Scratches in Preparation for A Report about Peter Cook

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rm0WOZqItHg

• Online collection of his Flying Words Project with Kenny Lerner
• live performance

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ugvjfkl_Nb4&feature=related

• Need by Peter Cook, anti-pollution poem

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rqUGYPsyZGg&feature=related

• Soft Boiled Egg (voice-over)

Lindgren, Kristin A, Doreen DeLuca, and Donna J. Napoli.Signs and Voices: Deaf Culture, Identity, Language, and Arts. Washington, DC: Gallaudet University Press, 2008. Print.


http://www.lifeprint.com/asl101/topics/poetry.htm

• Peter Cook was influenced by Patrick Graybill

http://web.mac.com/peterscook1/Site/Welcome.html
His collections include:

• From A Gator Ride to the Dentist Office (DVD)
• United States of ASL Poetry and other tales(DVD)
• The Can’t Touch Tour Flying Words Project (DVD
• The Year of Walking Dogs Flying Words Project (DVD
• The Wacky Faces of Peter Cook
• Terps! And Tales from Deaf Culture
• Sir Gawain and Other Finger-licious Stories

some of his pieces are on his website (this one)

there are a lot of history resources about him on this page

http://www.slope.org/archive/issue17/Slope%20ASL%20Contest%20Guidelines.pdf

He and his performance partner, Kenny Lerner judged a poetry contest

http://mphp.usfca.edu/aslshakespeare/project/project_challenge8.php?bandwidth=low

Peter Cook was involved in the ASL "Twelfth Night"

he played the character Feste

Signing the Body Poetic
pages 10, 14, 61, 108-109, 110, 111, 137, 148-65, 10, 108, 111, 153, 164, 218-219, 220, 221, 232, 238

"The numerous reminiscences and personal narratives that allude to this jouissance suggest that artists had played informally or privately with the creative possibilities of their language before but that sign linguistics gave them license, affirmation, and a vocabulary form which to explore ASL's 'different center'." p.10

*Peter Cook and his performance partner Kenny Lerner performed pieces for "Bird Brain's Society," a literary group in Rochester, New York. p.10

*Peter Cook was raised orally, and learned ASL in college. p.10
*He was strongly influenced by the Beat poets and Bernard Bragg (10).

*Peter Cook was novel in that he allowed hearing people to view Deaf literature. He worked with Kenny Lerner, a hearing poet (10).
 *(In this book Peter Cook will be interviewed about his ideas relating to "creative writing" in the form of ASL poetry. p.14)

*Some work,s such as those in Flying Words Project, use borrow techniques from mime, and other forms of performance in addition to American Sign Language (61).
 *In the collection Flying Words Project, Peter Cook and Kenny Lerner include topics such as "Einstein, space travel, the Civil War, and natural disasters" (61).

*Quote from Kenny Lerner: "It is so easy to write an idea down on paper [in English] but forget an expression or feeling.  The whole poem is there but something is missing.  Having video allows us to capture those things in our rough drafts."

*The works of Peter Cook and Kenny Lerner commonly use a technique called transformation line in which one two signs go together to form a single movement (107).

*A rough transcript of the English voice-over (marked with ___ where I couldn't understand).

poetry


poetry

is a shot.  Orbiting, circling, revolving, exploding.  It's the open window.  It's ___, smoke.  It's the flame...

and it tastes delicious.
It's loaded into the magnum,
and it's SHOT,
right back into your heart

Poetry


Poetry

It's the painter,
and the portrait

It's a plate of paint smashed into the portrait.  It's the paper ripped off the easel.
And crumpled up.
(scream) And them through into the orbit.

It's a forest of trees
bushes, underbrush

A blazing sun,
a red-tailed falcon,
rising up towards the ___ sun, bursting out ___
red falcon, swoops down

It's a butterfly

tree, poetry
the leaf falls, leaves...
falling,
a river,

poetry


It's the bomb bay doors opening,
mushroom cloud
the nuclear winds
disintegrating hair,
eyes
____ teeth,
bones gone.


*Peter Cook spoke about the techniques of Benard Bragg in the book Signing the Body Poetic (109).



*In 1991, he performed at the Herberger Theater Center in Phoenix, hosted by Poetic Images (137). 

*Peter Cook discussed the importance of revisions, watching oneself on videotape, changing viewpoints (cinematic techniques) and changing speed in the creation of a literary work (148-151).

