 Poetry, huh. Poetry is like, I remember a quote I read somewhere a while ago. It said, poetry is like trying to catch the wind. Once it's caught, it's no longer the wind. I don't know if that's a good definition, but it seems like a tough thing to explain. It's kind of a way of expressing oneself, but the way that expression is put forth is very condensed. A novel is a very long drawn-out way of showing a story, but poetry is a shorter form. But again, I would say it's like trying to capture the wind, and once it's caught, it's no longer the wind. It's like, I don't know if it's, you would describe it like a blind person trying to describe color to them, or an artist. How do they describe their own work? I've written poetry, but can I describe my own work? It's maybe from deep within personal thoughts and expression. I write for myself first, and then I let other people read and share in it. Sharing, that's a good word. Maybe that's the key of everything. Sharing your thoughts and feelings in a different way so that it impacts your reader. When I had my very first deaf teacher named Bob Panera, Robert F. Panera, he was really the first deaf teacher I had in school. I was 16 years old. I had read poetry. No, now wait. I remember I started reading poetry. I had a large anthology from the library, American Literature, and I did read some poetry in that book, and I liked it. That was when I was 13 or 14 years old. No one really showed me or taught me or showed me how to sign it. I just read it and enjoyed it for the words themselves. It wasn't until I had Bob as a teacher, and he joined the faculty. He was fresh out of Gallaudet himself, brand new teacher. We were his first students, and I was so eager and enjoyed his classes. He taught us poetry and acting, so maybe, does that answer your question? Oh, yes, from family. Well, my father was an actor, and he was very poetic himself. He wrote poetry. I didn't read it because my mother had destroyed all his work, his poetic work, when they separated. I was about one and a half or two years old. She got very angry and destroyed all the poetry he had written for her when they were courting. I was so upset when I heard that it happened, but when I heard my father wrote poetry, I had noticed that he was very poetic in his expression. When he signed, he was such a good signer, and let me show you an example of something he did. He might talk about walking through the forest, and he looks over at a brook that's tumbling over rocks, and the trees are overhead and a beautiful blue sky and butterflies. It was like that, or another example. He might talk about the water tumbling over the larger rocks, and almost like it was flowing over a man's shoulders, or he'd talk about the water flowing over smaller rocks, and it looked like a woman washing her hands. No, not in regular conversation, but when he told a story, it was a very poetic way. He didn't pay attention to rules or grammar. It was the movement of his hands and his facial expression. Everything was there. It was very poetic in and of itself. Yes, I think he did have some influence on me. I really give him credit for that. I really enjoyed watching the movement of his hands and the shapes of his signs. Oh, yes, I believe that was an influence, and also that Bob Panera really taught me the essence of the English. It would become much more meaningful when I learned about it. I would watch him acting out a poem like Cyrano de Bergerac, his famous long speech about his nose or hamlet. He would sign Macbeth and the soliloquies. Let me think. He did Shelley, Wadsworth, so many different poets. Whitman, so many. I really appreciated that. I learned how to sign. I copied how he signed all these poems, and I learned the poetry this way. I was about 13 years old when I performed a poem by a test pilot called John Collins. He had written a poem before he died. He was a test pilot for a bomber, and after he was killed in a crash, his wife found this poem that he had written portending his own death. It was very powerful. It was if he had predicted that this was the way that he would actually die. He talked about how he died. I signed all these written words. I signed it in front of about 400 deaf people at the deaf club one night. My father was supposed to be the headliner, but he suddenly became ill, and I had to replace him that night. So I memorized this very long poem, and I signed it in front of the audience. I just love poetry so much. I had this craving for poetry and performance from a very young age. I had gotten that somewhat from my father. He had that poetic sort of expression in thought and writing and signing that he passed on to me. He was a big influence on me. But I have to say that Bob Panera was the one who ingrained the English influence in me. So I had the sign influence from my dad and the English from Bob Panera, and I feel that it is the combination of those two that has made me who I am. The first two years, oh yes, yes. No, not really. It was all together. It was while I was growing up. The first time that I actually wrote a poem, I was in college. Oh yes, this is interesting. When Bob Panera joined the faculty in my school, about three months later, they called an assembly to go into the chapel. Everybody was sitting there in the audience. We really did not know what it was for, and they made an announcement that