The New Yorker Radio Hour - The Poet John Lee Clark’s “How to Communicate” Brings DeafBlind Experience to the Page

Episode Date: January 2, 2024

Although many hearing and sighted people imagine DeafBlind life in tragic terms, as an experience of isolation and darkness, the poet John Lee Clark’s writing is full of joy. It’s funny and surprising, mapping the contours of a regular life marked by common pleasures and frustrations. Clark, who was born Deaf and lost his sight at a young age, has established himself not just as a writer and translator but as a scholar of Deaf and DeafBlind literature. His recent collection, “How to Communicate,” which was nominated for a National Book Award this past year, includes original works and translations from American Sign Language and Protactile. He speaks with the contributor Andrew Leland, who is working on a book about his own experience of losing his sight in adulthood. This segment originally aired December 9, 2022. New Yorker Radio Hour listeners, we want to hear from you.  We have a few questions about the show and how you listen to it. The survey takes about twenty minutes, and your feedback will help us make our podcast better.  Take the survey here.

This is The New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker. This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. John Lee Clark is a poet, and his debut collection was nominated for a National Book Award this year. The book is called How to Communicate, and that's a central theme for Clark. He writes in English, but he speaks in protactile, an emerging language based on touch that's increasingly used by deaf-blind people. Clark was born deaf and lost his sight when he was young to a condition called Usher Syndrome. He was profiled in the New Yorker by the writer Andrew Leland just before Clark's book How to Communicate came out.

Here's Andrew Leland. I first encountered John Lee Clark on an email list serve. Poetry magazine was about to publish an essay he'd written, and I wrote to him asking for a copy. It was a casual request which began what was, for me, a life-changing chorus. I have a related disease to Clark's. It's called RP, and it's causing me to slowly lose my sight. In Clark's writing and in our correspondence, I was struck again and again by the way he described his experience as a deaf-blind person. Despite the rest of the world's tendency to imagine deaf-blind life in tragic terms, as a land of silence and darkness, Clark's writing is full of humor and life.

A running theme in his work is the importance of touch, a sense that cited and he's a sense that cited and hearing people tend to diminish or ignore. Let me give you an example. A poem of his called Clammer. It's being read here by Halene or Hal Anderson, a woman who frequently works with John as an interpreter. Clammer. All things living and dead cry out to me when I touch them.

The dog, gasping for air, is drowning in ecstasy. It's neck shouting, dig in, dig in. Slam me, slam me demands one door, while another asks to remain open. My wife again asks me, how did I know, just where and how to caress her? I can be too eager to listen. The scar here on my thumb is a gift from a cracked bowl that begged to be broken. To read and write, John usually uses a digital braille display, which converts the text on his computer into refreshable dots of,

Braille on a little electronic device the size of a computer keyboard. As we corresponded, I began to imagine him in his home office in Minnesota, his cat asleep on his feet, playing that braille display like a virtuoso, firing off manifestos and poems and essays at all hours. We met up earlier this fall when he was visiting St. Louis. Great. Well, John, I'm so glad to see you again, to touch you again, and thanks so much for taking the time to talk to me again.

Yeah, absolutely, Enru. This is great. It's great to be here with you. That's Hal Anderson again. She's interpreting for John here using a language called protactile. Unlike American Sign Language or ASL, which is a visual language, protactile happens entirely on the body. Think of rapid fire taps, squeezes, traces, hand shapes, and presses that are all articulated on the hands, arms, shoulders, upper chest, lower thighs, and even the back.

My hand that's on your knee is giving you feedback. So sometimes when you say something that as frequently happens, rocks my world, blows my mind, I vigorously agree with, I will pat your knee like this. If you start saying something that I'm gravely, gravely disappointed with or disagree with vehemently, then I'm going to swipe and wipe because that's the basic protractile that I know. And then if you crack me up, I do a spidery little tickle kind of on your knee. Yes. Absolutely. Great. Clark's first language, when he still had his sight as a child, was ASL.

It's when his family spoke at home. And we started our conversation talking about that early part of his life. The first day that I attended school, I went on the bus. And I got on the bus, boarded it, sat down, we took off. My mom didn't trust that I was going to actually get there and be okay. And so she pulled up kind of behind the bus. she followed along the bus in her car and watched me. And when I got off the bus, she approached me and said, so how was it?

