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by Raymond Luczak (Author)
In this groundbreaking collection of sign language gloss poetry, the first of its kind to be published, Raymond Luczak explores the dynamics of written English poetry and ASL gloss by communing with the animals living in Michigan's Upper Peninsula.
Having lost much of his hearing at the age of nine months, Luczak was not allowed to use sign language until he was 14 years old, when he demanded to learn it. In the mining town of Ironwood, Michigan, Luczak felt isolated among his hearing peers at school and his family members at the dinner table. More at home in the woods, he discovered a place both wild and welcoming, with no need to guess at meaning through lipreading. Sensing a kinship with the array of animals there, he believed they understood him in ways the hearing world could not. Knowing Deaf people had historically and wrongly been outcast as languageless and wild, Luczak reclaims the woods as a source for his own natural language and sense of belonging.
As a Deaf writer giving English poetry readings in American Sign Language (ASL), Luczak faced the challenge of performing his work in ASL, so he developed his own system of notating ASL gloss on the page. It is this deeply personal, interior language that Luczak uses to animate this moving collection, making his poems legible -- knowable, accessible -- across communities too often separated by a lack of knowledge.