Bob had won this award and a medal. It was an award for creative poetry, and it was from Gallaudet who had established this award. They had not necessarily publicized who the recipient was. They wanted to wait. They sent it to the school, and they wanted to present it and make a big announcement in front of our whole assembly that he had received this. Bob was shocked. He came up on stage and he received this medal. Later, I went to his classroom because I really wanted to see the medal, and he showed it to me. I looked up at him, and I looked at the medal, and there was an inscription on the back, and it said creative poetry and some other things on the inscription. And I asked him, do you think I can write poetry as well? And he said, why not? Go ahead and try it. Go ahead and write. I said, but the words, the sounds, how am I going to be able to do that? Well, he said, get yourself a rhyming dictionary, and that is how I became more and more involved in the whole process, because I would read how the words would rhyme and I would figure out how to put them in a poetic format, and that's when I started writing. I didn't really get more into it until I went into college. That is when it really took off, and then I wrote some poems that were printed in the American College Poetic Competition volume, and I got in once, twice, three times. I kept getting more published, and I have poems that I wrote back then in my biography, Sounds of Silence. In my senior year, Bob, who was a Gallaudet, announced the winner, and it was myself. I received the same medal that he had received earlier. It made me really proud, and it meant really a lot to me. Oh, yes, storytelling is different. It's different. I'm not sure I understand your question. What's the difference between ASL storytelling and ASL poetry? They're similar, yet different, of course, because when you're speaking English and telling a story in English, or written poetry is in English, that's similar. But it's different than expressing it in ASL or ASL poetry. It's kind of a long way. It's a novel, I would call a narrative, and a poetry is a more condensed version. Maybe I don't understand your question. Oh, yes, when that started the National Theater of the Deaf, yes, Dorothy Miles was involved in its inception. And she played a lot with poetic signing. We worked together a lot. We collaborated together. The two of us would invent signs for the plays that we were staging for the National Theater of the Deaf. Let me see. What was the title of the big one we did under Milkwood? We took Under Milkwood by Dylan Thomas, and we changed it to Songs of Milkwood. We would make this beautiful language by Dylan Thomas. It was very flowery and quite lovely, and we were translating it into sign language and trying to make it equivalent. And then we presented it as a play. It was very successful. Let me see. Did you ask me about, yes, ABC stories when they began? Well, Dorothy gave a workshop about ABC stories at the time, and that started a trend that continues till this day. Nobody had really played with that before. So I'm here to tell you that Dorothy Miles is the one who started that. No, no, no, no. It had not been around before the 60s. I mean, we founded the National Theater for the Deaf in 66, 67, 68. Yes, right around there is when Dorothy joined. So I'd say 68, 69 is when these ABC stories kind of hit town. And from that time forward, they really took off. But not before that. I mean, if someone wants to prove me wrong, that's fine. But to my knowledge, she was the one that started that fad. No, it began in the 60s and continued after that point. Well, really, the two of us were very good friends. We were friends before we'd even met, actually, because I'd been reading her poetry for a while before I met her in person. You know, it was in the Gallaudet Lit review. I was so compelled with the way she wrote and she had seen my work in theater and she had seen how I performed. We finally met in person. Then I said, come on, come join NTD. And she was thrilled to do so. She had always wanted to. She was quite excited and didn't join. It established a friendship that's lasted a long time between us. I asked her if you considered writing some poems with sign language in mind at the same time. She said, well, that would be an interesting thing to try. And that is what she did from then on. She would write poems, thinking of the signing she would use as she composed the poems. So I feel that maybe I had an influence on her for having her attempt that and she created quite a legacy of poetry after that. Because we were working together at that time and we had started with this Dylan Thomas project that I mentioned before under Milkwood. And so that process of looking at the language, the written language, and then translating that into sign, I think that she was inspired by that. And then as she started writing more and more, she kept sign language in mind constantly as she wrote the English. If you know what I mean, I think that had a great influence on her. Yes, I see parallels between Dot Miles and Sylvia Plath. They both had deep grief that they were expressing with their writing. Yes, so a lot of people thought that she committed suicide. I don't believe that. I think it was an accident. She fell from the second story. It was a small fall. Really, you don't try and kill yourself from