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Deaf Republic
Goodreads Choice Award
Nominee for Best Poetry (2019)Ilya Kaminsky's astonishing parable in poems asks us, What is silence?
Deaf Republic opens in an occupied country in a time of political unrest. When soldiers breaking up a protest kill a deaf boy, Petya, the gunshot becomes the last thing the citizens hear--they all have gone deaf, and their dissent becomes coordinated by sign language. The story follows the private lives of townspeople encircled by public violence: a newly married couple, Alfonso and Sonya, expecting a child; the brash Momma Galya, instigating the insurgency from her puppet theater; and Galya's girls, heroically teaching signing by day and by night luring soldiers one by one to their deaths behind the curtain. At once a love story, an elegy, and an urgent plea, Ilya Kaminsky's long-awaited Deaf Republic confronts our time's vicious atrocities and our collective silence in the face of them.
Finalist for the T. S. Eliot Prize
Finalist for the Forward Prize for Best Collection
Deaf Republic opens in an occupied country in a time of political unrest. When soldiers breaking up a protest kill a deaf boy, Petya, the gunshot becomes the last thing the citizens hear--they all have gone deaf, and their dissent becomes coordinated by sign language. The story follows the private lives of townspeople encircled by public violence: a newly married couple, Alfonso and Sonya, expecting a child; the brash Momma Galya, instigating the insurgency from her puppet theater; and Galya's girls, heroically teaching signing by day and by night luring soldiers one by one to their deaths behind the curtain. At once a love story, an elegy, and an urgent plea, Ilya Kaminsky's long-awaited Deaf Republic confronts our time's vicious atrocities and our collective silence in the face of them.
Finalist for the T. S. Eliot Prize
Finalist for the Forward Prize for Best Collection
80 pages, Paperback
First published March 5, 2019
About the author
Ilya Kaminsky
51 books411 followersIlya Kaminsky is the Poetry Editor of Words Without Borders. His awards include a Ruth Lilly Fellowship from Poetry magazine and first place in the National Russian Essay Contest. He is the author of Dancing in Odessa which won the Dorset Prize.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 1,397 reviews
October 15, 2023
I emerged from this poetry collection utterly dazed, as if torn out of a dream. It took me a long moment before I came back to myself.
Deaf Republic is unlike any poetry collection I've ever read. The poems here are presented as a play in two acts, including a list of “Dramatis Personae” at the beginning. Within the drama, set in a fictional town called Vasenka, a deaf child named Petya is murdered by a soldier while attending a puppet show. The little boy's crime is to spit at an army sergeant who has arrived to break up a public gathering in a time of martial law. As a result, the whole town goes deaf in protest, as if silence is the only language left to explain the extent of their annihilation.
In these poems, Kaminsky imagines silence as a strategy, an act not of subservience but of insurgency. It is a language, hidden so it wouldn’t die; a way to communicate grief, defiance, and solidarity in the aftermath of a trauma so deep it scours all sounds. But silence, the poet knows, is also a violence; it is complacency masquerading as bravery, self-created deafness against the suffering of the vulnerable.
Through these deep-seated human contradictions and ironies, Deaf Republic asks us to think about what happens to language at the center of an atrocity. How do we speak of the things that haunt us the most when they defy all the languages we live in? And more crucially: how do we laugh, how do we love, how do we remain human?
The formal ambition here is staggering, the poet's light touch and his probing attention to the metaphoric possibilities of language are nothing short of extraordinary. This is poetry that does not leave you intact, that sits uneasily inside you. Poetry that makes you uncomfortable and even—on a less acknowledged level—implicated, and thus afraid. Poetry that brings you face to face with yourself, and dares you to wince away. And here, I want to quote the short poem, "We Lived Happily During the War," that opens Deaf Republic because it underscores the raw potent power of Kaminsky’s language:
I love this poem. You read Kaminsky’s poetry and feel, in every line, that it is driven by terrible necessity. But because this is poetry that also knows joy, knows beauty, there are moments that crop up amidst the violence and inhumanity that are so quietly joyful and beautiful they are almost brutal in their sheer tenderness:
This is how Deaf Republic breaks you in one poem, and restores you in the next. I finished this collection with both a sense of tragedy and of hope. I felt, oddly, as if my heart was breaking—or rather that it was broken a long time ago and it was reassembling itself, in the aftermath of poetry, into a painful strange new shape.
Deaf Republic is unlike any poetry collection I've ever read. The poems here are presented as a play in two acts, including a list of “Dramatis Personae” at the beginning. Within the drama, set in a fictional town called Vasenka, a deaf child named Petya is murdered by a soldier while attending a puppet show. The little boy's crime is to spit at an army sergeant who has arrived to break up a public gathering in a time of martial law. As a result, the whole town goes deaf in protest, as if silence is the only language left to explain the extent of their annihilation.
In these poems, Kaminsky imagines silence as a strategy, an act not of subservience but of insurgency. It is a language, hidden so it wouldn’t die; a way to communicate grief, defiance, and solidarity in the aftermath of a trauma so deep it scours all sounds. But silence, the poet knows, is also a violence; it is complacency masquerading as bravery, self-created deafness against the suffering of the vulnerable.
Through these deep-seated human contradictions and ironies, Deaf Republic asks us to think about what happens to language at the center of an atrocity. How do we speak of the things that haunt us the most when they defy all the languages we live in? And more crucially: how do we laugh, how do we love, how do we remain human?