Were you okay? And I said, I'm fine, but the bus driver seems to forget all how to talk. You know, all of their vocabulary. They couldn't talk with me. And she said, no, no, no. They're hearing. And I said, they're hearing. Well, what is that?

So my mom had to explain to me that not everyone in the world spoke like we did. So they're learning that they're. other people in the world who essentially couldn't talk. That was a rude awakening. I love that kind of inversion of how hearing people tend to frame deaf people. And it reminds us that the life of ASL is equal to that of English, and there's no reason why we need to center English in the way that the hearing world does. Yes, absolutely.

Yeah. Spot on it. Andrew. Yet, here you are with this magisterial book of poetry in magisterial English. So something happened along the way where you befriended English. And when and how did that happen? Okay. Well, it's complicated. It's a little complicated. So being a baby, I immediately was immersed in the language of my family. And because I came from my... a deaf family, other kids knew that I was a source of information to them. They didn't have a whole lot of other deaf role models in their lives. And so I ended up being that for some kids.

I took a leadership role as a child among my peers. And as I became more and more blind, as I got older, like for example, in the sixth grade, I went to a school for the deaf as opposed to that little deaf program. And at that residential school, the school for the deaf, I had to abide by deaf customs, you know, and norms. And so I wound up at a crossroads because I wasn't deaf. I was deaf blind. At that age, even, I was deaf blind.

And so I didn't fit the mold. I did not fit the deaf mold. And so, for example, I'll just give you an example here, waving hands to get someone's attention is something that happens oftentimes. I wouldn't see someone who waved at me, and I would just go about my business, and they would think that I was being extremely rude because I wasn't responding a pope really. So people started to disregard me, to push me away. And so I was more isolated at that point, and so I got involved in books.

I was like, well, if you guys were going to go on without me, well, then I've got better things to do than to go off with you, too. And I was hooked on books at that point. And because of what they were infected, I guess, with readerly disease, I guess you could call it. Yeah. Because, yeah, books did a whole, whole lot for me. They helped me to get through a really tough time. Any titles or authors come to mind as primary vehicles for that literary disease that you contracted in sixth grade? Well, funny you ask, what happened was I entered a drugstore and they had some mass market books on the shelf.

And I had to decide to have them and get a book, okay, what books should he get? So I browsed for a little minute and, of course, happened upon a super thick book, all these other slim volumes. Ah, those aren't for me. I need to go after the biggest book I could find, you know. and it happened to be kin Fulett's the pillars of the earth and I ended up going back to that drugstore to buy other books

again those mass market books that they sell but I noticed though in reading them that it was hard to read them because their print was so small so I was trying to figure out well how can I get a hold of books with bigger print and I went to the Goodwill, and they had lots of hardcover books. And so I graduated to those because they had larger print.

And then after that, ended up going into frequenting used bookstores. And then Barns & Noble, I'd go through the bins to see which books had the largest font, you know, that was large enough for me to read comfortably. So I didn't choose books based on the story, the content, the topic, if I could read them, if they were legible to me, you know, or visible, I guess, the font size was comfortable, then they passed muster. And it actually helped me. It did take me on a sort of certain trajectory, you know, in literature. I mean, Kafka, Navakov, those kinds of authors that, it happened to me that their books were printed with larger print.

If I wasn't blind, I would probably have just stuck with the mass market media, and maybe I wouldn't have moved out of that genre altogether. So, hidden blessings, Andrew. I love that. You talked about this moment when you're realizing that your vision is changing, and it's changing the decisions you make and how you live. and I want to read a poem that I think connects to that experience, which, by the way, is in a very different way, I guess, something that I'm going through myself. So I identify a lot with what you're saying, too,

just in terms of being blind and yet also, you know, I'm about to read this poem off the page, and that's not an oxymoram, I guess. Absolutely. Okay. Goldilocks in denial. Goldilocks was in deep denial and refused to use a white cane. That's how she got lost in the woods, stumbling over tree roots and things.