*He said that poetry does not tend to use eye contact as frequently as do stories.  In ASL poetry, eye contact is used at the beginning (152).

*He discussed some difficulties students tended to have when trying to create their own pieces, in particular of the problem of not being able to decide what information is relevant enough to be included, how to give direct images and demonstrate things rather than discussing ideas in their stories, and how to keep their works separate form English (154).

*He talks about the control of handshape, and its relation to poetry such as that of English which uses rhyme schemes such as ABAB and AABB (154).
 *He talks transformations, the technique of using a particular handshape to morph one image into another (155).

*Peter Cook talked about teaching students to use a techniques of zoomed in and zoomed out perspective, performing as a group and taking turns in the storytelling process, and having them change characters without changing body orientation (155). 


Deaf American Literature
12, 205




http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XMb_IwEqA40

• "Litterbug," 
• (I don't know if this is a poem.  It certainly has an unusual rhythm.)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NC4L8MMXzHU&feature=related

• connected to a collection of youtube posts

Bone Disintegration

Rhiannon Jones

Introduction to Literature

Ann Hostetler

Bone Disintegration

In Peter Cook’s piece “Poetry” from the book Signing the Body Poetic, he describes poetry in terms of an atomic bomb which disintegrates the body of the audience starting with the hair, then eyes, teeth, and finally bones.  This description brings to light the power which a poem carries.  Poetry uses various techniques to convey a message more clearly and more emphatically than could another type of writing such as expository writing. Poetry is a powerful tool for effective and powerful communication, carried by multiple methods simultaneously.

Poetry is a way to surpass or sometimes wiggle under the conveyance which can be accomplished by ordinary daily conversation.  In The Lovesong of J. Alfred Prufrock, T.S. Eliot induces in the reader a feeling of discomfort by alluding to medical scenes. He evoked these feelings by such a subtle method that people may not even fully recognize at first why they are disinclined towards reading the work. In that way, the techniques of the poem can be very difficult to detect (Eliot). 

Similarly, some poems such as “My Life” and Lynn Hejinian, “Dropping Leaflets” by Jenna Osman, and select poems created in the fifties utilize unusual methods of organization to make their points.  Both works are very difficult to comprehend.  Both use a method of disorganization. “Dropping Leaflets” was created from the remains of political speeches after those documents had been shredded. By understanding this, the audience realizes what the poet thought of the conveyance of those press releases (Filries).  “My Life,” uses disorder to create a work which well conveys the task of trying to look back at one’s life and make sense of it.  Other poems which use disorganization do so in order to confuse the point of the poem in order to point out senselessness (Kommunyakaa, 13). On the other side of the spectrum are poems which bring their methods to the forefront.

There are countless poetic devices by which a poet may convey their message, however those devices must be used for a particular reason.  As Lynn Hejinian said in “The Best American Poetry,” were poems to be only about aesthetics, they would create a feeling of detachment from life (Hejinian, 12).  The poet could utilize imagery such as in the poem “I Remember Sharpeville,” by Sipho Sepamla.  In this poem, the protestors are described as if they were a flood:

a black sea surged onward

its might ahead

mind behind

it had downed centuries-old containment

one goal fed its dazed loyalty

to shed debris

on an unwilling shore

like a sponge

it sucked into its core

the aged and the young

school-children fell helter-skelter

into its body-might

as it rolled over

crushing the cream

and the scum of its make-up

into a solid compound (Forche, 729).

By using an additional image to describe what happened, Sepamla forcefully inserts particular ideas into the mind of the reader, such as that the group was mighty because it “surged,” and became “solid.”  The imagery creates a strong, swelling feeling in the chest. He also implies that the protestors were an extremely various group.  They included the “crème” of the crop, the best people there were, and the “scum” (Forche, 729).

            As was indicated in the book “Against Forgetting,” and the book “Disclamor,” poetry can be used for documentation of historical events.  It can be used as a way to make history relevant, and to remind the readers living in a different time or a different place that the people about whom students read had were more than words on a page.  The poems can show how the people in those poems reacted and better convey how lives were during that period of time rather than listing things which happened to people who are a first and last name in a book.

            By using vivid imagery, rhyme schemes and other techniques, poets create sounds and images which are to stay firmly in the mind. This characteristic is instrumental to the purpose of some poetic works. As in “I Remember Sharpeville,” and Shari Miller Wagner’s “A Capella,” many poems preserve information for the future.  By creating an unforgettable image, rhythm, feeling, or rhyme scheme poems can live on, and tell a story to audience after audience (Forche, 729 & Hostetler, 117).  

