Outside & Subterranean Poetry (66): Gilbert Eastman, from “Epic: Gallaudet Protest” (in American Sign Language)

Gilbert Eastman (American Sign Language, 1934-2006)

From epic: Gallaudet protest

universe    earth    u.s.a.    washington, d.c.

lincoln memorial    statue    hands: a & l

looked back    124 years ago

charter    signed    announcing

college for the deaf

face-profile    columns    looked at reflection pool

washington monument    streets    cars

capitol dome    u.s. flag

turned streets    trees    buildings

stop. fence    gate: “gallaudet university”

entered    road-curve

chapel hall    tower clock

arches    terrace    steps    streets

statue base    gallaudet and alice

one student came    students one by one came

looked at statue    walked    joined more people

long line of people    football field    bleachers

got button    fade-out “deaf president now”

fade-in    looked at crowd    pickets

speaker with beard came    spoke    clapped

another speaker    spoke    screamed

another speaker    spoke    waving-hands

deaf deaf deaf “d” unity all-over

stood    walked around campus

dark    into    night

**********************************************************

week-later    sunday    march 6   time 7:00 p.m.

one by one came crowd waited and waited    became nervous

looked at cop walking toward crowd

papers stacked    passed out

paper announcing new president:

zinser woman hearing hair-curl, scarf

paper crushed, set afire

burn z    anger

“go!” crowd ran    stopped hotel

doorman stopped    cops stood in row

students stood in rows and rows

leader called    spilman

hair-up, ruffles, came-down    stopped

faced students    with interpreter    spoke

“deaf people are not ready to function in a hearing world.”

row-students shocked    fists-up    screamed

cries up in sky    up in darkness

screams disappeared into night    silence               

**********************************************************

sunrise    monday   

group    pointed at gate    chain lock

point gate    chain lock    point gate    chain lock

ran to main entrance    stood one by one

rows and rows    closed gate

cars tried entering    couldn’t    left

rows    guard

group discussed    called students    flocked

leader man blond, crew-cut came with red band    stood

followed three persons, blue bands

one tall, thin, glasses, jacket, buttons

one medium, thin face, smoking

one woman, small, strong, hair short, glasses

three joined leader, four faced

first rows    yellow bands

more rows    more rows    looked at leader

explained    “no violence!”

“understand!”    “give up no”

rows hands-rising, waving. stopped

4 demands:    1) deaf president

            2) spilman (hair-up, ruffles) out

            3) board 51% deaf

            4) no reprisal

rows clapped    returned to gate, guarded

spilman arrived with group, meeting doors closed

called students    flocked to building    gym

large room    sat    hands-waving

vips entered    stood-in-line    sat

spilman entered with interpreter

spilman spoke, interpreter signed

suddenly deaf professor interrupted    signed “please leave.”

spilman tried to stop them but couldn’t

students got-up    left gym    stood outside

anger    confused    looked for help

walked to capitol    ran-up steps    doors closed

chaos    looked-up in sky    darkness

stars falling down    disappearing into darkness

**********************************************************

sunrise    tuesday

guards    let some people coming in

faculty    staff    students    supporters

uppers (administratives) out

professors asked what? students asked help us! four

demands!

people flocked, sat rows. each expressed problems

they listened    formed committees    meetings

fund-raising    how? thermometer with round-line red

money-giving    red-rising

press conference    newspaper reporters plus

tv reporters came    asked questions

deaf felt helpless    looked at group coming

“interpreters!” they helped us!

deaf signed, interpreters spoke to reporters

looked at five deaf leaders coming

national organizations different

leader by leader spoke    clapped    waved hands

reporters wrote down    ran to cars    drove away

stopped at newspaper building    entered    ran into office

typed    computer    line by line

pushed key    came-out paper    took it and ran

to huge room    put on machine    turned on

rolled    pressed    folded    stacked

put-in trucks    doors opened    trucks hurried out

same time    pressed    wired all-over usa

continued through the night    stars faintly twinkled

**********************************************************

sunrise    wednesday

guards    rows    rows    tired

blockade    looked at truck    let it in

opened doors    packs of newspapers    came out

headline: “gallaudet protest”