Then she hit a wall, a house, door. She entered and wrinkled her nose and remembered the Annie movie from when she was little. It was the part where Daddy Warbuck said, I smell a wet dog. It was dark inside, so she did her ginger duck walk and zombie arms until she came against a table with some food on it. After emptying a bag of Doritos, she wandered deeper into the house. Kitchen, bathroom, living room, small chair, too small, medium-sized chair, too hard, big recliner. Ah, that's much better. When the three bears got home, they were happy to find that they had company. Papa Bear shook Goldilocks awake and asked who you. When she didn't answer, Papa Bear put his paw

under her hand. She snatched her hand back and said, I can see. Papa Bear said, okay, and asked again, who you? She said, I'm from Long Island, here vacation. Papa Bear asked, when arrive here, you? She said, my name, yellow curls. Papa Bear asked, need help you. She said, we'll soon graduate, May. Papa Bear gave up and turned to Mama Bear and said,

denial, obvious, misunderstand, misunderstand. Mama Bear said, sad, yes, nothing can do, leave alone. Baby Bear asked if he could play with yellow curls. Mama Bear thought about it and said, No, better not, yellow curls denial means hard talk, can't play good. So the whole Bear clan went about their business as if Goldilocks wasn't sitting there. She jumped up and stamped her feet and said, Not nice, you ignore, avoid me.

She whirled around to make a dramatic exit, but ended up in the bedroom where she stumbled and fell into a bed. She stayed on the bed for a long time, pretending that she had planned to sleep there all along. Nice. It shows a little bit of denial as a psychological state, right? But what happens later on, if a person's losing their vision or whatever, they sometimes try, I mean, things are overlooked, right?

And when accidents do happen, people sometimes will, oh, well, I intended to do that. So it's a psychological effect that happens that I went through myself. I noticed myself doing it. And a person usually does that when they're not in a great place. But it's a part of the journey, I would say. You know, it's a part of the journey. There's that moment in the poem when Papa Bear puts his paw underneath her hand in the way that, you know, your hand, the Hal's hand, is underneath yours right now.

And to me, just because I've spent time with you and I've been experienced to protectile, it's clear to me as a somewhat initiated reader that that's a moment of saying, let's communicate tactially. And part of her denial is to say, no, no, no, I can see. I don't need to communicate tactically. And can you talk about that aspect of becoming deafblind and the way it changes how you communicate? So as I said, in that period of time where I maybe was in denial and things were getting muddled for me. And I probably did respond as Goldilocks did off the mark when people made.

mentioned or said certain things to me, certain comments, I didn't respond in kind. But I then became a role model for other deaf people. I'm a teacher. I provide training. I get other deaf people on board. And when I do that, there are other people who are in that denial phase. And that's tough for me as a teacher. And I think part of that frustration that I have with them potentially is my own frustration at myself, my past self, coming up and revisiting. That's the poet John Lee Clark, communicating through an interpreter, using the touch-based language, protactile. Clark's story continues in a moment.

This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. Stick around. This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. We've been hearing a story about the writer John Lee Clark, a deaf-blind poet whose debut collection was nominated for a National Book Award this year. And he's recently published a collection of essays called Touch the Future. As the title suggests, Clark writes a lot about the sense of touch. He's an advocate for the language, protactile, which uses physical contact between the speakers.

Through a protactile interpreter, Clark spoke with our contributor, Andrew Leland last year. We'll continue with the interview now. I want to read another poem. And this one makes me laugh. every time I read it in part because as a journalist who is writing about deafblind communities, I feel like it's a little bit of a warning sign. It's from three squared synchains. It's one of the sincains. The reporter is in awe. The reporter is in awe of a deafblind man who cooks without burning himself.

Helen Keller is to blame. Can't I pick my nose without it being a miracle? I guess, you know, I laugh because I'm a reporter and I'm an awe. And yet I want to know how to be impressed with you, John, and your accomplishments. You're strangling me now. But I am. And I wonder, it raises, I think, a tricky and interesting and important question about disability, which is that on the one hand, like, you're doing incredible things. like you've written an incredible book of poetry.

On the other hand, there is such a risk of becoming that reporter who's in awe. And I wonder, like, how do we avoid that infantilizing, you know, praising you for picking your nose while still recognizing the wonderful stuff you're doing? Well, I don't know what to advise. but I think for me I'm a little lucky. You know, one concept maybe, one place of struggle is when lots of people with disabilities are crying, screaming for access, you know, I want access, I want access, we have these rights, you know,

we want our rights to be protected. I think that attitude might lend itself to certain other attitudes in response. And for me, I think I think I take. take things a little bit different. My take is a little bit different. I think it can actually be a boon. It can be a benefit when we have less access to the mainstream because it means they have less access to us. And what that means is we then have at our disposal this beautiful community, I mean, a community that isn't being thrust upon by outside forces. We have, I mean, a whole wealth of things that we can then develop and that we can, and we don't have to be stuck with