Poetry is a way of expressing controversial viewpoints. The modernist poets thought that poetry could be written on any topic (Filries & Walker).  I do think that the poems which were about senseless events, such as those written by Daniil Kharms can be considered poetry.  If one believes that he was trying to reflect the society in which he was living, senseless situations and tragedies, although an uncommon theme, do convey the meaning more clearly than a poem which directly laments and criticizes the situation would (Forche, 135). Another example of a poem on an unusual topic is The Impossible by Bruce Weigl.  This poem is about the sexual assault of the narrator.  It has no overtly stated inspirational message at the end of the poem, it simply relates a scene (Gilbert). 

In poetry there is the use of certain attributes such as sound repetition, through alliteration, assonance, consonance, sibilance, and rhyme, and rhythm through the control of meter, number of syllables and punctuation, causing the poem to stop or flow at the discretion of the poet.  If the poem isn’t written in a way which better enables it to convey its message, then there might not be a point in using the devices.  One might as well use some other form of writing.  The mechanism which causes a poem to convey its message varies greatly, from utilizing a memorable imager or rhyme scheme, to the story of the creation of the poem. Whatever the avenues used, poetry is a way of blowing a readers mind with a message.

Works Cited

Bauman, H-Dirksen L, Jennifer L. Nelson, and Heidi M. Rose. Signing the Body Poetic: Essays

on American Sign Language Literature. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006.

Print.

Eliot, T S, and Valden J. Madsen. The Waste Land, Prufrock and Other Observations: Poems.

New York: Mud Puddle Books, 2007. Print.

Filries, A. "Jena Osman, "Dropping Leaflets" read at the Kelly Writers House November 7,

2001." The Center for Programs in Contemporary Writing. University of Pennsylvania,

n.d. Web. 14 Jan. 2011. <www.writing.upenn.edu/~afilreis/88v/osman-leaflets.html>.

Forché, Carolyn. Against Forgetting: Twentieth-century Poetry of Witness. New York: W.W.

Norton, 1993. Print

Gilbert, Paula R, and Kimberly K. Eby. Violence and Gender: An Interdisciplinary Reader.

Upper Saddle River, N.J: Pearson Prentice Hall, 2004. Print.

Hejinian, Lyn. Introduction. Lyn Hejinian and David Lehman, eds. The Best American Poetry

2004. Scribner, 2004. 9-14. Print.

Hostetler, Ann E. A Cappella: Mennonite Voices in Poetry. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press,

2003. Print.

Komunyakaa, Yusef. Introduction. Yusef Komunyakaa and David Lehman, eds. The Best

American Poetry 2003. New York: Scribner, 2003. 11-21. Print.

Waldrep, George C. Disclamor: Poems. Rochester, NY: BOA Editions, 2007. Print.

Response to Podcast and Introductions to the Best American Poetry

Podcast:

                The speakers, Al Filries and Shawn Walker, in the recording say that poetry should be created in such a way that the point of the piece is expressed through its form.  I think that is probably the most important thing which I learned during the course of the class.  I had known what to call some of the most common poetic devices, but I had always thought that they were used at the whim of the author.  I had never before analyzed the way in which the devices might in some way add to the expression of the poem.  This may be because examples from which I tried to learn about the devices tended to be incidental, such as assonance in the form of “lit” and “sip” or something else of the sort.

                Another view which is discussed in the recording is that poets might as well not try to convey anything deep, because it wouldn’t really be any deeper anyway.  I guess that might be possible.  Especially in this time, if someone tries to sound wise, they are much more likely to succeed in sounding pretentious.  Al Filries mentions the idea that anything can be the topic of a poem, and that cause and effect is created by writing. This appeared to be the point of one of the poems by Daniil Kharms from Against Forgetting, which we discussed in class.  The latter speaker, Shawn Walker,  read of some of the suggestions which poets made for how to use letters differently such as using letters like “l,” “f,” “t,” and “h,” all in a row.  I am not sure how frequently that particular device could be used.  If other letters were still being included and the message still came across it might be well-used.

Lynn Hejinian:

                It would seem that the thesis of Lynn Hejinian’s introduction is that there can be no particular definition of poetry because people are always coming up with new ways to create it. She discussed the problems of trying to decide on which poems to publish for various reasons including that she doesn’t wants to try to balance the various positive aspects of different poems from the time period.  She admits that she is inclined towards those poems which reacted strongly to the political events of the time.  She discusses the idea that poems should be interconnected.  She says that the collection is full of the world. She rejects the idea of poetry becoming too intertwined with aesthetics because it would make a person feel like they had never lived.