hurrah    returned to gate, guarded

professors    workers met together

discussed    voted.  approved four demands

helped students    hurrah    but

one ran in, stood, breathed, announced

z hair-curled, scarf favorable

looked up, disappointed    heart broken

one by one grab flag    rose high

inspiring    hands waving

over there    building    room    tv camera lens

ted koppel hair, apart, sat, table curve

point blond crew-cut, point z hair-curled, scarf

point california, mm hair-long-curl, glasses

ted looked at watch    lens to camera

frame, down wire to next room

man earphones, microphone, tv sets

1) fix tie    2) fix scarf    3) fix hair

count 5 4 3 2 1 0              push button

line ran down    went through to disk

then, shot up into space    reaching satellite

satellite moved    shot down

china    frame    burn z

india    frame    gate

africa    frame    pickets

italy    frame 4 4 4

france    frame    spilman out

sweden     frame    deaf unity

england    frame    deaf president now

america    frame    blond hair crew-cut signed

zinser spoke, captioned

mm emoted

ted koppel looked at clock    5 4 3 2 1

cut    blackout

**********************************************************

sunrise    thursday

gate    guarded    tents    slept

 woke up    clothes dirty    hungry

 got up    joined group

another truck came in    let it in

opened doors    boxes boxes out of truck

looked at boxes    puzzled    opened

food! food! food! grabbed    gave out    shared

truck left    guarded all day

mail trucks entered    doors opened    bags

letters pile

building (ole gym) rails    doors opened

people stood    busy running around

room table round    telephones

interpreters    hearing volunteers

sat around table. rings    rings

answered    hung up    answered

deaf president thumb-up mark thumb-up mark

deaf president thumb-down mark thumb-down mark

thermometer red-line up    up

box    coins    bills    checks    up    up

tap shoulder, looked around    puzzled    noticed

girl little holding dime    put it in box

inspired    tears in eyes

gate guarded    tv trucks    antennas

tv reporters    newspapers reporters

microphone moved, deaf signed, interpereters spoke

all day into night

clouds crept into darkness

**********************************************************

Translation from ASL by Gilbert C. Eastman

commentary

source: H-Dirksen L. Bauman, Jennifer L. Nelson, & Heidi M. Rose, editors, Signing the Body Poetic: Essays on American Sign Language Literature, University of California Press, 2006.

(1) POETRY WITHOUT SOUND.   Even in its early, tentative stages, the signing poetry emerging as an aspect of the "culture of the deaf" challenges some of our cherished preconceptions about poetry and its relation to human speech.  Ameslan (American Sign Language) represents, literally, a poetry without sound and, for its practitioners, a poetry without access to that experience of sound as voice that we've so often taken as the bedrock of all poetics and all language.  In the real world of the deaf, then, language exists as a kind of writing in space and as a primary form of communication without reference to any more primary form of language for its validation.  It is in this sense a realization of the ideogrammatic vision of a Fenollosa – "a splendid flash of concrete poetry" – but an ideogrammatic language truly in motion and, like oral poetry, truly inseparable from its realization in performance.  (Ethnopoetic analogues – for those who would care to check them out – include Hindu and Tantric mudras, Plains Indian and Australian Aborigine sign languages, and Ejagham [southeastern Nigerian] "action writing": a history of human gesture languages that would enrich our sense of poetry and language, should we set our minds to it.)  The reader may also want to relate this piece to more recent discourse about "written-oral dichotomies, etc., but the revelation of Ameslan, in that sense, isn't a denial of the powers of oral poetry but the creation of its possible and equally impermanent companion in performance. (J.R., from Symposium of the Whole, 1983)

(2)  The “epic” goes back to March 1988 and a massive student strike at Gallaudet University, a federally chartered school for the education of the deaf and hard of hearing located in Washington, D.C., over the failure to appoint a non-hearing university president.  Writes Kristen C. Harmon, in introducing the epic & Gilbert Eastman’s part in it as “creator and omniscient narrator”: “Eastman is not conversing in everyday ASL.  In English, this introduction translates as ‘Within the blackness of space a single planet comes into focus – the earth, in its orbit, rotating on its axis.  The face of the earth comes into view – the United States’; even in translation, this kind of language clearly represents a departure from the conventions of conversational or informal written English.”  The resultant performance work, then, is in a tightly condensed language of its own & at a true remove from what it might have been as spoken.

(3) Quoting W.J.T. Mitchell (“Preface: Utopian Gestures”, in Signing the Body Poetic): “In the world of the Deaf, I am a disabled person, incapable of hearing or seeing or reading or listening to what is being said by the people around me.” Exactly who is the outsider here?