The formal ambition here is staggering, the poet's light touch and his probing attention to the metaphoric possibilities of language are nothing short of extraordinary. This is poetry that does not leave you intact, that sits uneasily inside you. Poetry that makes you uncomfortable and even—on a less acknowledged level—implicated, and thus afraid. Poetry that brings you face to face with yourself, and dares you to wince away. And here, I want to quote the short poem, "We Lived Happily During the War," that opens Deaf Republic because it underscores the raw potent power of Kaminsky’s language:
And when they bombed other people’s houses, we
protested
but not enough, we opposed them but not
enough. I was
in my bed, around my bed America
was falling: invisible house by invisible house by invisible house.
I took a chair outside and watched the sun.
In the sixth month
of a disastrous reign in the house of money
in the street of money in the city of money in the country of money,
our great country of money, we (forgive us)
lived happily during the war.
I love this poem. You read Kaminsky’s poetry and feel, in every line, that it is driven by terrible necessity. But because this is poetry that also knows joy, knows beauty, there are moments that crop up amidst the violence and inhumanity that are so quietly joyful and beautiful they are almost brutal in their sheer tenderness:
Soaping together
is sacred to us.
Washing each other’s shoulders.
You can fuck
anyone—but with whom can you sit
in water?
This is how Deaf Republic breaks you in one poem, and restores you in the next. I finished this collection with both a sense of tragedy and of hope. I felt, oddly, as if my heart was breaking—or rather that it was broken a long time ago and it was reassembling itself, in the aftermath of poetry, into a painful strange new shape.
February 24, 2022
At the trial of God, we will ask: why did you allow all this?
And the answer will be an echo: why did you allow all this?
What is the language of resistance? Deaf Republic, the much anticipated and long-awaited--fifteen years since his last collection Dancing in Odessa--new collection of poetry by Ilya Kaminsky addresses this question and many others across its haunting narrative. This book is incredible: an epic poem told in a series of contemporary, short-form poems (many of which are powerful on their own), Deaf Republic is a potent tale of oppression, military violence and the resistance against it. The city of Vasenka--a city without much context but manages to register as universal--is under occupation of a violent military. In the opening poem, the soldiers shoot an innocent deaf child for spitting at them. ‘Our country woke up the next morning and refused to hear soldiers,’ Kaminsky writes, and so a silent rebellion commences. The first half tells the story of a young family of puppeteers that fight back and face the reality that violence begets violence. The second half follows the theater owner as she has her workers teach sign language by day and seduce soldiers by night in order to kill them. Silence and deafness become the act of resistance--‘Deafness isn’t an illness! It’s a sexual position!--and the narrative is illustrated with the sign language for words such as town, tank, hide or army convoy. However, it is cautioned that silence can also be a form of passivity when the absence of resisting makes room for oppression. A tale of humanity bravely spitting in the face of destruction, Kaminsky explores the strength of unity against oppression and the damnation of weaponized, collective fear as both a prophetic warning and an act of resistance to the politics of the Now.
I teach his children’s hands to make of anguish
a language--
see how deafness nails us into our bodies.
I’ve been frequently floored lately by the new voices in poetry and the directions they have taken us. Deaf Republic joins a lofty rank of essential reads that challenges the boundaries of poetic storytelling. This is a collection that demands repeat readings the way your favorite films get better upon each rewatch. The language is precise and playful. For example, Kaminsky takes us from metaphorical language to blunt realism to remind us of the severity of our actions through a jarring juxtaposition:
What is truly striking about the language in Deaf Republic is the urgency that screams out from the prose as if the work is understanding itself through its own creation and chronicling of it’s narrative self:
Kaminsky brilliantly follows his narrative through a perfectly pitched series of rising and falling of action. Opening with a killing that exposes ‘the nakedness / of a whole nation’, we see people begin to rally around leaders such as the theater owner in part two, people rebelling followed with mass execution, killing one solider followed by a public execution, and so on. Initially the citizen leaders are seen as strength and hope away from oppression, an opportunity to 'ride away from are own / funerals'. Leaders are important to teach the way forward: ‘In a time of war//she teaches us how to open the door/and walk/through/which is the true curriculum of schools.’
Kaminsky doesn’t just examine bravery but also the fault lines that can be exploited by the powerful to bring the people to their knees: fear and self-interest. We see people turn in their revolutionaries out of fear, people turn a blind eye to suffering because it isn’t happening to them. This is where the book really grips the reader when suddenly a narrative about a distant town feels very eerily familiar. ‘Ours is a country in which a boy shot by police lies on the pavement / for hours’ Kaminsky writes, quickly followed by an assertion that ‘it is a peaceful country’. The final poem is a bridge between the narrative and our modern reality where a country ‘clips our citizens bodies / effortlessly, the way the President’s wife trims her toenails.’ The temptation to just return to one’s own life, to ‘not hear gunshots’ but marvel over a suburban sunset, is a strong pacifier but it also means being complicit in the oppression of the suffering. There are two types of silence going on in this book: one of resistance and one of passivity. ‘Forgive us,’ Kaminsky writes in the opening poem, ‘we lived happily during the war.’
It has begun: I see the blue canary of my country
pick breadcrumbs from each citizen’s eyes--
pick breadcrumbs from my neighbor’s hair--
the snow leaves the earth and falls straight up as it should--
to have a country, so important--
to run into walls, into streetlights, into loved ones, as one should--
The blue canary of my country
runs into walls, into streetlights, into loved ones--
The blue canary of my country
watches their legs as they run and fall.