just one world. Within, we can journey into and create all kinds of different approaches and things because we don't have anyone else sort of breathing down our necks, expecting certain things, wanting certain things. Let me read another one of these Sinkanes just to add it to the conversation. Okay, go for it. And it's, and it's, and if I'm, I think it's a riff on Emily Dickinson. Am I a nobody too? Yes, you got it. I got it. I had some help from my wife, but am I a nobody too? I am sorry to disappoint, but I am. Yet nobody would let me be one, not even when I catch a bus stinking of nobody's.

Well, so, yeah. Maybe if some readers by my book, they'll know I'm a deaf-blind poet at time of purchase. They're in awe just holding it in their hands. They haven't read a single poem, maybe. So they're just in awe, even finding out the piece of information of me being deaf-blind. Wait, a deaf-blind person got a book of poetry published, published book of poetry? No way. The awe is there already.

So I hope in those instances, in those cases, I hope that when they open that first cover, I hope that what strikes them first and foremost is a sense of disappointment. I want them to be disappointed. And then I want them to go, oh, this isn't what I thought. This isn't what I. And then I hope that they return to the text for the right reasons, Andrew. I have to tell you, I'm sorry that I am selfish. I'm a selfish person.

I hope that people are in awe because the poetry they read strikes awe in them. that they are amazed by the quality of the poems that's in the book. That's my hope, my selfish hope, Andrew. So when we were setting up this interview, you made a joke over email about this tendency where people don't believe that the interpreter is really interpreting what the deaf-blind person is saying. And when I heard that, I felt really sad. But I also thought, really, you know, that's not going to be something that we're going to deal with today. And then I was talking to a friend who's very bright

and really should know better, and he kind of was like, how do you know that that's what, you know, that protract tells really a language, and it's not just the interpreter, you know, speaking for John or for the deaf line person. And my heart broke a little bit, and I just, what do you say to that person? to the people out there who may be well-meaning,

but still find themselves in awe and even in disbelief of the idea that protactile has the richness that it does. I'm not too worried about saying anything, to be honest. Because I do trust. I have faith in the listeners, Andrew. I trust that what they're imagining is wrong. I have faith that they're imagining is wrong. that they are going to misconstrue some things and misconceive some things, but in that

misconstrual and in some of those misconceptions, they're going to happen upon some things that are true. Many oppressed communities are really concerned with image and with representation, and they stress out about it, they worry, they take pulse and, you know, they, they, they, you know, say, oh, are they recognizing us? And are they really sort of seeing us for who we are, and how are we being portrayed? And there's a lot of worry on the community's part about PR.

I don't have a real connection with that feeling because those of us in the deafblind community, the experiences that we've had have been so, so rich that honestly, I don't really care. And I don't mean that in a rude way. I don't mean like, I don't care about these people. No, no, no, no, no. You know, I have friends that are hearing and sighted and I adore them.

I love them. That's not my point. My point is that I'm not going to deliberate over how to convince other people to approve of me and accept the language I'm using, and I'm not going to be scanning, you know, the horizon for naysayers. I'm going to be, like, when this book is published, hey, if you're into it, you know, And that's something that you're eager to delve into, do it. If it doesn't float your boat, move on. That's, you know, with a shrug.

I'm too busy to worry much about what that response is in terms of what other people are thinking. The poet John Lee Clark talking with contributor Andrew Leland. Clark's essay collection, Touch the Future, came out in October. And his debut book of poetry, How to Communicate, was a finalist this year for the National Book Award in Poetry. We heard the voice of Helene Anderson, who translated between spoken English and protactile. I'm David Remnick, and I join everybody at the New Yorker Radio Hour

in wishing you a great holiday and a happy new year. See you next time. The New Yorker Radio Hour is a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker. Our theme music was composed and performed by Merrill Garbus of Tuneiards with additional music by Louis Mitchell. This episode was produced by Max Bolton, Adam Howard, Kalalia, David Krasnow, Jeffrey Masters, and Louis Mitchell, with guidance from Emily Boutin, and assistance from Michael May, David Gable, and Alejandra Dekke.

The New Yorker Radio Hour is supported in part by the Cherina Endowment Fund.