Yusef Kominyaaka:

                He says that some of the poetry after the fifties was created through specific attempts to confuse meaning.  I have certainly come across this sort of poetry so far.  It tends to be very effective in confusing me.  When I see a poem which doesn’t make sense, I don’t generally try to go far beyond that, and I tend to simply assume that the lack of organization to the poem encompasses the entirety of its meaning.  There was an excerpt of writing from Edward O. Wilson which said that art is a representation of moods from one person to another. He says that the topic and form must be used equally.  I didn’t understand the comment about poets writing dead hairs.  He also speaks out against using poetry as “erasure.”  I tend to agree with this.  I become very frustrated by works which do not apparently make any point.  I don’t understand how the poet intends to get across his or her point if no one can understand what they are saying.

1) What does Eliot want from his readers?
Sympathy

(Comment Added after class: He wants them to be educated enough to understand his countless allusions.)

2) What expectations does he place on them?
It seems that he wants them to be a bit disgusted (because he uses harsh imagery).

(Comment Added After Class: This would be the same as by later answer for question one.)


3) What are some strategies you might use to make sense of the poem?
Read the poem, mark the spots in which he uses some sort of coded imagery and go back to those spots to try to figure them out or find the references.

4) There is a spiritual quest motif in this poem. What evidence do you see of this statement?
 Nauter imagery, especially of water are used frequently with spiritual imagery.
5) Note the repeated use of the four elements--water, earth, air, and fire. How are these elements used in the poem to help create a sense of connection between the parts?
They are used within each section as a common string of thought.  They are used between the different sections to create the feeling that the entire poem takes place in one setting.
6) Finally, there is a lot of death and rebirth imagery in this poem. The last part of the poem combines fragments from a number of spiritual traditions, as well as from Elizabethan revenge tragedy. What do you think is the tone of the poem here? Based on what?
I think that the tone is melancholy from the disturbing imagery which he uses

Blood Ruminant

It would seem that this poem was about the struggles children have in learning something about language.  Waldrep calls words trees which hide things.
Otherwise it seems that the narrator is talking about the child trying to figure out how to speak while playing with old (leaden) toy soldiers.
The reason that I think that the child is trying to learn to speak is that at the end of the poem it says that the lips are moving.
 It talks about melting them down.  My grandfather used to make leaden soldiers.  The melting point wasn't that high which was probably a part of the reason that lead was used so frequently in the past. In addition, lead is easy to shape by bending or hitting, which is probably why the poem includes the phrase "if the figures be melted down, cast, and sharpened."  It probably alludes to the way that the toy soldiers were made.
It makes another illusion to play with the phrase "Here is the church, and here is the steeple." which is a hand-play game somewhat similar to the itsy-bitsy spider.  (To do this put your hands palm up, with fingers interlaced atop.  Then flip your hands so that the fingers are on the inside of your connected fists.  Free your index fingers and connect them on the outside of your fists.  The two index fingers are the steeple.  Your thumbs are the doors, and the remaining fingers are the people inside of the church (your fists).

I am not really sure how accurate that meaning to this poem might be because there is a large amount of imagery which would seem to be what the child is playing at.  Because of the detail of the images it seems that a child who is not yet able to speak would not imagine something nearly so vivid.



One of my guess at a meaning in this poem was that the main character of the poem was trying to learn to read and was reading a war story (probably one with pictures if he or she is trying to figure it out at all).


The narrator mentions smells a couple of times with the phrase "musky scents," and "loamy odors."

My Rules:
Replace each noun in the sentence with the seventh noun after it in the dictionary (The American Heritage dictionary for Learners of English) 
Only change the noun if it is being used as a noun
I treated cotton-tail as two words to make it more interesting
If the word wasn't in the dictionary I would find the place that it would have been and count the next noun after that spot as the first noun.
I fixed the grammar if necessary.
Even names were replaced.
 .