A narrative in poetry, an inventive format, and a brave discourse on violence and oppression, Deaf Republic is a must read. An urgent warning and a reminder to speak out while we still can.
5/5
We Lived Happily During the War
And when they bombed other people’s houses, we
protested
but not enough, we opposed them but not
enough. I was
in my bed, around my bed America
was falling: invisible house by invisible house by invisible house.
I took a chair outside and watched the sun.
In the sixth month
of a disastrous reign in the house of money
in the street of money in the city of money in the country of money,
our great country of money, we (forgive us)
lived happily during the war.
And the answer will be an echo: why did you allow all this?
What is the language of resistance? Deaf Republic, the much anticipated and long-awaited--fifteen years since his last collection Dancing in Odessa--new collection of poetry by Ilya Kaminsky addresses this question and many others across its haunting narrative. This book is incredible: an epic poem told in a series of contemporary, short-form poems (many of which are powerful on their own), Deaf Republic is a potent tale of oppression, military violence and the resistance against it. The city of Vasenka--a city without much context but manages to register as universal--is under occupation of a violent military. In the opening poem, the soldiers shoot an innocent deaf child for spitting at them. ‘Our country woke up the next morning and refused to hear soldiers,’ Kaminsky writes, and so a silent rebellion commences. The first half tells the story of a young family of puppeteers that fight back and face the reality that violence begets violence. The second half follows the theater owner as she has her workers teach sign language by day and seduce soldiers by night in order to kill them. Silence and deafness become the act of resistance--‘Deafness isn’t an illness! It’s a sexual position!--and the narrative is illustrated with the sign language for words such as town, tank, hide or army convoy. However, it is cautioned that silence can also be a form of passivity when the absence of resisting makes room for oppression. A tale of humanity bravely spitting in the face of destruction, Kaminsky explores the strength of unity against oppression and the damnation of weaponized, collective fear as both a prophetic warning and an act of resistance to the politics of the Now.
I teach his children’s hands to make of anguish
a language--
see how deafness nails us into our bodies.
I’ve been frequently floored lately by the new voices in poetry and the directions they have taken us. Deaf Republic joins a lofty rank of essential reads that challenges the boundaries of poetic storytelling. This is a collection that demands repeat readings the way your favorite films get better upon each rewatch. The language is precise and playful. For example, Kaminsky takes us from metaphorical language to blunt realism to remind us of the severity of our actions through a jarring juxtaposition:
The body of the boy lies on the asphalt like a paperclip.We can dress up violence however we like, but what matters is that violence is the end of a life, a bleeding corpse that will never reawaken. Also impressive is the way the narrative seems unstuck from time, feeling all at once like a tale from decades past, an accounting of the present, or visions of the future.
The body of the boy lies on the asphalt
Like the body of a boy.
What is truly striking about the language in Deaf Republic is the urgency that screams out from the prose as if the work is understanding itself through its own creation and chronicling of it’s narrative self:
Tonight they shot fifty women on Lerna Street.There is that beautiful debt to language we must all acknowledge: that it is through words we define reality like groping in the dark. However, in Deaf Republic, language is not of the mouth but of the hands--of the body--and Kaminsky reminds us that true resistance comes from the actions of the body. Speaking out is one thing, acting is another. The sacrifices that are made, too, come from the body. When the people of Vasenka are arrested or gunned down, a puppet is hung from their door as a reminder of the body and soul now lost. The image is striking, and reminds us how we are often at the whims and mercy of political and economic string-pullers. There is a tale of actions of the body, how actions can shape us--’it / only take a few minutes etcetera to make a man’--or how our mere being can be an affront or rebellion:
I sit down to write and tell you what I know:
a child learns the world by putting it in her mouth,
a girl becomes a woman and a woman, earth.
body, they blame you for all things and they
seek in the body what does not live in the body.
On earth
A man cannot flip a finger at the sky
Because each man is already
A finger flipped at the sky.
Kaminsky brilliantly follows his narrative through a perfectly pitched series of rising and falling of action. Opening with a killing that exposes ‘the nakedness / of a whole nation’, we see people begin to rally around leaders such as the theater owner in part two, people rebelling followed with mass execution, killing one solider followed by a public execution, and so on. Initially the citizen leaders are seen as strength and hope away from oppression, an opportunity to 'ride away from are own / funerals'. Leaders are important to teach the way forward: ‘In a time of war//she teaches us how to open the door/and walk/through/which is the true curriculum of schools.’
Kaminsky doesn’t just examine bravery but also the fault lines that can be exploited by the powerful to bring the people to their knees: fear and self-interest. We see people turn in their revolutionaries out of fear, people turn a blind eye to suffering because it isn’t happening to them. This is where the book really grips the reader when suddenly a narrative about a distant town feels very eerily familiar. ‘Ours is a country in which a boy shot by police lies on the pavement / for hours’ Kaminsky writes, quickly followed by an assertion that ‘it is a peaceful country’. The final poem is a bridge between the narrative and our modern reality where a country ‘clips our citizens bodies / effortlessly, the way the President’s wife trims her toenails.’ The temptation to just return to one’s own life, to ‘not hear gunshots’ but marvel over a suburban sunset, is a strong pacifier but it also means being complicit in the oppression of the suffering. There are two types of silence going on in this book: one of resistance and one of passivity. ‘Forgive us,’ Kaminsky writes in the opening poem, ‘we lived happily during the war.’