jumping from the second or third story. You go up to the 12th or 13th. I don't know if she had forgotten to take her medicine that day. It was a very unbalanced time, but she loved to sit in the window sill and look out and sing to herself. She had a very small apartment there. And I feel like what happened is she fell on the rod iron fence and she was caught on one of the spikes of the rod iron fence and she bled to death. If someone had caught her, she'd landed on the ground. She might not have died from the second floor. That's not that far. I know a lot of people think so, but I don't believe that. She had a real zest for life. She got better and better with her work and she went back to England and she started taking her medicine. She found her own place and she worked a lot for the British, the Deaf Associations. She helped write a dictionary of sign language. She was called to present many workshops and she was very excited about her life. The Drama Club at Gallaudet invited her and gave her an award and she was happy about that. Oh, yes, I was puzzled, but I remember buying the book and looking through it and not really understanding it, but Stokey had not really started that research. It was really Ursula Bellucci who began it. That's where the true research began. It was with Bellucci. So, when I looked it up by Stokey, I looked at the ideas in it and I thought, fine, that makes sense to me, but it was not until I became friends with Dr. Bellucci signed with a U on the cheek like this that you know basically it was just a few years after NTD was founded. NTD was founded in 67 and Bellucci's research in the lab was around 70 or 73. That's when they coined this new name for sign language. They called it, we'd always called it our language, the sign language, but they called it ASL and that's when we started kind of discussing this and debating this and I thought that perhaps I was wrong and she proved me wrong and I started analyzing what I'd been thinking along as I was growing up. I'd just signed, but I'd always thought that English, you know, that's the world language everyone uses English. I'd grown up taught that English was the most important thing to learn and sign language was different. You only use it in your own world, your small group of people, that's for us, but in the greater world. To be successful, we needed to learn English and ASL was insignificant, but now I had proof right in front of me. I realized I had to accept fully at that point that it is true. ASL is a real in-depth language and so I started looking at my own sign language. I looked at videotapes I'd made all along. She and I were friends at the time and finally she admitted to me that she said you're right in a way but we can't keep ASL pure. English will influence it but it can still stand alone separate from English. Poetry and stories, it's very exciting for sure. Yes, I agree. Yes, definitely. Yes, I've gone through that myself, the change. At first I was very resistant of course but after a while I gradually did accept it and I realized that it was part of my essence truly. Yes, you know I had signed my whole life. ASL was fun. I love storytelling and ASL. My father of course was quite an accomplished storyteller and I picked up so many tips from him. You know we would sit around in school, we'd tell stories and sign. Do you know I did not really see it as a language itself? You know we're just a small minority group. We used it amongst ourselves but our true struggle was to improve our English to succeed in the world, in the hearing world. That was always the goal. People looked down on ASL. It was a small little language used in our circle. Now we know it's on the par with English and it's important it's got the respect it deserves but that was not true in my time. There was a lot of difficulty up until now. It was like the birth of ASL was established. The linguistic world was ready so you have to understand where I'm coming from and this was an issue with MJ Bienvenu and I. We used to have these great tests of wills. You know she's from a different generation than I. She grew up already feeling that it was language in its own right. We're good friends now and those arguments are behind us. I worked at the National Theatre for the Deaf and it was a particular onus of mine to do the translation. A big responsibility for me in about 1967 because there were no role models. There were no precursors for this sort of work that I was doing. We had to do some approximation of signing to the English. Finally people were saying you know you have to be able to try and force the things into a better sort of rendition of sign language. When I worked with Dot Miles it was a whole different sort of process. She said no you don't have to force it. We have to keep the poetry. We have to keep the beauty of it. Dot Miles you know had this beautiful way of signing English. She could relate the signs to the English and English to the signs. Really amazing way. It was very interesting how she made those sort of connections. Some people thought you should keep it truly separate. I was open enough to the process to try to take this plunge and make some sort of amalgamation of it. You know it's kind of a sinker swim thing but I grew an understanding more as the process continued. You know I realized this was not anything like ABC stories. We were