The New York Times, "Hands That Speak, Hands That Rhyme"

ON the fourth Monday of every month, the spoken word gives way to the signed at the Bowery Poetry Club. Jason Norman, the host, casts his microphone stand to the side and introduces the A.S.L. Slam, a free-form poetry and storytelling night for the American Sign Language community.

“This,” signs the puckish M.C. with cropped brown hair, “is your stage.”

On a recent evening, participants included a white-haired gentleman in a yarmulke, a Harvard-educated actress in her late 20s named Shira Grabelsky and Bram Weiser, a hearing computer specialist for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority who is an aspiring interpreter. Many favor humorous anecdotes in lieu of poems.

American Sign Language, which is more than 150 years old, is a language that its users say is entirely independent of English, though it is not universally recognized as such. Indeed, A.S.L. is also entirely independent of British Sign Language, and has more in common with French Sign Language.

“Sometimes I wish we had a rule book,” Mr. Norman said of the poetry, through an interpreter, “but A.S.L. hasn’t really even been accepted as a language.”

Repetition of certain hand shapes can represent rhyme just as sounds in spoken poetry produce structure; the pattern of holds and pauses recalls the meter and rhythm of spoken verse. Yet these devices represent approximations.

“I think there’s rhyme in A.S.L.,” Mr. Norman considered. “Or maybe not rhyme. Maybe it’s a beat.” He performs his poems with intricate physicality, with careful and detailed expression.

The event at the club, on the Bowery near East First Street, attracts as many as 50 people, a mix of the deaf and hearing A.S.L. students. On this evening, as with many, some told stories rather than poems, performing with a wit that delighted the room.

Paul Mitchell, a young man wearing baggy jeans and a baseball cap, mimed the perfect impression of how, after a stumble on the street, a white guy might cower while a black guy might morph his misstep into the perfect mock layup. Applause, expressed visually, came as the waving of both hands.

People who can hear, Mr. Norman says, often see A.S.L. as “beautiful” in its movement, dancelike, yet devoid of the precision of speech. But of course language is meant to be understood. “To say A.S.L. is beautiful,” Mr. Norman said, “is a compliment with an insult behind it.”

Still, a language’s youth carries benefits for poetry. “Its rules aren’t frozen yet,” Mr. Norman said. “It’s living and breathing. Deaf children are natural storytellers.”

More Articles in New York Region » A version of this article appeared in print on September 7, 2008, on page CY4 of the New York edition.