It has begun: I see the blue canary of my country
pick breadcrumbs from each citizen’s eyes--
pick breadcrumbs from my neighbor’s hair--
the snow leaves the earth and falls straight up as it should--
to have a country, so important--
to run into walls, into streetlights, into loved ones, as one should--
The blue canary of my country
runs into walls, into streetlights, into loved ones--
The blue canary of my country
watches their legs as they run and fall.
A narrative in poetry, an inventive format, and a brave discourse on violence and oppression, Deaf Republic is a must read. An urgent warning and a reminder to speak out while we still can.
5/5
We Lived Happily During the War
And when they bombed other people’s houses, we
protested
but not enough, we opposed them but not
enough. I was
in my bed, around my bed America
was falling: invisible house by invisible house by invisible house.
I took a chair outside and watched the sun.
In the sixth month
of a disastrous reign in the house of money
in the street of money in the city of money in the country of money,
our great country of money, we (forgive us)
lived happily during the war.
July 10, 2019
Ambitious, intelligent parable about the ways we are complacent in the face of things we should be up in arms about. Very interesting, both in terms of content and craft.
December 18, 2023
Our country woke up the next morning and refused to hear soldiers.
In the name of Petya, we refuse.
At six a.m., when soldiers compliment girls in the alley, the girls slide by, pointing to their ears. At eight, the bakery door is shut in soldier Ivanoff’s face, though he’s their best customer. At ten, Momma Galya chalks No One Hears You on the gates of the soldiers’ barracks.
By eleven a.m., arrests begin.
Our hearing doesn’t weaken, but something silent in us strengthens.
In the ears of the town, snow falls.
—from “Deafness, an Insurgency, Begins”
Deaf Republic is an amazing collection of poetry, a both lyrical and narrative poetry sequence that takes place in an occupied country. The occupied country Kaminsky knows best is his native Ukraine, occupied then and again now, in 2022. At a protest, soldiers kill a deaf boy, Petya, and that is the last thing the other citizens hear, as they invent a kind of sign language to communicate, images of which we see in the text. More violence follows, as we meet a newly married couple, Alfonso and Sonya, expecting a child, and Galya, with her puppet theater luring fascist soldiers to their deaths. If you are going to read one book of poetry this year, let it be this one. It reads like Bertolt Brecht’s Mother Courage.
“And when they bombed other people’s houses, we
protested, but not enough.”
This is really a remarkable work of art for our troubled, endless-war time. There are love poems (“Before the War, We Made a Child,” there is an elegy, there is humor, but the basic poetic act here is an angry stand Kaminsky takes against these violent, cruel times. The poet, who is himself hard of hearing, configures deafness as a kind of political act, as a refusal to “take it anymore.” You say poetry and politics aren’t compatible? I say read this book and stand with him in protest for peace.
“They take Alfonso and no one stands up. Our silence stands up for us.”
Here’s a multi-media performance of his work, with excerpts from the book:
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/20...
In the name of Petya, we refuse.
At six a.m., when soldiers compliment girls in the alley, the girls slide by, pointing to their ears. At eight, the bakery door is shut in soldier Ivanoff’s face, though he’s their best customer. At ten, Momma Galya chalks No One Hears You on the gates of the soldiers’ barracks.
By eleven a.m., arrests begin.
Our hearing doesn’t weaken, but something silent in us strengthens.
In the ears of the town, snow falls.
—from “Deafness, an Insurgency, Begins”
Deaf Republic is an amazing collection of poetry, a both lyrical and narrative poetry sequence that takes place in an occupied country. The occupied country Kaminsky knows best is his native Ukraine, occupied then and again now, in 2022. At a protest, soldiers kill a deaf boy, Petya, and that is the last thing the other citizens hear, as they invent a kind of sign language to communicate, images of which we see in the text. More violence follows, as we meet a newly married couple, Alfonso and Sonya, expecting a child, and Galya, with her puppet theater luring fascist soldiers to their deaths. If you are going to read one book of poetry this year, let it be this one. It reads like Bertolt Brecht’s Mother Courage.
“And when they bombed other people’s houses, we
protested, but not enough.”
This is really a remarkable work of art for our troubled, endless-war time. There are love poems (“Before the War, We Made a Child,” there is an elegy, there is humor, but the basic poetic act here is an angry stand Kaminsky takes against these violent, cruel times. The poet, who is himself hard of hearing, configures deafness as a kind of political act, as a refusal to “take it anymore.” You say poetry and politics aren’t compatible? I say read this book and stand with him in protest for peace.
“They take Alfonso and no one stands up. Our silence stands up for us.”
Here’s a multi-media performance of his work, with excerpts from the book:
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/20...
April 23, 2022
This is a powerful book of connected poetry that speaks volumes, especially in light of current events. What happens when we don’t speak up about the atrocities committed against our fellow humans? Or perhaps we speak, but those words are hollow when not followed up with action. Or, maybe we do have a voice but others refuse to listen.
The neighbors peek from behind curtains. Silence like a
dog sniffs the windowpanes between us.
There is a plot to this poetry collection. Ilya Kaminsky weaves together a story about an occupied town whose citizens resist in an unusual way after the shooting of an innocent child by a soldier.
Our country woke up next morning and refused to hear soldiers.
In the name of Petya, we refuse.
Kaminsky was born in the Ukraine so the relevance and urgency of this piece was what drew me to it in the first place. Some of it is hard to read, but it’s the harsh reality of what many people are enduring right now. While I sit in the comfort of my home with my pile of books next to me, the sound of the first lawn mowers of the season humming outside the windows, I can’t help but feel complicit with the monsters of the world.