doing something totally different here. I enjoyed watching other people do ABC stories. They're either fun or they were not my thing really. You follow the ABC structure but there's no depth of feeling. There are no heavy ideas. It's kind of cute. Oh yes but not ABC stories. Oh yes I'm thinking was that the word amalgamation. Yes it is very different. I agree. The word and what it's truly expressing with ABC. You know there's no words there at all with words and their meaning. Yes I understand. Yeah the story behind it true movement. Is that what you mean? Body language and expression. Body expression of course you use your body language as well. Yes you do see that but I'm not sure if I understand your question. Yes large movement. Yes it's very different when you're performing something. You stay in one place. Patrick Grable would do that. Dorothy Miles would move around. This other person didn't move very much either. Only use their arms mostly for expression. Grammar. No I didn't have a problem reading or understanding their poetry. I understood it right away. I didn't have a problem with that. Maybe the English as well. I would read some parts. I would understand some I didn't. I'd have to read it a second and third time. It was never perfect. Yes I'm as at home with performing an ASL. I mean I grew up with it. I'd immediately think an ASL and perform that way. Maybe a new sign or a hearing person might have trouble following it. Yes I have one I can show you. I have one for you. It's called death. Death. What is it? Closed eyes. Hands across one's chest. In a sense of peace. Lowered into the ground and buried. Peace at last. But wait. Perhaps the soul will ascend to heaven and meet the creator. Or perhaps descend to the depths and meet what is below. We just don't know. We wait and we hope. Okay if you noticed in that poem facial expression plays a major part of the meaning. The face speaks volumes. The hands are just movements of the signs of course but the facial grammar is crucial. So death the sign for death and the sign for what as in what is that on my face you can see that and then closed eyes then buried peaceful whatever. Then wait a minute maybe we will ascend maybe the dead person will go up to heaven or perhaps the other way but we don't know. We don't know what the future holds and while we wait we hope it's all that simple. No no I I don't think first in words I think in signs first. A friend of mine who is hearing said what kind of words would you give to interpret for an audience and I said maybe you should speak the words for me first to the audience. Death what lowered into the grave or buried you can say it either way. You know word word word like a gloss rendition. So at the same time that I sign you should say it then or should you say it first and then I sign afterwards. Maybe people hear it and understand the concept and then they watch the signs afterward and maybe then they'll be able to catch it. I performed that for a small group for an audience but if I read it for deaf people it's different of course ASL students people who are studying and analyzing it you know if they use a videotape then I can give an explanation to begin with and they can understand it afterwards without a vocal rendition. No I gave my friend the words now but I wrote a song actually that I'll be singing tonight it's a song for the eye not for the ear I can show it to you now if you like do you want it without words just the signs. Welcome to my theater in the sky comedy flying flying against the wind let us fly together against the wind fly in the rain the lightning the storms fly high over the earth fly to the sun fly to the moon fly through the white clouds in the sky and fly through the darkness it is a theater in the sky the story of my life yes my life my life on wings full of surprises and hopes and enjoyments frustrations and fears happiness and laughter that is the theater in the sky the clouds are like the curtains that opened wide for me up in the sky the stars are the footlights and stage lights and the other passengers are the audiences up in the sky the angels are our audience too the plane itself is the stage other passengers are like actors the same as I and the pilot is like a stage director the flight attendants are the ushers that is our theater in the sky the story of my life yes my life on wings I live now and look back on all the times that I have gone through and tonight I will present them to you so strap on your seatbelts get ready to enjoy the ride hey there are no English words in that just all signs for the eye and it's in sort of a song format it's musical in a way it's not a poem now it's different I had never tried this before the first time I really attempted it I had tried to write actually sort of those words in a song music for the eye yes oh okay yes I feel it very strongly I think I've always been musically inclined ever since I was little I guess some people are just born that way some are not even hearing people sometimes do not have a sensitivity for music I was but I was born deaf yes I like that I do have another song it's the flying song let me see oh it is the names of countries and states city signs here in America I just put them all together in a sign song kind of thing let me think fly to Europe fly to Africa fly to Asia fly to Hong Kong fly fly fly all over the world fly