Mary Beth Miller is a well-known comedienne. One of her more popular routines involves her “live” hands that fight each other in ASL. It is really masterful when she, the right hand, and the left hand are in turmoil. For example, the left hand protests that the right hand is being used most of the time and the left hand thinks this is not fair, so it won’t cooperate with the right hand. This gives Mary Beth some trouble and she scolds the hands for their silly behavior. The skit goes on and on and it really makes the audience laugh very hard since they know the use of both hands is important in ASL.
Two ASL comedians, Charles McKinney and Al Barwiolek, formed a comedy team (CHALB) that had much success and performed in many places all over the world during the 1980s and 1990s. One of their most famous shows was called Deaf Pa What? It was about Deaf people’s habits in the Deaf world. In one sketch they exaggerated Deaf people’s “long good-bye”: They put on coats and hats, indicating they are about ready to leave, but they continue chatting for another half hour. Then they realize they must go, but again they continue chatting for a half hour or more with coats and hats on. This is a big hit with all audiences in the Deaf community because it is so much a part of Deaf people’s daily lives.
Poetry
ASL poetry emerged in the 1970s and is a fast developing art form. It is believed that from the 1840s (when residential schools flourished in the U.S.) to the 1960s (when William Stokoe recognized ASL as a language), there were some ASL poets, but they went unrecognized because of the oppression of ASL and the inability to document signs and sign performances. In the 1970s, videotape equipment became widely used, and, as a result, it became possible to record and preserve ASL and ASL poetry. Several ASL poets—Patrick Graybill, Ella Mae Lentz, and Clayton Valli—published their works on tape in the 1990s.
In Deaf in America: Voices from a Culture (1988), Carol Padden and Tom Humphries discuss rhythm of movement in two ASL poems, “Eye Music” by Ella Mae Lentz and “Windy Bright Morning” by Clayton Valli. They describe the rhythmic quality in both poems in an effort to point out how movement can express notions like harmony, dissonance, and resonance differently in poetry than in ASL prose.
Valli (1996) has also explored the features and functions in prose and poetry in ASL. At the phonological level, signs in prose are not specifically chosen for phonetic form. However, signs in poetry are chosen for specific phonetic form (physical image) to accomplish rhyme, rhythm, and meter; the signs also are more flexible in regard to changing of phonetic parameter(s). The morphological and lexical features are treated quite differently. Signers can create a new sign by compounding, inventing, borrowing, and other processes, but new signs must be approved by the community through use. Poets, on the other hand, can create new signs through invention. The new sign is created by the poet and does not require a history ot use by the Deaf community. As for syntactic features, classifier predicates in prose tend to be used after identifying arguments of the verb. This is not so in ASL poetry, where classifier predicates often are used without explicitly identifying arguments. Gilbert Eastman, an ASL poet and performer, uses a lot of classifier predicates and physical images in his poem about the historic and dramatic Deaf President Now movement, “DPN Epic.” This poem shows clearly that ASL poetry is very different from ASL prose.