Colors of ASL … A World Expressed: ASL Poetry in the Curriculum

Wendy Low
(Abridged Version for Proceedings)

I. What is ASL poetry; why should we include it in our curricula?

What are hands?

… World expressed!

—Clayton Valli (1990) Hands (my translation)

Wings to “fly back up to the colors”

… “the colors of ASL.”

—Debbie Rennie (1990) Black Hole? Colors of ASL (my translation)

These allusions may not have been familiar to you in translation, as you read the title of this session. Even now, you may be seeing them signed in their original language for the first time. I hope that within five years, such allusions used among an audience of teachers working with deaf students will light up faces across the room.

These metaphors (hands as a world, hands as wings, ASL as colors) from ASL poems published on videotape suggest reasons to include ASL poetry as an integral part of our curricula. The metaphors speak of the central importance of sign language in the lives of Deaf people as a means of personal and cultural expression. They also speak of ASL as a means of access to a forum for expressing and analyzing subtle and colorful literary meanings, a forum that I will later point out may provide doorways for easier access to understanding written literature.

Kelleher and Fernandes (1991) note how shared Deaf experiences, world views, and cultural values are expressed in ASL stories and poems. Historical changes in deaf education and politics can also be traced in “ASL poetry” and “signed poetic expressions.” Two examples: 1) The ascendancy of English literature and signed English modes in education in translation works of past decades by Robert Panara and Bernard Bragg; 2) The impact of expanding knowledge of linguistic analysis of ASL in the recent increase in conscious manipulations of the handshapes and morphology of ASL in poetic compositions (noted by Padden & Humphries, 1988). Thus, ASL poetry can be studied as part of the study of the culture and history of the deaf community, and as part of the analysis of how ASL works as a language.

Although it is important to note that ASL poetry can be viewed as “culture and history of the deaf community,” or as “ASL,” it is equally important to note that ASL poetry is “poetic literature.” Thus, it has the extensive, inclusive, imaginative, explorative, probing, longing, and questioning qualities of any genre of art. It is, like literature from spoken languages, a subtle and deeply “telling” use of language. I would consider it cheating ourselves and our students to view ASL poetry solely as a tool for discussing aspects of American Deaf culture and ASL, and never take it in and enjoy it as literature: as a complex, subtle, and beautiful flowering of human minds playing with language and meaning, probing and expressing experiences and dreams. Deaf students take pride in this literary heritage. I am thus, as a teacher of literature, claiming ASL poetry for “Literature Studies,” as others have claimed it for “Deaf Culture Studies” and “ASL Language Studies.” ASL poetry shows a variety consistent with 20th century poetic expression in written languages. There are poems that flash brief images at us, poems that elaborate extended metaphors, surreal narratives, bitterly ironic puns, vivid protests, psychological reflections. It makes sense to enjoy and study ASL poetry in all the ways that have proven fruitful with poetic arts.

What is ASL poetry? Like poetry in any language, it is language that:

1.Has a form which is “rhythmic” or “patterned”;

2.Is in some way “frozen” or “repeatable”; and

3.Rewards repeated viewings and attention to “layers” of meaning.

Let me be frank and note that the boundaries of this definition are not strictly drawn. There are questions as to whether ASL includes or excludes sign-mime or pidgin forms of what I will call “signed rhythmic expression” such as those used in many older translations from English. There are questions of where storytelling ends and poetry begins, as shown in Sam Supalla’s recent use (e.g., Supalla & Bahan, 1991) of the terms “line” and “stanza” in analysis of his own stories (or are they epic poems?). As with spoken poetry, differences between “dramatic” or “performance” art and performed poetry are at times debated.

For me, these debates can mask the point that if these other forms are not ASL poetry, they still often make striking poetic use of ASL for their best effects and, therefore, may merit being read in terms of what we know about ASL poetry. However, we have now a certain body of works on videotape that everyone agrees is poetry, and it is to these poems that I will direct my attention.

II. Strategies for studying ASL poetry

We will now discuss some of the possible approaches to studying poems, classified into (A) Reading and responding, (B) Structured analysis of poetic form, and (C) Composing.

II. A. Reading and responding

This short poem, Hands by Clayton Valli (1990), has, like my favorite poems in English or Spanish, gained weight for me from request reading, consideration, and discussion—yet it remains as delightful and sprightly to me in its sheer, short, astonishing beauty as the first time I saw it. Apply the following approaches:

1.Repeated viewing

2.First responses

3.Questions and observations

a.connections to our thoughts and lives

b.imagery

c.place of poem in the author’s life and works

d.cultural context

e.form (and genre)

f.authorial choices between possible options

g.possible symbolism

4.Meaning, message, or effect for us

Many of the approaches I have applied to this poem overlap and intertwine: I know of no fixed order for using them, and, certainly, these are not all the possible fruitful ways to look at poems.