And when they bombed other people’s houses, we
protested
but not enough, we opposed them but not
enough. I was
in my bed, around my bed America
was falling: invisible house by invisible house by invisible house –
I took a chair outside and watched the sun.
In the sixth month
of a disastrous reign in the house of money
in the street of money in the city of money in the country of money,
our great country of money, we (forgive us)
lived happily during the war.
The neighbors peek from behind curtains. Silence like a
dog sniffs the windowpanes between us.
There is a plot to this poetry collection. Ilya Kaminsky weaves together a story about an occupied town whose citizens resist in an unusual way after the shooting of an innocent child by a soldier.
Our country woke up next morning and refused to hear soldiers.
In the name of Petya, we refuse.
Kaminsky was born in the Ukraine so the relevance and urgency of this piece was what drew me to it in the first place. Some of it is hard to read, but it’s the harsh reality of what many people are enduring right now. While I sit in the comfort of my home with my pile of books next to me, the sound of the first lawn mowers of the season humming outside the windows, I can’t help but feel complicit with the monsters of the world.
And when they bombed other people’s houses, we
protested
but not enough, we opposed them but not
enough. I was
in my bed, around my bed America
was falling: invisible house by invisible house by invisible house –
I took a chair outside and watched the sun.
In the sixth month
of a disastrous reign in the house of money
in the street of money in the city of money in the country of money,
our great country of money, we (forgive us)
lived happily during the war.
July 18, 2022
"At the trial of God, we will ask: why did you allow all this?
And the answer will be an echo: why did you allow all this?"
Powerful.... that's all I keep thinking while I'm trying to think of what to say about this book. Powerful. So, so, so powerful.
In alternating verse and prose poetry, Ilya Kaminsky writes the story of the citizens of Vasenka, a town somewhere in Eastern Europe. It is an occupied town and the people protest by becoming deaf and creating a sign language of their own.
It forces us to reflect on our own silence in the face of atrocities. Our own complicity, weakness, failure to act when others are suffering.
I am struggling to write about this book. It has left me almost speechless. So prevalent and necessary and stunning in its imagery.
I will be haunted by Deaf Republic for some time to come. It has imprinted itself deep under my skin.
And the answer will be an echo: why did you allow all this?"
Powerful.... that's all I keep thinking while I'm trying to think of what to say about this book. Powerful. So, so, so powerful.
In alternating verse and prose poetry, Ilya Kaminsky writes the story of the citizens of Vasenka, a town somewhere in Eastern Europe. It is an occupied town and the people protest by becoming deaf and creating a sign language of their own.
It forces us to reflect on our own silence in the face of atrocities. Our own complicity, weakness, failure to act when others are suffering.
I am struggling to write about this book. It has left me almost speechless. So prevalent and necessary and stunning in its imagery.
I will be haunted by Deaf Republic for some time to come. It has imprinted itself deep under my skin.
October 21, 2019
Words fail.
April 29, 2019
Brilliant. I wish there were an infinite number of stars to give, because this is that kind of book. A must read if ever there was one.
May 4, 2019
Simply brilliant! This dark fable of a town under siege is a statement on our times. The people of the town become deaf after a soldier shoots a deaf child at a public gathering. The deafness here is purposeful, though, and a statement on how we can remain silent in the face of government atrocities and institutionalized biases. Tragic, yet filled with beauty, this is a powerful book of poetry.
March 13, 2019
I finished the book in one sitting, memories of my first life in a different country chasing Kaminsky’s brilliant pen like ghosts in the dark. If not the whole book, I beg everybody to read the last poem In a Time of Peace, at the very least.
I could quote the whole book. If you have a twitter account here’s a thread I posted while reading the book. https://twitter.com/exlibrisetc/statu...
I could quote the whole book. If you have a twitter account here’s a thread I posted while reading the book. https://twitter.com/exlibrisetc/statu...
August 16, 2023
A very strong poetry collection – would highly recommend.
November 6, 2019
If you're one of those poetry-phobic readers (their numbers are legion), this would be a good gateway book. It opens with a Dramatic Personae and reads a bit like a play in two acts. Mostly free verse poems, but sometimes the plot is advanced with a bit of what's called "prose poetry."
The Republic in question is under fascist siege. Soldiers. Executions. The people rebel by pretending to no longer hear, which counts for something when your town is occupied and the soldiers have quartered in the town to freely use its services. Suddenly, quiet (and not so quiet) resistance takes root. Enraged soldiers kill townspeople. Entrenched townspeople kill soldiers.
Let's see: a Republic with two sides deeply divided who don't hear each other. Well, yeah, there's metaphors for the taking if you're in an acquisitive mood! But I can't for the life of me think of who would like to have soldiers at his bidding to obliterate enemies with impunity. No. Doesn't match any present-day profiles I know.
But anyway, a sample poem, as in the opener, which specifically mentions America, though the main story does not. I think you'll like it:
We Lived Happily During the War
by Ilya Kaminsky
And when they bombed other people’s houses, we
protested
but not enough, we opposed them but not
enough. I was
in my bed, around my bed America
was falling: invisible house by invisible house by invisible house.
I took a chair outside and watched the sun.
In the sixth month
of a disastrous reign in the house of money
in the street of money in the city of money in the country of money,
our great country of money, we (forgive us)
lived happily during the war.
