving goodbye to our house.

  How we children dashed inside

  to light switches for our house

  to wave back goodbye,

  light to light bright in the night!

  Now that I am grown

  and have my own family, do come

  for a visit but do not leave

  when it is time to go. Sign, do sign

  Better go home we and our hands

  will make time go suddenly slow.

  LYRICISM OF THE BODY

  Alex Lemon

  AND NOW I SEE

  A man may see how this world goes with no eyes.

  —WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, King Lear

  I woke to a radically different world on September 16, 1999. My brain surgery had gone well, but everything around me was blurred and doubled and jumping and excruciatingly brilliant. The vascular malformation in the pons of my brainstem had been dealt with, but I couldn’t see the intensive care unit around me. My eyes looked like they were trying to pop out of my head and they’d rolled out to sides of my head. It was devastating—I was suddenly sitting in a wheelchair, cloistered in blinding fog. I was twenty-one years old. For years, I wore an eye patch (and sometimes still do) for the walleye vision, and it slowly got better, but the nystagmus and double-vision have never completely gone away.

  But, as I’ve learned to accept this changed body, I’ve realized that visual changes have played a significant role in my poetic development. They’ve destabilized me, helped me embrace the unruliness of the world and accelerated the broadening of my imagination.

  Without sight, I felt like the world had become an unknowable place. But the idea that I knew the world because I could see it was an illusion—an illusion of control. This destabilization was bewildering and beautiful and pivotal. The act of tearing everything down helped me become open to the possibility of everything, and that openness is a crucial element of writing. “I dwell in Possibility— /,” Emily Dickinson wrote, “A fairer House than prose— / More numerous of Windows— / Superior—For Doors—,”and the architectural metaphor that begins in the first stanza of 466 is an excellent way to think about the complexities of a poem. Each poem is a building. Theoretically, each building has an endless arrangement of doorjambs and windowsills and steps, just as each theoretical poem can be built of an enormously complex arrangement of poetic elements. So, what do you want to build—another cookie-cutter sonnet in the suburbs or the gorgeous wasteland of the Watts Towers?

  Everything I see is shifting, vibrating. That glass of water looks as if it’s walking across the counter. Those flowers are rising, ever so slightly, out of the vase. They are fireworks the half second before becoming fireworks. The painting bleeds into the wall, which the person walking by has already bled into. Nothing is contained. Nothing is capped or limited. This porousness, in my eyes, is a striking move toward what Keats so admired about Shakespeare, his great aptitude for negative capability. It is “being in uncertainties,” because that mug has no exact shape and maybe it is rattling over the tabletop. Then again, maybe it’s not; maybe the mug is a suitcase and inside the suitcase is a door to your favorite dining establishment, The Manatee Hut.

  I do not think that my visual disability has given me anything I couldn’t have acquired with the “good” vision I’d been born with, but it sped up my poetic appreciation of the world. Specifically, not being able to see forced me into an extended stay in my imagination. Like shooting baskets or doing the crossword puzzle, the more time I spent on it, the better it got. My imagination ballooned; it became wonderfully corpulent. It became a place of safety and pleasure. And as my altered sight returned and continued changing, my imagination continuously expanded, but suddenly, the one constant in my life was that wildly spinning place.

  So of course I see how many fingers you’re holding up. A baker’s dozen, right? Or hmmm, is that sign-language and why are you calling me a big fat liar? It’s OK, I forgive you—you’re wearing a lovely face and a neato-bandito T-shirt. I too heart New York, almost as much as burritos. Or, wait a second—is that my hand living inside your chest like a heart koozie? And one last thing, before you make me leave, I must say you look utterly ravishing like that, with your hair all on fire.

  Mosquito

  You want evidence of the street

  fight? A gutter-grate bruise & concre
te scabs—

  here are nails on the tongue,

  a mosaic of glass shards on my lips.

  I am midnight banging against house-

  fire. A naked woman shaking

  with the sweat of need.

  An ocean of burning diamonds

  beneath my roadkill, my hitchhiker

  belly fills sweet. I am neon blind & kiss

  too black. Dangle stars—

  let me sleep hoarse-throated in the desert

  under a blanket sewn from spiders.

  Let me be delicate & invisible.

  Kick my ribs, tug my hair.

  Scream You’re Gonna Miss Me

  When I’m Gone. Sing implosion

  to this world where nothing is healed.

  Slap me, I’ll be any kind of sinner.

  It Had Only Been Dead a Few Hours

  What a strange paradise this is—

  languid apricot trees & birds

  of paradise. Tire-flattened

  oranges in the alley & ants

  in the hummingbird feeders.

  Neighbors peek from the blinds

  when the sprinklers torque on

  & I cannot romanticize this

  ultimate torture test. You say

  your foot is killing you?—well,