Customer Reviews

Mute (Body Language)

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First, let's talk appearances. The cover of Raymond Luczak's mute is perfectly intimate - with a hint of isolation. Two lovers press their ears together with their eyes closed while along the top of the cover, a lone tree weathers winter in a field. Quite easily one of the most breathtaking covers of any recent book of poetry. It's a pocket-sized book, which is a good thing, because I carried it around with me for weeks after its arrival. You might say I had a schoolboy crush on the book... but in the months since I've read it (several times now, in fact), that crush has blossomed into a full-on love affair, and I can say that Mute ranks as one of my all-time favorite contemporary books of poetry.

It doesn't matter if you've known someone who is deaf or who is gay. This book is about that great canyon that can exist between us, and about how we attempt to bridge that canyon. But the specific experiences here are what set the poems apart. "How to Fall for a Deaf Man," a wise choice for the opening poem, is a powerful introduction to the challenges of the butterflies-in-the-stomach that comes when one man falls for another, one who is hearing, and one who is deaf. These lines ripped my heart out and brought tears to my eyes: "Do not worry whether you should/continue buying CDs or downloading music/or listen to the radio in the morning./Your ears and voice are a gift/as much as his eyes and hands are." The tone is big-brotherly, Godly, fatherly. The tone is a patient lover placing a gentle hand on his new partner, feeling his heartbeat, and saying, "Just love me. The rest will fall into place."

Who doesn't want a love like that? Who can't relate to that?

"1989" is another favorite. Let me rephrase. "1989" is maybe my favorite lost-love-that-maybe-never-was poem ever. "I hadn't mastered the language of ache," Luczak writes, which makes me recall the years of my own unraveling into love's dangerous hands. Luczak recalls memorizing the timbre in this lover's voice. Tell me that notion isn't like seeing the face of God?

I've mentioned two poems. I could write about all 29, but I want you to discover them for yourself. Buy this book if you love poetry. Buy this book if you love a man, or if you love a person who is deaf, or are scared of loving a person who is deaf, or if you are scared of loving anyone at all. It will make your heart sing... you'll hear it internally and memorize its timbre.

And you'll never be the same.

Bryan Borland