to Sweden to Moscow to London fly fly fly Philadelphia Chicago fly fly London Hong Kong all over the world fly Philadelphia Chicago Rochester Austin fly fly Baltimore Detroit fly fly all over the world Seattle Phoenix South Carolina North Carolina Maryland Virginia fly fly fly all over the world and finally New York New Orleans and fly home to La La Land so if you notice there's a visual rhyme going on especially with like Phoenix and Seattle Baltimore Detroit the movement up and down or side to side in English there was corresponding to rhymes but we have to do visual movements that would be a parallel to that structure it's a sign song I've never seen anybody else do that before probably from the song at Gallaudet you know that song I think that really influenced me maybe the rhythm of the song it was in poetry it's different but it influenced my performance about the sky and flying and also I developed something called visual vernacular vv it's a form of mime it's not really a full mime structure I change it into a smaller frame size and somewhat like a film frame it's as if you're editing between different shots close up far away I refer to this as visual vernacular for lack of a better term I think I decided when I was studying mime under Marcel Marceau that I would tweak his method somewhat and I created this new sign form it is very much part of our language anyway it is a deaf way of signing it is really embedded within it and I've been teaching this particular technique for many years some of it's really successful and it seems to have really taken off and spread around the country but I decided I do have a few stories I presented in vv I will be showing some tonight at the performance I can show you a little bit here just to give you an idea of what it looks like let me show you one it's an older one I've done it several years ago I'm not sure if you've seen this one before you have it's a hunter and his dog have you seen that one now I don't want to repeat myself to you if you've already seen it you know if you've seen it people don't want to see it again okay it uses cuts and edits zoom in close-ups I develop visual vernacular and kind of overlaid it with poetry and song style of expression visually I put it all together and mixed it up and then offered it to the audience there's the hunter he loads his gun gives a whistle come on boy and here is his dog the hunter pats him on the head the dog reacts they walk through the woods all of a sudden the dog stops he indicates that there's a bird up ahead the dog points the hunter blows his whistle the bird takes wing the hunter takes aim and kills it the bird flops down to the ground and the dog runs over to retrieve it brings it back to the hunter who pats his head takes the bird from the dog and they continue on their way the camera freezes and the dog winks at the audience you can see it's like watching a whole movie it's a film technique using editing close and far shots different characters going back and forth in the frame to the characters within the story there are three characters in that movie to show you can sit in one place and incorporate all of those in one frame just like watching a movie on tv it's right in front of you that's the basic idea of visual vernaculars so does mime and is part of my asl style William Stokey saw me doing this and called me into his office one time after he saw me and i showed him several examples of my visual vernacular and he loved it he said it's interesting to see the narrative in asl and it's very cinematic well i've never thought about that before and stokey wrote bernard bragg has done this wonderful cinematic technique when i tell the story when i'm describing things it is very condensed it's in a picture format it's very simple and it's actually incorporated into natural asl signing and so now there is a professor at gallaudet named dirksen something i don't know his last name and he's used the terminology cinematic technique to apply to my work i said now you got to give me credit for this i constructed it and he said oh of course i will i will give you credit there are a lot of studies being done on asl in terms of cinematic and film techniques that are used within it i taught vv for several years and you know i was at ntd for more than 30 years i think that i've influenced many young people who came to our workshops i think a lot of them have incorporated into their work oh yes peter cooked learned a lot from my workshop way back in the day i think he has had a great deal of influence on him i watch what he does now and think wow if a little bit of what i taught him was implanted within him and he's grown to that extent that's wonderful it's beautiful his work is wonderful i can tell you i performed at gallaudet just last week and after that several people came up to me and made various comments i just loved what they said about my work i said really you see it that way they said yes it's like 3d i said what do you mean they said they felt like they were in the story immersed in the story i said oh it's very three-dimensional and it wasn't word for word they said they felt like they were in the picture and it zoomed in and then suddenly they were in the picture they said it felt like it happened to them they said it was very from the heart and they felt that i was very immersed in my story it wasn't like i was