Book

The perseverance

Summary: "In this extraordinary debut collection, award-winning poet Raymond Antrobus interrogates anger, grief, illness, vulnerability, deafness, and race through a commanding engagement with language, tongues, listening, and sound. In the wake of his father's death, the speaker in Raymond Antrobus' The Perseverance travels to Gaudi's cathedral in Barcelona. Ruminating on the idea of silence and sound, he wonders whether acoustics really can bring us closer to God. As he receives information through his hearing aid technology, he considers how deaf people are included in this idea: 'Even though,' he says, 'I have not heard / the golden decibel of angels, / I have been living in a noiseless / palace where the doorbell is pulsating / light and I am able to answer.' So begins a stunning examination of a d/Deaf experience alongside meditations on loss, grief, education, and language, both spoken and signed. With a global scope and a deep intimacy, Antrobus draws on family and historical figures to create a chorus of voices: on the page, in our mouths, in our hands and ears. The Perseverance is a book about communication and connection, about cultural inheritance, about identity in a hearing world that takes everything for granted, about the dangers we may find--both individually and as a society--if we fail to understand each other"--

Record details

ISBN: 9781951142421
ISBN: 195114242X
ISBN: 9781951142438
ISBN: 1951142438
Physical Description: print
81 pages : illustrations ; 23 cm
Edition: First US edition.
Publisher: Portland, Oregon : Tin House, 2021.
Copyright: ©2021

Content descriptions

Bibliography, etc. Note:

Includes bibliographical references.

Formatted Contents Note:

Echo -- Aunt Beryl Meets Castro -- My Mother Remembers -- Jamaican British -- Ode to My Hair -- The Perseverance -- I Move Through London like a Hotep -- Sound Machine -- Dear Hearing World -- 'Deaf School' / by Ted Hughes -- After Reading 'Deaf School' by the Mississippi River -- For Jesula Gelin, Vanessa Previl and Monique Vincent -- Conversation with the Art Teacher (a Translation Attempt) -- The Ghost of Laura Bridgman Warns Helen Keller About Fame -- The Mechanism of Speech -- Doctor Marigold Re-evaluated -- The Shame of Mabel Gardiner Hubbard -- Two Guns in the Sky for Daniel Harris -- To Sweeten Bitter -- I Want the Confidence of -- After Being Called a Fucking Foreigner in London Fields -- Closure -- Maybe I Could Love a Man -- Samantha -- Thinking of Dad's Dick -- Miami Airport -- His Heart -- Dementia -- Happy Birthday Moon.