The Republic in question is under fascist siege. Soldiers. Executions. The people rebel by pretending to no longer hear, which counts for something when your town is occupied and the soldiers have quartered in the town to freely use its services. Suddenly, quiet (and not so quiet) resistance takes root. Enraged soldiers kill townspeople. Entrenched townspeople kill soldiers.
Let's see: a Republic with two sides deeply divided who don't hear each other. Well, yeah, there's metaphors for the taking if you're in an acquisitive mood! But I can't for the life of me think of who would like to have soldiers at his bidding to obliterate enemies with impunity. No. Doesn't match any present-day profiles I know.
But anyway, a sample poem, as in the opener, which specifically mentions America, though the main story does not. I think you'll like it:
We Lived Happily During the War
by Ilya Kaminsky
And when they bombed other people’s houses, we
protested
but not enough, we opposed them but not
enough. I was
in my bed, around my bed America
was falling: invisible house by invisible house by invisible house.
I took a chair outside and watched the sun.
In the sixth month
of a disastrous reign in the house of money
in the street of money in the city of money in the country of money,
our great country of money, we (forgive us)
lived happily during the war.
December 28, 2020
“Sağırlar sessizliğe inanmaz. Sessizlik, işitenlerin icadıdır.”
Sovyetler Birliği’nde savaş sırasında, sağır bir çocuğun bir askerin yüzüne tükürdüğü için öldürülmesinin ardından gelen direnişin izini sürüyor, hem de şiirle. Ben normalde şiir sevmeyen, oku(ya)mayan bir insanım. Ancak bu kitapta bir oyun ile çağdaş şiirin arasında roman tadında bir anlatım var. Günümüz dünyasına dair şiddeti, insanlığı, eşitsizliği, kederi, neşeyi çok minimalist bir dil ile ancak gözünüzün önünde katılaşıp gereğe dönüşecek bir netlikle veriyor. Sağır çocuğun ölümünün ardından isyan edip konuşmayı reddeden, en büyük silahı sağırlık olan ve kendi işaret dilini geliştiren köylüler ile askerler arasında yükselen gerginliği ve bunun getirdiği sonuçları böyle bir anlatımla okumak çok farklı bir deneyimdi. Bir gün bir tiyatro sahnesinde de izlemek istediğim kitaplardan birisi oldu.
“Sessizlik mi
Seni dövmek için kullandığım bir sopa o, seni bir sopayla
dövüyorum, ses, dövüyorum seni
Konuşana kadar, doğru
Konuşana kadar”
“Yer yüzünde
insan göğe orta parmak çekemez,
Çünkü her insan zaten hep
Göğe çekilmiş bir orta parmaktır.”
Sovyetler Birliği’nde savaş sırasında, sağır bir çocuğun bir askerin yüzüne tükürdüğü için öldürülmesinin ardından gelen direnişin izini sürüyor, hem de şiirle. Ben normalde şiir sevmeyen, oku(ya)mayan bir insanım. Ancak bu kitapta bir oyun ile çağdaş şiirin arasında roman tadında bir anlatım var. Günümüz dünyasına dair şiddeti, insanlığı, eşitsizliği, kederi, neşeyi çok minimalist bir dil ile ancak gözünüzün önünde katılaşıp gereğe dönüşecek bir netlikle veriyor. Sağır çocuğun ölümünün ardından isyan edip konuşmayı reddeden, en büyük silahı sağırlık olan ve kendi işaret dilini geliştiren köylüler ile askerler arasında yükselen gerginliği ve bunun getirdiği sonuçları böyle bir anlatımla okumak çok farklı bir deneyimdi. Bir gün bir tiyatro sahnesinde de izlemek istediğim kitaplardan birisi oldu.
“Sessizlik mi
Seni dövmek için kullandığım bir sopa o, seni bir sopayla
dövüyorum, ses, dövüyorum seni
Konuşana kadar, doğru
Konuşana kadar”
“Yer yüzünde
insan göğe orta parmak çekemez,
Çünkü her insan zaten hep
Göğe çekilmiş bir orta parmaktır.”
May 25, 2019
Whatever this is, it’s my new favorite genre of writing.
I can’t believe how much joy this book contains while making legible half a dozen absolute tragedies.
I can’t believe how much joy this book contains while making legible half a dozen absolute tragedies.
December 31, 2018
The linked poems in DEAF REPUBLIC glint like icicles against a stark background. The light source: a gentle, insistent humanity in the face of tragedy. In the space between sound and silence, action and inaction, the collection builds and re-builds kindness in unexpected, crucial ways. Like a sacred text, DEAF REPUBLIC offers new meanings each time I turn to it, and turn to it again. I’m convinced it holds a prayer inside it, or is a prayer itself.
Thanks to the wonderful folks at Graywolf for the ARC.
Thanks to the wonderful folks at Graywolf for the ARC.
October 18, 2019
Since I’m so accustomed to reading novels I sometimes find it a challenge to get in the right mindset to read a book of poetry because my instinct is to look for a narrative. In a way, I didn’t have to adjust this instinct to read Ilya Kaminsky “Deaf Republic” because there’s a definite overarching story and the book even begins with a list of “dramatis personae”. It takes place in an unspecified village during an unspecified time period. The village has been occupied by military forces who publicly execute citizens. The focus is not so much on the ethos or machinations of this oppressive regime but the fate of a family of puppeteers, the lives of the local population and their frequent passivity to resist the war on their doorstep. When a boy is shot and killed the sound of the gun causes the villagers to go deaf. Like Jose Saramago’s novel “Blindness” the collective absence of this sensory experience powerfully symbolizes the limitations of people’s empathy and a dangerously wilful ignorance. These poems consider issues to do with individual political responsibility through resonate imagery and flashes of dramatic action/inaction. Though the narrative has the feel of a fable, the first and final poems are unmistakeably contemporary in their American setting with references to greed in “our great country of money” and our silent witnessing of gun violence.
