Sher Poetry

A hybrid form between interview and book review. Click below to listen.

					Retranslating Silence
					              by
					    Sher Schwartz 


Listening in the Dark
by Suzy Harris.
The Poetry Box, 35 pp.
$14.00


Retired special education attorney, Suzy Harris's chapbook, Listening in the Dark explores a theme not often examined in poetry. Deafness. Harris asks: "but what of those who grow up with two languages / one that is silence?" This silence went unrecognized into adulthood, because Harris "developed speech normally, and hearing loss wasn't suspected."  But one morning in her twenties, Harris awoke to complete silence. Her profound deafness was assuaged for some years by hearing aids, but eventually she moved to cochlear implants, a new technology, which helped Harris hear again.

Her childhood was spent in Indiana with six siblings and parents who supported "language as play--language as sound." Her mother was a poet and an artist, and she introduced the children to poets such as James Whitcomb Riley a popular Hoosier poet who wrote in dialect and African American poet Frank Marshall Davis who wrote in vernacular. One can imagine much laughter and pantomime in the living room while Harris and her six siblings read these poems aloud to each other. Because Harris's hearing loss was gradual, she was able to use clues of sound and lip reading to catch most of the words. "How to be Deaf" reminds the speaker "when you feel exhausted by the work / of hearing, bathe in quietness." And in a later poem "there is silence waiting for you on the doorstep / invite her in." Silence in this chapbook is both a balm and an experience of uncertainty.

One of the most remarkable poems in the collection for me is "Language Lessons." It investigates the unsettling experience of trying to use a cochlear implant to hear again. The cochlear implant uses a sound processor that's worn behind the ear. Harris explains: "cochlear implants do not work like hearing aids; they don't amplify sounds." The "implants transmit electronic signals that go to the auditory nerve. The auditory nerve transmits signals to the brain, and the brain converts these signals to language." Capturing this process is one of the goals of this lyric poetic memoir. 

The poem "Language Lessons" entreats the brain in five lessons to allow the "dings and ticks and beeps recede," and to "let the singer's voice rise above" alien noise. Harris says: "when a cochlear implant recipient is first turned on, voices sound like you are in the bottom of a well." Harris, at first, couldn't "tell the difference between male and female voices." The brain must resurrect its ability to hear words and make sense of them. In sparse, yet powerful verse "Language Lessons" conveys the physical and emotional advice needed to give a brain on the border of confusion the roadmap for coping with new auditory sensations. Harris's poetic choice gives the reader a unique inside view of how the brain reacts when it is first presented with this new way to hear. 

Besides what the increasingly deaf speaker experiences, the reader gets glimpses into how hearing loss affects romantic relationships and friendships. In the title poem "Listening in the Dark" I feel how sweet friendship is when friends "lean into the light" so the speaker of the poem can see their lips move and they can catch some of the conversation. In a later poem, I note a twinge of heartache between young lovers when "whispers" can no longer be heard. This collection has made me aware of so many nuances related to this "invisible disability." Harris shares the "silence around" deafness and the myriad ways deafness makes daily life challenging and different. She gives voice for those who don't hear the voice and for those who spend their lives with people with hearing loss. But, I don't fall into either of these categories, and I found the collection engrossing for its ability to show, through poetic evocation, a world of quiet and sound I know little about.

The chapbook doesn't attempt to define deafness. This is not a journalistic account.  Listening in the Dark paints loss and resurrection and prompts the reader to sing again–– to hear again. Her final poem "What is Possible," is a generous call. I imagine a speaker who asks writers, artists, and seekers to remember your voice is still there, don't forget it, and go hopeful:

	my voice travels, unseen
	seeking other voices. Together,
	our voices travel like clouds,
	cross borders easily,
	falling like rain on dry lands.  

In the end Listening in the Dark invites us to recall our own silences and to consider those spaces we need to retranslate into new ways of going forth in this world, whether in our relationship to the past or in relationships with others.