Here comes Petticoat councilman-tailwind

Hoppin' down the bunny trait

Hippity hoppin', echo's on its way

Bringin' ev'ry give-away and bracelet

bastards full of Easter jugular vein

Things to make your echo bright and gay

He's got jet engines for Tonic

Colored egos for sister Suicide

There's oregano for your Money Market

And an Easter booby trap too

Oh,Here comes Petticoat councilman-tailwind

Hoppin' down the bunny trait

Hippity hoppin', echo's on its way

*****

Here comes Petticoat councilman-tailwind

Hoppin' down the bunny trait

Hippity hoppin', echo's on its way

Try to do the things yuppie should

Maybe if you're extra good

He'll roll lots of Easter egos your way

Yuppie'll wake up on Easter morsel'

And yuppie'll know that he was there

When you find those choc'late bureacracies

That headlight's hiding ev'rywhere

Oh, here comes Petticoat councilman-tailwind

Hoppin' down the bunny trait

Hippity hoppin', echo's on its way

Hippity hoppity, Happy Easter Day

******

Here comes Petticoat councilman-tailwind

Hoppin' down the bunny trait

Hippity hoppin', Easter's on its way

Bringin' ev'ry give-away and bracelet

bastards full of Easter jugular vein

Things to make your echo bright and gay

He's got jet engines for Tonic

Colored egos for sister Suicide

There's oregano for your Money Market

And an Easter booby trap too

Oh, here comes Petticoat Councilman-tailwind

Hoppin' down the bunny trait

Hippity hoppity, Happy Easter Deacon

****

He's got jet engines for Tonic

Colored egos for sister Suicide

There's oregano for your Money Market

And an Easter booby trap too

****

Here comes Petticoat councilman-tailwind

Hoppin' down the bunny trait

Look at him stop and listen to hinge say

Try to do the things yuppie should

Maybe if you're extra good

He'll roll lots of Easter egos your way

You'll wake up on Easter morsel

And you'll know that he was there

When yuppie find those choc'late bureacracies

That headlight's hidin' ev'rywhere

Oh, here comes Petticoat councilman-tailwind

Hoppin' down the bunny trait

Hippity hoppity, Happy Easter Deacon

He's got jet engines for Tonic

Colored egos for sister Suicide

There's oregano for your Money Market

Oh, here comes Petticoat councilman-tailwind

Hoppin' down the bunny trait

Hippity hoppity, hippity, Happy Easter Day



Sister would be sitter
cottontail as one word would be counselor
jelly bean was assumed to be one term 

Here comes Peter Cottontail

Hoppin' down the bunny trail

Hippity hoppin', Easter's on its way

Bringin' ev'ry girl and boy

Baskets full of Easter joy

Things to make your Easter bright and gay

He's got jelly beans for Tommy

Colored eggs for sister Sue

There's an orchid for your mommy

And an Easter bonnet too

Oh, here comes Peter Cottontail

Hoppin' down the bunny trail

Hippity hoppity, Happy Easter Day

*****

Here comes Peter Cottontail

Hoppin' down the bunny trail

Hippity hoppin', Easter's on its way

Try to do the things you should

Maybe if you're extra good

He'll roll lots of Easter eggs your way

You'll wake up on Easter mornin'

And you'll know that he was there

When you find those choc'late bunnies

That he's hiding ev'rywhere

Oh, here comes Peter Cottontail

Hoppin' down the bunny trail

Hippity hoppity, Happy Easter Day

Hippity hoppity, Happy Easter Day

******

Here comes Peter Cottontail

Hoppin' down the bunny trail

Hippity hoppin', Easter's on its way

Bringin' ev'ry girl and boy

Baskets full of Easter joy

Things to make your Easter bright and gay

He's got jelly beans for Tommy

Colored eggs for sister Sue

There's an orchid for your mommy

And an Easter bonnet too

Oh, here comes Peter Cottontail

Hoppin' down the bunny trail

Hippity hoppity, Happy Easter Day

****

(He's got jelly beans for Tommy)

(Colored eggs for sister Sue)

(There's an orchid for your mommy)

(And an Easter bonnet too)

****

Here comes Peter Cottontail

Hoppin' down the bunny trail

Look at him stop and listen to him say

"Try to do the things you should"

Maybe if you're extra good

He'll roll lots of Easter eggs your way

You'll wake up on Easter morning

And you'll know that he was there

When you find those choc'late bunnies

That he's hidin' ev'rywhere

Oh, here comes Peter Cottontail

Hoppin' down the bunny trail

Hippity hoppity, Happy Easter Day

(He's got jelly beans for Tommy)

(Colored eggs for sister Sue)

There's an orchid for your mommy

And an Easter bonnet too

Oh, here comes Peter Cottontail

Hoppin' down the bunny trail

Hippity hoppity, hippity, Happy Easter Day