Read my full review of Deaf Republic by Ilya Kaminsky on LonesomeReader
Read my full review of Deaf Republic by Ilya Kaminsky on LonesomeReader
August 28, 2019
A boy is killed, the people react. A country is occupied, the people react.
These poems are filled with images of the townspeople as they act against the atrocities in their country, their town, their homes.
There's a feeling of courage and hope throughout. There's also a feeling of pain and sorrow. Always there's a feeling of humanity.
These are lovely poems. I cannot begin to analyze them as I know nothing about poetry. However, the emotions & feelings brought by these poems are ones of people living through the worst, yet remaining human, alive and strong.
These poems are filled with images of the townspeople as they act against the atrocities in their country, their town, their homes.
There's a feeling of courage and hope throughout. There's also a feeling of pain and sorrow. Always there's a feeling of humanity.
These are lovely poems. I cannot begin to analyze them as I know nothing about poetry. However, the emotions & feelings brought by these poems are ones of people living through the worst, yet remaining human, alive and strong.
January 23, 2019
Absolutely astonishing.
February 19, 2019
If there is a perfect book, it might be this one.
May 7, 2019
Absolutely incredible from start to finish.
April 27, 2022
I have always meant to read this collection and what better time than when Ukraine is in the news - the poet was born in Odessa, although it was the Soviet Union at the time - and this collection tells the story of a village fighting back. I recommend finding the poet reading his work - he lost most of his hearing at age 4 and that figures into this collection for sure. My favorite is still We Lived Happily During the War.
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/vide...
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/vide...
August 29, 2022
**4.5 stars**
“At the trial of God, we will ask: why did you allow all this?
And the answer will be an echo: why did you allow all this?”
I have never read anything quite like this before. Two connected Acts of play (strictly a series of poems, non-conversational) that oscillate through the wide range of emotions from love to grief, anger to vengeance while getting progressively darker, in ways both literal and metaphorical: this sounds as devourable and promising as it gets. Speaking of which, this is the first time I have come across a collection of poems that can fall under the category of being grizzly.
Kaminsky’s use of poetic language is accessible and lucid, but it is different from the type of poetries we cumulate as Instagram poems. It runs on a logic that feels otherworldly and surreal, yet very much grounded and realistic. When the deaf and (seemingly) autistic youth is murdered, deafness unambiguously becomes the sole weapon the people of Vasenka take up against the military torture, and they use it to their advantage. Such unequivocal silence becomes a kind of retribution.
“Deafness is suspended above blue tin roofs
and copper eaves; deafness
feeds on birches, light posts, hospital roofs, bells;
deafness rests in our men's chests.”
Kaminsky here manages to masterfully blend sound with silence, bereavement with longing, articulating what appear to be simple truths. His narrative—early life in Odesa and family history set against the backdrop of the former Soviet Union—has shaped the Deaf Republic. Kaminsky, mostly deaf since the age of four, transforms infirmity into power here, and as personal that is, it is what elevates the storytelling to the next level. And this doesn’t for once feels too forced, as the story is told in lines and poetry that effectively manage space. We can't get away from the horror since it reappears from a different angle or on a different page.
“In these avenues, deafness is our only barricade.”
And, yet, there is joy in this harrowing story of fragility and limited rights. The poems of Sonya and Alfonso, the newlywed puppeteers, are sensory riches, and sometimes get so much sensual that it starts to tread the thin line between emotional and carnal, but always comes back to being melancholic in the end. As much as it’s a deep well of bittersweet emotions, to be the voyeur to the fervent ministrations sometimes acts as a kind of tonal shift. While that’s not necessarily a bad thing if used sparely and with relevance, here it does get a bit jarring often.
“Deafness isn't an illness! It's a sexual position!”
The best thing about this book is how it manages to create a backstory for this fictitious town and beleaguered country, as almost a dystopian world (say) by the likes of Margaret Atwood or Cormac McCarthy. We can see and feel it when we round a corner. The intangible has form. With surprise, the logic becomes image-dense. The two Acts act like a social allegory on the power of reaction.
Community action cannot withstand ongoing strife, uncertainty, and risk. Relationships deteriorate, and individuals focus on the personal rather than the community. While masterfully presenting an imagined setting, the poems appear to dangle us over the cliff of the here and now, forcing us to observe the equal and opposing forces that reflect how damaged we are and how we still might be able to move on.
“Watch, God— deaf have something to tell that not even they can hear.”
As much as the storytelling is praiseworthy here, it is not that usual, and for that matter, please take my opinion with a grain of salt. It is powerful, no doubt, but I’m still unsure if it will stand the test of time (I don’t know why I feel it, maybe it’s due to the tonal shifts).
Well, you should still go for it. Freaking brilliant when it comes to innovativeness.
“You are alive, I whisper to myself, therefore something in you listens.”
“At the trial of God, we will ask: why did you allow all this?
And the answer will be an echo: why did you allow all this?”
