Peter Cook: ASL Performer
Kenny Lerner: Voice Performer
“POETRY”
POETRY
POETRY
POETRY
clenched fist, unfurling from the heart
poetic feet beat embodied meter
POETRY IS THE SHOT
hand-gun shoots bullet-becomes-planetary-orb
ORBITING
CIRCLING
REVOLVING
EXPLODING!
IT IS THE OPEN WINDOW
IT’S CAUGHT
baseball catcher blown back
ball-becomes-bubbling-sauce
SMOKING
SMOKING
IT'S THE FLAME
bullet drips into a pot
AND IT TASTES DELICIOUS
Cook tastes bullet-sauce
IT’S LOADED INTO THE MAGNUM
AND IT’S SHOT . . .
toward the audience. stops. rewinds.
RIGHT BACK INTO YOUR HEART
THAT’S
POETRY
POETRY
POETRY
clenched fist, unfurling from the heart,
poetic feet beat embodied meter
IT’S THE PAINTER
AND THE PORTRAIT
Painter slathers a handful of paint,
thick-river-curves-on-canvas
then becomes the portrait painted,
thick river-curves slathered on the poem’s face
……...…………………..
little-finger scribbles on the fourth-wall-canvas
poem’s face scribbled in fine little-finger lines
…………………………..
painter slashes diagonals across the canvas
brushstrokes mouth & jaw right
eyes & forehead left
face-poem slashed in diagonals,
brushstroked mouth & jaw left
eyes & forehead right
…………………………..
IT’S A PLATE OF PAINT
SMASHED INTO THE PORTRAIT
IT’S THE PAPER
RIPPED OFF THE EASEL
AND CRUMPLED UP
Last g(r)asp of the poem:
hand screaming out of discarded canvas
AND THROWN INTO ORBIT
planetary orb twisting in the cosmos
IT’S A FOREST OF TREES
painted onto nature itself
BUSHES
UNDERBRUSH
paint-hurled-becomes-sun
A BLAZING SUN
A RED TAILED FALCON
paint-hurled-becomes-bird
RISING UP TOWARD
THE SOURCEFUL SUN
BURSTING OUT
SUNBATHED RED FALCON
SWOOPS DOWN
hand-wings-soar-into-flight
IT’S A BUTTERFLY
become-butterfly-lights-on-poet’s-head
-brushes it off
A TREE
poet tenderly paints a tree into being
POETRY
“P” falls like a leaf
A LEAF FALLING
index-finger leaf falls
then another
LEAVES
F
A
L
L
ING
five-finger-leaves flutter
TOWARDS THEIR REFLECTION
IN THE RIVER
POETRY
POETRY
POETRY
clenched fist, unfurling from the heart,
poetic feet stamp out embodied meter
IT’S THE BOMB BAY DOORS OPENING
Bomb drops to the ground
MUSHROOM CLOUD
THE NUCLEAR WINDS
D I S INT EG R A T I N G H A I R
E Y E S,
CLA TT ERI NG T E E T H
BONES
H E ‘ S
G
O N
E !
Textualized by H-Dirksen L. Bauman
COMMENTARY
(1) The signing poetry emerging as an aspect of the "culture of the deaf" challenges some of our cherished preconceptions about poetry & its relation to human speech. ASL poetry represents, in itself, a language without sound &, for its practitioners & viewers, a poetry without access to that experience of sound-as-voice that we've so often taken as the bedrock of all poetics & all language. In the real world of the deaf, then, ASL (American Sign Language), like its national & autochthonous counterparts elsewhere, exists as a fully formed language: a kind of writing in space & an independent language without recourse to any more dominant form of language for its validation. The extensions it brings to our definitions of poetry can hardly be overstated.
(2) Writes H-Dirksen L. Bauman about his textualized version of “Poetry” as conceived & performed by Flying Words Project: “As a sign language poem can only be fully appreciated in its embodied performance, readers are encouraged to visit the video link provided here (youtube.com/watch?v=JnU3U6qEibU) to see Flying Words Project’s ‘Poetry’ in its original form. Those who view the video will see (if sighted) Peter Cook’s blend of ASL and gesture and will hear (if hearing) Kenny Lerner’s voicing, which is not intended as a translation but as a verbal supplement, painting a context within which viewers can grasp the significance of the visual-gestural images.
“Presented here in print, the ALL CAPS words on the left margins are the direct transcription of Kenny Lerner’s voicing, while the italicized text on the right margins consists of my own ‘imagist condensations’ of the ASL/visual/gestural performance that the audience would see for themselves.”
That Peter Cook enhances his performance with a range of mimetic gestures & non-verbal sounds is also to be noted.
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