THE MANY FORMS OF RAYMOND LUCZAK'S "INSTRUCTIONS TO HEARING PERSONS DESIRING A DEAF MAN""How will poetry — arguably the world's first art from — respond to technological upheaval threatening
to make the book's mean's of artistic expression and delivery as outdated as the eight-track player's."
Since at least as far back as Dana Gioia's now classic essay "Can Poetry Matter?" the question of poetry's obsolescence has been an uncomfortable one for those who see poetry as part of their identity. This concern has been intensified for conventional poets with the increase of digital technology at an almost unfathomable rate. Ironically, however, for many of those involved in the disability community, the prospect of the end of the hegemony of the printed page is a welcome one. Increased technologies have made poetry and other literary genres available to previously marginalized readers. A welcome example of this is the journey that Raymond Luczak's poem "Instructions to Hearing Persons Desiring a Deaf Man" has taken. Luczak's poem was first published in Van Gogh's Ear. Here is the way that it appears in print. INSTRUCTIONS TO HEARING PERSONS DESIRING A DEAF MAN A deaf man is always a foreign country. In 2008 it was chosen for Best Gay Poetry and apppeared as part of Luczak's collection of poetry Mute in 2010. The poem experienced its final permutation in print form when it was included in the anthology Beauty is a Verb: The New Poetry of Disability in 2011. However, despite the fact the poem is ostensibly addressed to a hearing audience, Luczak, a Deaf poet himself, knew that there would be signing members of the Deaf community who might find the poem resonated with them as well. With that in mind, he created an ASL version of the mind and created a video of himself signing the poem, which can be seen here. The added bonus here for viewers conversant in both ASL and written English is that they are able to gain insight into what Luczak did to translate the original poem. Not long afterwards, the poet was approached about doing a video version. Luczak relates: When Brooke Griffin, an animator, asked to adapt my poem "Instructions to Hearing Persons Desiring a Deaf Man" from my book Mute into a short film, I was surprised and flattered but consented. I performed the poem in ASL and gave her the original footage. I had no idea what she'd do with it, but eight months later, here it is! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YwzR9zBwyM8 Clearly, this animated version demonstrates how a poem might take on a life of its own and engage an audience who might never have opened Luczak's hard copy of Mute. Wordgathering readers who have been checking out other poems in this issue are probably already aware of at least one group of readers that have been left out of the above three versions: those with vision impairments who do not have screen readers available. Poet Jill Khoury has been helping the journal remedy that process by creating audio files for every poem in this issue whose authors were not able to create a file themselves. So here is Wordgathering's contribution to the various ways in which "Instructions to Hearing Persons Desiring a Deaf Man" can be experienced. Listen to Audio Version read by Jill Khoury.
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