Description
W.W. Norton & Company, hardcover
Publication date: December 6, 2022
A stunning debut that “brims with the talent and generosity of a living classic” (Ilya Kaminsky), from an award-winning DeafBlind poet.
Formally restless and relentlessly instructive, How to Communicate is a dynamic journey through language, community, and the unfolding of an identity. Poet John Lee Clark pivots from inventive forms inspired by the braille slate to sensuous prose poems to pathbreaking translations from ASL and Protactile, a language built on touch. Amid the astonishing task of constructing a new canon, Clark reveals a radically commonplace life—the vagaries of family, grief, and small delights: visiting a museum, knitting, and, once, encountering a ghost in a gas station. A rare work of transformation and necessary discovery, How to Communicate offers a “steadily revelatory gift” (Carl Phillips).
From “To Ask”:
The ASL words Braille and Forgive are almost the same so it was like I was saying
forgive me while brushing my fingers over the dots
Forgive me forgive me forgive me
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