You can’t miss Flying Words. You simply can’t. It’s one of the most amazing displays of eloquence in motion that you’ll ever see. Deaf artist Peter Cook is amongst the greatest American Sign Language (ASL) poets alive today. He combines with Kenny Lerner’s powerful array of words and sound effects in a collaborative, high-wire literary act to weave the battle of Gettysburg, a moving sunset, or a march with Martin Luther King. Since ASL is a language of moving images, you view the scene as if you are there. When a confused deer is flushed out of the woods and into the middle of battle, you see the bayonets glistening and the cannonballs flying. When a leaf lands in a pool of water, you watch the ripples spread calmly across the stream.
“Flying Words Project has accomplished what poets have been trying to do for several centuries now; to make their poems more visual, more embodied, more alive. To witness the work of FWP is to witness a milestone in literary history.”
Dirksen Bauman, Gallaudet University.
