Noah Buchholz, a deaf poet, was standing on a stage on the ground floor of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum on Wednesday night, with a gentle smile.
His left and right hands intermittently motioned forward, as his fingers spread open like little bursts of fire and joy. He was performing a poem inspired by his deaf mother’s experience in a school that forbade students to use ASL, recalling how she and her friends at the dorm would gather at night by a window to sign in secret.
This is what sign language poetry, a genre rooted in the sign language tradition, looks like: a feast for the eyes.
Buchholz was one of the poets invited to showcase their poetry for an event, Sound/Off, organized by the Guggenheim’s 2024 poet in residence, Meg Day. Day, who is deaf and uses they/them pronouns, has spent the year working on highlighting sign language poetry, a well-established artistic form within Deaf culture that has received little recognition among wider audiences.
Among Day’s initiatives is “Ekphrasis in Air,” a display of sign language poetry on the sixth floor of the rotunda, in the “Harmony and Dissonance” exhibition devoted to Orphism. Nestled between two areas broadcasting readings of poetry by Guillaume Apollinaire and Blaise Cendrars are three video screens projecting poems in American and British Sign Languages, including by Day, Douglas Ridloff and Abby Haroun.
“These poets are represented and thoughtfully presented,” Day said, adding, “this is a different kind of attention.”
Among deaf people who sign, ASL poetry is known as a growing art form with a rich history. Signed poems are increasingly available on video, and events like slams and festivals offer a space for deaf artists. But Day’s residency brings the art for the first time to the Guggenheim, a setting where it has the potential to reach audiences who have never experienced it.
Day said that central to their endeavor was a desire to recognize a language and a form that many people struggle to see as such. “I think a lot of people would really push back on the idea that there is a deaf literature at all,” Day said, or would feel that “if it exists in ASL, then it can’t be literature.”
The seven poems featured in the installation are all examples of ekphrasis, or poetry that is created in response to a visual work of art. Buchholz, a director of the ASL program at Princeton University, said that the connection between a genre like sign poetry and the visual arts would seem natural since sign languages are inherently visual, but historically, ekphrasis has not proved very inclusive. That is just an example of how many aspects of sign language and Deaf culture have yet to be discovered or become widespread, he added.
“Now that society has largely acknowledged the existence of Deaf culture and sign language, it is time to delve deeper into Deaf culture and learn more about the contributions it can make to mainstream society,” said Buchholz, whose poem “Reflecting (on) the Guggenheim” is also part of the display.
Rosa Lee Timm, whose poem “Echoes in the Round” is in the exhibition, said, “I’m thrilled to be part of something that elevates ASL poetry to such a respected artistic space.”
Sign language poetry, like written poetry, is an elaborate art form that stretches the possibilities of language through rules and techniques. But with its visual nature, it can add a new dimension, the poets participating in the project point out.
ASL poetry offers an incredible depth of expression through the use of location — a sign normally at the forehead, for example, can be moved somewhere else — as well as handshapes and facial expressions, Timm said: “A single sign choice can evoke a variety of thoughts and emotions depending on how it’s performed.”
ASL poetry’s dynamic quality “allows for a manipulation of space and movement that written poetry can’t quite capture,” she added. “The physicality of the language adds layers to the meaning and emotional impact.”
Poets are able to push the boundaries of the genre by developing their own style. Buchholz, for example, said his poetry blends common elements of spoken and written poetry, such as wordplay and rhyme, with distinctive elements of sign language poetry like spatialization (which involves changing a sign’s location) and classifiers (signs whose handshape, location, movement or palm orientation may be manipulated to depict a detail).
The poems in “Ekphrasis” are displayed without captioning, an intentional choice made by Day and the other poets. Day said that the assumed audience at the Guggenheim is hearing people, and they sought to shift the balance. “The issue of captioning feels political,” they said.
Viewers without sign language knowledge are guided through the display by the authors’ explanatory notes and invited to enjoy the videos as they would other artworks. “People move into the Guggenheim anticipating that they will see things they don’t necessarily understand,” Day said. “And there’s a welcome comfort with that. There’s an invitation to curiosity.”
Ridloff’s poem “Cosmos,” for example, takes on an Orphism work by Frantisek Kupka, “The Colored One,” an abstract painting devoted to people communing with nature. On video, Ridloff, one of the most popular contemporary ASL poets, uses his fingers to point in various directions at increasing speed, until his hands, in front of his chest, almost create energy before diverting in a motion evocative of an explosion in space. Later, his left hand cups his right fist, which slowly starts pulsating, like the beating heart of a new life.
Raymond Luczak, who contributed the poem “Guggenheim Fair,” said he would not be upset if visitors “didn’t ‘understand’ my poem.” In fact, he invites museumgoers “to turn off the English in their heads.”
“Experiencing something wholly foreign can be life-changing,” he said.
For Sound/Off, Day decided to bring together deaf and hard-of-hearing poets (among them were Sam Rush and Camisha Jones, as well as Raymond Antrobus, whose work is also in “Ekphrasis in Air”) who compose to various degrees in sign language and English, in the hope of setting off a nuanced conversation about poetry and deaf poetics. Day said they hoped it would help people understand “the complexity and the expanse of possibility of poetics” when “we include things that aren’t English text.”
For Haroun, who became deaf at age 8 and holds an M.F.A. in poetry and creative writing from the University of Baltimore, participating in the initiative was an opportunity to explore a different side of her art. “Writing poetry is easy for me, but to perform a poem in ASL is no easy feat,” she said.
Haroun, who contributed “On Brooklyn Bridge” to “Ekphrasis in Air,” added: “This is the kind of exposure and encouragement that I needed. It’s invaluable growth.”
At Sound/Off, Haroun performed a poem celebrating being a deaf Black woman. Her hands twirled increasingly higher, eventually separating in opposite directions and coming back down to her sides. Her interpreter recited: “Tonight I am going to be Maya Angelou, signing poems that spiral sky high.”
Michael Kaufer, a deaf retired teacher in attendance who also runs a deaf film camp, said that it was about time that a space like the Guggenheim welcomed ASL poetry. “I am thrilled, and I hope that there will be more,” he said through an interpreter. “I hope that this isn’t the first and the last.”
Joanna Cruz, the hearing child of deaf parents, was at the event with their friend Sara LiBrandi. “It was just incredibly touching seeing poetry signed for the first time,” Cruz said. “It’s not something I have ever experienced.”
LiBrandi said she was impressed by how expressive the poetry was, and how much she could pick up on without knowing ASL. “I felt very privileged to be welcomed,” she said, as someone who is not a part of this community.
Also among those in the audience was Peter Cook, a deaf poet who, along with his hearing partner, Kenny Lerner, has been sharing ASL poetry for decades through their Flying Words Project. As the event came to a close, he was beaming. “The theme is just beautiful diversity, different generations of poetry,” he said through an interpreter.
So much of what he saw felt new, he said: the inclusion of people with different experiences of hearing loss, the work of interpreters in the space, the incorporation of different visual styles.
“And this is an international museum, and for it to acknowledge ASL as the language of art is perfect — this is the perfect venue for that,” he said.
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