telling an objective story they said they just were entranced was how i told the story and you know how i begin i spell my name i don't spell it in the conventional way i spell it from right to left from their perspective so they can read it and feel immediately drawn in they don't have to reverse anything i want them to see things through my eyes so that they can feel the way that i feel and so that it really is an all-inclusive experience i think that's the mark of a good storyteller yes a little girl came up to me after a performance and she said i looked at you and you look like a movie star i said really she said yes do you know what i mean i had no idea yes i think so yes little girls and boys this this is their first language and i think maybe long ago signing or gesture was the first language that people used before there was written language people drew things on walls they drew stories so through art and through gestures how they communicated i believe pictures were the first language it's almost like there were all these movies people were presenting like there was a saber-tooth tiger over there and a person shows that mimes having a spear go through the tiger and killing it and then maybe biting off a hunk and eating it and then winking well maybe not the winking part if you were saying something from the top of a tree describing that if you're climbing up a tree and you see the tiger climb at the bottom of the tree and he wants to come up and you're looking down at your hand you're showing the tiger is below you see you're showing what you're seeing that's my point of view and you show the action of what the tiger is doing with your other hand you don't have to watch a movie to see that you i'm not sure how they would do that a long time ago i would say in storytelling that influenced me and maybe influenced movies but that's a good question it is something to ponder trying to imagine what cave men cave people thought and how they communicated amongst themselves if they were on the top of the tree and they're trying to say that or tell someone later from that angle looking down how would they show that or someone looking up what do you see when you're looking up in the sky maybe there's a bird and how would they gesture a bird flying if they did not have a vocal language or a specific sign language or a fish in the water they would show this fish and they are trying to recount how they speared this fish brought it out of the water and then they ate it how would they do that oh yes the two of us have been very good friends for a long time yes malz and i he's very clever very creative the way he plays with his signs and his translations his english words into sign very fun not much not really uh i was uh really in trance with jabberwocky because the words don't make any sense it was such a challenge for him to translate it and expand upon it and imagine what the language might mean he was great at that that was not the only thing that i know of he did along those lines he does a lot of good plain with sign a lot of joking sign but i've not seen anything else he's done like that he mostly writes a lot of songs he does a lot of written english mostly his work is written english for the year for the musicality of it yes it's interesting this ear music kind of thing but he does not hear of course he lost his hearing when he was a young boy and could hear before he became deaf so i think he still has a strong love and connection with spoken english and the way the sounds work he wrote plays and he wrote songs really it's wonderful how talented he is yeah he's champ his son i saw him just a week ago and he said that he was doing fine they'd moved to uh northern virginia he was doing well his health had continued to decline but his mind was still sharp and uh that he was he's been doing fine me oh the two of us worked together at the national theater for the deaf we were roommates and toured together we shared a lot of things with each other a lot of ideas poetry ideas for that and then lines from the play that we were performing we'd talk about it we had a good time we were very good friends yes in general that's true really i've seen a lot of content i see really two different camps of people it seems to me there are people who are from deaf family and people who are from hearing families and their work is very different in some way the three of us patrick grabel is not exactly from a deaf family he has deaf siblings he grew up not in a deaf family in a deaf world but his mother is a very accomplished signer and lma lens is from a very strong culturally deaf family i'm from a deaf family also and who else were we talking about no no not panera i mean asl poetry not panera didn't do that he wasn't involved in that group there were three of us really debbie renny peter cook and valley uh different groups and you can see a difference i would really say from the first creating asl poetry well let me see valley does that is that correct was he maybe the first person doing that who else was that ella really i believe i was the first one because i taught and i was teaching it you know there were classes and we were doing experiments with different things signing and illa was one of my students and i believe that clayton valley took one of my classes one time so i feel like i had a little bit of influence that i have thrown out