My first document

JOHN LEE CLARK TO

ASK

Selected, designed, and typeset by

To Ask

To Ask

To Ask

© by Daisy

artd 444 Typographic Systems

Molly C. Briggs, Instructor

Spring 2024

School of Art & Design

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

John Lee Clark is an American deafblind poet, essayist, historian, and translator and an activist in the Protactile movement. His acclaimed How to Communicate: Poems, 2023, incorporates creative reflections on the Braille slate, prose poems, and “erasures” that reinterpret nineteenth-century poems and critique the limits of the canon.

To Ask is an original re-setting of Clark’s poem “To Ask”.

This project was inspired by the pedagogical research of book designer and doctoral student Natalie F. Smith, with whom Professor Briggs has co-taught typography in past semesters.

Foreword

There are many poems in How to Communicate where John Lee Clark writes about people who are DeafBlind struggling to accept help or goodwill from others because it might feel patronizing or otherwise uncomfortable. To Ask is a poignant poem about love, loss, and learning. Clark writes about his then-girlfriend who was learning Braille for him and he shoots down her efforts. I think often we might find ourselves scoffing at or belittling someone for trying something that we are perhaps better at. To Ask serves as a heartwrenching reminder that everyone has to start somewhere.

To Ask

She was a wonderful girlfriend

She didn’t have to but she started to learn Braille

I say started because she didn’t finish

She didn’t finish because I was the worst boyfriend imaginable

She was studying the Braille book she had ordered from the Hadley School for the Blind

Braille has a simple version called Grade One and an advanced version called Grade Two and she naturally started with Grade One

She asked me about a passage

I read it and it said See Spot run

I said stupid book kiddies and tore it in half

She said hey my book

I said SEE I Is The WaS SPOT run Ing run eD duh duh and tore it into more halves

She gave Braille up and almost gave me up

Almost

She went on to learn Gaelic French Japanese Danish Spanish

and became a pioneer in written ASL

Braille she never touched again

It took years and being kicked out and finally being separated for two years but I learned to be a good husband

During the two years I was alone I read and read and read

The ASL words Braille and Forgive are almost the same so it was like I was saying forgive me while brushing my fingers over the dots

Forgive me forgive me forgive me

I was wrong She did master Braille The hardest most advanced kind

This book was designed and edited by Daisy Liu.

The poem was written by John Lee Clark.

The typeface used is Anonymous Pro designed by Mark Simonson.