Peter Cook and E. E. Cummings Essay -- Biography Biographies Essays

Peter Cook and E. E. Cummings      Ã‚  Ã‚   Contemporary poets have made interesting additions to modern and post-modern poetry as a collective whole. They have given unique insights into the nature of modern poetry and provided a broader understanding into the purpose and concept of poetry as an art form. One contemporary poet of importance is Peter Cook.    Peter Cook is a contemporary deaf ASL poet. He incorporates American Sign Language, mime, dance, and storytelling into his performance of his poetry, which is written in American Sign Language and translated into written or spoken English. For instance, in the Flying Words Project, he performed his poetry in ASL while Kenny Lerner performed the same poetry orally (A Deaf Poetics). The most interesting aspect of his poetry is the visual aspect of his performance of it. Seeing the words on the page is not enough to understand any of his poems, but they must be seen, ideally with an understanding of ASL (Graz erzÃ…  hlt). One of his poems performed during the Flying Words project was videotaped.    poetry poetry poetry is shot . . . circling, revolving, exploding hits the open window . . . and it tastes delicious it's loaded into the magnum and is shot back into your heart poetry is the painter and the portrait . . . (The Best Minds of Our Generation)    To watch this performed, however, is a much different experience than simply hearing it voiced. This is similar to some of E. E. Cummings' poems which are visually arranged on the page in such as way to enhance the meaning of the poem aside from simply hearing the words aloud. Cummings' use of punctuation and spacing, breaking up words and carefully arra... ...ed to modern poetry as a form of expression. While pre-modern and classical poetry often focused on rhyme and meter, two poetic devices which have no meaning to deaf poetry, modern poetry has provided a much freer view of poetry that also looks at poetry as a visual art form. This view was, in part, brought about by the works of such poets as E. E. Cummings, and evolved into such intriguing projects as the Visual Words project at RIT, and the Flying Words project of Peter Cook.    Sources Cited: Cummings, E. E. Selected Poems. Liveright, New York. 1994.   http://www.tales.org/kuenstler/cook_eng.htm, Graz erzÃ…  hlt 2001   http://poetry.about.com/library/weekly/aa061097.htm, A Deaf Poetics, part III - Poetry - 6/10/97   http://www.poetspath.com/rm/flying.ram, The Best Minds of Our Generation (The Allen Ginsberg video is interesting, too)