there but then they took these ideas and it is what they did with the asl afterwards that it's important they tried different techniques and ways of presenting it and i think maybe that was the beginning of it but i think valley really started playing with it it was not until he became part of let's see there was a linguist what was her name celeste or something a linguistic galadat it was somebody who really pushed him to work very deeply you know use dictionaries and get more into it and look at the linguistics of it and do the studies and analysis i feel that really challenged valley to go into a whole other realm and he became better known in the deaf community after that i think his reputation grew even amongst hearing people at that time uh you know debbie maybe let's see she influenced patrick grabo i believe but i think also illa got influenced from these people as well let me see illa was before because of me and there's a gentleman named joe castranovo illa and joe had worked with me before mostly i'd worked with joe i was involved with teaching him sign and poetry and playing with signs and working with that whole translation process i sort of began that with him he became very fascinated with it and then took off went to town coming up with a whole myriad of creative endeavors with it and that grew within that group and that he became a real asl poet then so did illa patrick grabo was in that group so i look at these two parallel groups one from hearing families one from deaf and then it seemed to stop there and there's not been a renaissance like that since and my question is why where is everybody what is happening is it because there's so many videotapes out you know you can sell videotapes and they're all over the market i'm forgetting the name of the group there's a video company in dc that produces videos of work that i've seen but it seems as if everything has come to a grinding halt and my question is why i think schools are not really encouraging children to watch these tapes or encouraging the children to experiment i mean i don't really know how to describe that or explain why it's happening i don't know why it stopped yeah sella for one i don't remember the title exactly but it was really about oppression people feeling that english was the be all and end all and that they were all looking down on asl i am remembering you know is a very powerful thing it came from a place of anger within her but it was situational it is about what's going on here in america how everyone tries to impress upon people that english is the language to learn and the asl is somehow subhuman or less elevated you see that expressed in her poetry she does a poem where they're unearthing this treasure which is asl and that every time they try to show it the dirt is thrown back into the faces of those who are trying to show that asl is equal and beautiful it's very powerful and angry i wonder if that sort of poetry you know if it comes from that place of anger it comes from a place of oppression i believe that's fine that's part of it you could call that political poetry i suppose i remember again a la in her time she was speaking about her view and what she was thinking i remember her talking about content and feeling the content was not necessarily as important as showing the beauty in something you have to have a powerful message you have to have a powerful point sometimes humor is good too you know patrick grable the way he did that song about the piano there's humor in that valley describes his memories looking back in the bright windy morning with the window opening memories humor anger oppression there's a variety of themes that you can find but it's not limited it doesn't have to stop there i don't know where it's going but there are a lot of other things to explore within it yes probably of course background has a lot to do with her work and who people are determines what sort of poetry they produce that oppression is enough that people to express themselves and maybe people perhaps are not oppressed enough to create more poetry now maybe that is why there's a lack of it but sure about that well stronger in asl than in english so to explain that i feel can you express that if you're in asl if you're stronger in english that's your first language i'm not sure i would say that no yes i can say that marcel marceau taught me how to breathe on stage because of course i could not hear myself and he said people all the way in the back can hear you breathe that was news to me i had no idea said breathing is very important in the performance aspect of mime like if you find a dying bird and you hold it in your hand people can hear you breathe so if you're a panting while you are performing it doesn't really fit with the subject of what you are doing as the bird is dying you need to connect to that with your breath slowly the bird dies did you hear me breathing could you hear it the exhalation i was doing the same time the bird expired the bird is breathing slower and slower were you able to hear that that's how marceau explained it to me that that's what people need to hear and i know that breathing is very important in any kind of acting breathing in performing asl poetry i think about my breathing also or reading or improvisation breathing is every related to music breathing is most important i was taught that about breathing