Hey, it's Empire's Book of the Day. I'm Andrew Limbaugh. The first bit of advice you often get when

approaching poetry is, you got to read it out loud. Poetry can be just as much an oral medium as it is a

written one, but not always. Raymond Antribus is on the pod today. He's a poet and he's deaf, and he's got a memoir titled

The Quiet Ear, An Investigation of Missing Sound. In this interview with MPR's Mary Louise Kelly,

he talks about using his deafness as an aid to writing, something that makes his poetry

better. That's ahead. In the U.S., national security news can feel far away from daily life.

Distant wars, murky conflicts, diplomacy behind closed doors.

On our new show, Sources and Methods.

NPR reporters on the ground bring you stories of real people,

helping you understand why distant events matter here at home.

Listen to sources and methods on the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts.

When writer Raymond Antrobus was a child, he had a hard time making sense of the world around him.

He struggled to hold conversations. He missed instructions from his teachers. He would

get sent off to detention. Everyone assumed he had a cognitive disability. Until one day, his mother

bought a telephone, a loud phone. When it rang, it was piercing. Everyone in his house seemed to

notice but him. That is how Raymond Antrobus learned at six years old that he was deaf.

Well, he's out with a new memoir called The Quiet Ear, an Investigation of Missing Sound.

Raymond, welcome.

Oh, thanks for having me.

So to explain to people listening now, you were hearing aids.

You're also able to hear my questions in now, you were hearing aids. Yes.

You're also able to hear my questions in part because you have closed captioning going across a screen that's capturing what I'm saying.

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