II. B. Structured analysis of poetic form

I have urged attempting all fruitful approaches to studying poetry. Nevertheless, it seems important to give special consideration to an approach that Deaf students are less likely to encounter in reading English literature: the approach of a structured analysis of form and its effect on meaning. Generally, when deaf students encounter English language poetry in class, the formal aspects related to the English sound system are either neglected or explained in a mechanical, purposeless way. If the teacher goes so far as to speak more in depth of the affective and cognitive effects of rhythm, rhyme, puns, etc., the students still lack vivid, direct impressions to make such knowledge “real” and flexible. However, I have seen that even students with only moderate fluency in ASL are fascinated by ASL poetry, are often amazed to find that they like “poetry,” and can, with repeated viewings and discussions, analyze it and grasp how it works formally. Padden and Humphries (1988) note that ASL poets “mime” the formal aspects of ASL “to create rich layers of meaning beyond the simply denotative” (p. 109). In ASL poetry, many students encounter for the first time a poetic art with formal aspects they can fully appreciate and analyze, because those formal aspects are visual.

This kind of metalinguistic knowledge, which comes from analyzing the careful choices that poets make and how those choices affect the impact and meaning that the poem has for its audience, is an important literacy skill, and can prepare students to ask similar essential questions of everyday communication and of forms of written English they read and write. Therefore, and for the reason that categories used in structural formal analysis of ASL poetry are still developing and not familiar to most teachers, let’s take a closer look at aspects of form in ASL poetry, and how they can carry meaning. Most of my aspect categories come from analyses performed by poets themselves (Graybill 1990, Rennie 1990, Valli 1990).

Some formal resources of ASL poetry (demonstrate):

Feature level:

1.Handshape (and the alliterative repetition of handshape)

2.Movement (rhythm and the repetition, flow, or reversal of movement)

3.Use of space (balance/imbalance)

Word level:

4.Word play (transformations; metaphors, personifications; puns)

5.Diction (word choice)

6.Incorporation of allusions or foreign languages

Phrasing and discourse level:

7.Phrasing (line shape; stanza shape)

8.Overall rhythm, rhyme and/or stanza “scheme”

9.Fixed forms

(Demonstrate through analysis of Reflection by Patrick Graybill [1990]).

II. C. Composing

Responding to literature and literary analysis improves with experience composing literature. Students with previous creative experience in ASL are eager to experiment and proud of their fluency. I find treating these activities as ungraded workshops, and grouping students to try poetic experiments together can lessen the anxiety of students who feel less fluent. I learned most of these activities to spur poetic experimentation from Patrick Graybill and Debbie Rennie. (Demonstrate):

1.Handshape play

2.“Transformations”

3.Combining two natural objects (and perhaps personify them)

4.Fingerspelling play (letters=classifiers=description of object or activity spelled) (show Calf by Debbie Rennie [1990])

5.Repetition

6.Striking images, memories, dreams

7.Translation (from an English poem; from a painting)

8.Duets or choruses

III. One curriculum and beyond

There are strategies for encouraging student and teacher involvement in ASL poetry. In the back of the room are a stack of copies of the proposed course outline and a bibliography of tapes, readings, and breathing poets for a full 10 week course in ASL poetry that I developed in collaboration with Patrick Graybill, Peter Cook, Kenny Lerner, and Debbie Rennie, and that Patrick and I plan to offer this coming winter. Most of the specific ideas listed under content and strategies have proven their worth in previous workshops or classes, but, unfortunately, the outline can give you but a rough idea of what we have in mind. Feel free to contact me with questions about what terms mean or how activities work.

Not every program will mount a full course in ASL poetry. Naturally, in deciding what strategies to use, each program has to consider the resources they have and want to devote (curricular time, finances, staff) to get the greatest breadth and depth of benefit with its particular students, in its particular program. Anyone interested in discussing that, or the complex process that led to the development of a community network of poets, events, curricula, and supporters for ASL poetry in Rochester, N.Y., please contact me. I invite your questions and comments.

About the Presenter

Wendy Low is a visiting professor of language and literature at the National Technical Institute for the Deaf. She has a B.A. in English literature from the University of Rochester and an M.Ed. from the University of Rochester and Rochester Institute of Technology.

References

Graybill, P. (1990). Poetry in motion; original works in ASL [Video series]. Burtonsville, MD: Sign Media.

Kelleher, J. F., & Fernandes, J. J. (1991, March). The world according to (the) Deaf: The place of ASL literature in a comprehensive Deaf Studies curriculum. Paper presented at the Deaf Studies for Educators Conference, Dallas, TX.

Padden, C., & Humphries, T. (1988). Deaf in America: Voices from a culture. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Rennie, D. (1990). Poetry in motion; original works in ASL [Video series]. Burtonsville, MD: Sign Media.

Supalla, S., & Bahan, B. (1991, March). American Sign Language literature series: Research and development. Paper presented at the Deaf Studies for Educators Conference, Dallas, TX.

Valli, C. (1990). Poetry in motion; original works in ASL [Video series]. Burtonsville, MD: Sign Media.