I have never read anything quite like this before. Two connected Acts of play (strictly a series of poems, non-conversational) that oscillate through the wide range of emotions from love to grief, anger to vengeance while getting progressively darker, in ways both literal and metaphorical: this sounds as devourable and promising as it gets. Speaking of which, this is the first time I have come across a collection of poems that can fall under the category of being grizzly.
Kaminsky’s use of poetic language is accessible and lucid, but it is different from the type of poetries we cumulate as Instagram poems. It runs on a logic that feels otherworldly and surreal, yet very much grounded and realistic. When the deaf and (seemingly) autistic youth is murdered, deafness unambiguously becomes the sole weapon the people of Vasenka take up against the military torture, and they use it to their advantage. Such unequivocal silence becomes a kind of retribution.
“Deafness is suspended above blue tin roofs
and copper eaves; deafness
feeds on birches, light posts, hospital roofs, bells;
deafness rests in our men's chests.”
Kaminsky here manages to masterfully blend sound with silence, bereavement with longing, articulating what appear to be simple truths. His narrative—early life in Odesa and family history set against the backdrop of the former Soviet Union—has shaped the Deaf Republic. Kaminsky, mostly deaf since the age of four, transforms infirmity into power here, and as personal that is, it is what elevates the storytelling to the next level. And this doesn’t for once feels too forced, as the story is told in lines and poetry that effectively manage space. We can't get away from the horror since it reappears from a different angle or on a different page.
“In these avenues, deafness is our only barricade.”
And, yet, there is joy in this harrowing story of fragility and limited rights. The poems of Sonya and Alfonso, the newlywed puppeteers, are sensory riches, and sometimes get so much sensual that it starts to tread the thin line between emotional and carnal, but always comes back to being melancholic in the end. As much as it’s a deep well of bittersweet emotions, to be the voyeur to the fervent ministrations sometimes acts as a kind of tonal shift. While that’s not necessarily a bad thing if used sparely and with relevance, here it does get a bit jarring often.
“Deafness isn't an illness! It's a sexual position!”
The best thing about this book is how it manages to create a backstory for this fictitious town and beleaguered country, as almost a dystopian world (say) by the likes of Margaret Atwood or Cormac McCarthy. We can see and feel it when we round a corner. The intangible has form. With surprise, the logic becomes image-dense. The two Acts act like a social allegory on the power of reaction.
Community action cannot withstand ongoing strife, uncertainty, and risk. Relationships deteriorate, and individuals focus on the personal rather than the community. While masterfully presenting an imagined setting, the poems appear to dangle us over the cliff of the here and now, forcing us to observe the equal and opposing forces that reflect how damaged we are and how we still might be able to move on.
“Watch, God— deaf have something to tell that not even they can hear.”
As much as the storytelling is praiseworthy here, it is not that usual, and for that matter, please take my opinion with a grain of salt. It is powerful, no doubt, but I’m still unsure if it will stand the test of time (I don’t know why I feel it, maybe it’s due to the tonal shifts).
Well, you should still go for it. Freaking brilliant when it comes to innovativeness.
“You are alive, I whisper to myself, therefore something in you listens.”
October 19, 2019
Wow, that was something else. I listened to BBC Radio 4's production of Deaf Republic while travelling today and ended up rewinding and relistening to parts over and over again. Utterly extraordinary. This radio adaptation was incredibly well-done (I'm sad it expires soon as I can't keep relistening), with multiple voice actors and, as far as I can tell, not abridged (usually, the abridger is listed in the show notes and there's not mention of that here). I was spellbound by this. It's a lyrical narrative, and reads like a timeless epic or fable. Moving and soul-crushing, and a political commentary on terror and war. I'm ordering a hard copy right now, plus another work by Kaminsky. Thank you, BBC Radio 4, for introducing me to this masterpiece.
March 28, 2019
I honestly don’t have words for how amazing this poetry collection was. It was something special that I didn’t even know I needed at the moment but it hit me with such a force, the words spoke volumes ( ironically since it’s all about being deaf and silence) I can easily see this being on a very short list for poetry collection of the year come the fall. Please read this .
February 17, 2019
Best book. Best. Expletive-worthy, breathless, wordless book.
February 25, 2022
A serious political story is told through poetry. The killing of a young deaf boy incites protests that are met with escalating violence from the soldiers. The poems are short, but the story development is quite clear. There is hope seen through an infant, who has her parents brutally murdered, but in the end "our country has surrendered".
The 74 pages that it took to tell this story of some distant, violent country is then told one more time in the final two pages through "In a Time of Peace":
"I watch neighbors open their phones to watch a cop demanding a man's driver's license. When the man reaches for hs wallet, the cop shoots. Into the car window. Shoots."
"It is a peaceful country."
Such an incredibly powerful book!
My second reading of this impactful book is on the day Russia invaded Ukraine. I read this as a reminder of the atrocity of war. The final poem reminds me that we are living in our own war.
The 74 pages that it took to tell this story of some distant, violent country is then told one more time in the final two pages through "In a Time of Peace":
"I watch neighbors open their phones to watch a cop demanding a man's driver's license. When the man reaches for hs wallet, the cop shoots. Into the car window. Shoots."
"It is a peaceful country."
Such an incredibly powerful book!
My second reading of this impactful book is on the day Russia invaded Ukraine. I read this as a reminder of the atrocity of war. The final poem reminds me that we are living in our own war.
March 10, 2019
WOW. This blew me away. More to say, but currently stunned.
April 5, 2019
This is exactly as good as people say it is.
May 14, 2019
I read this in silence; it is devastating.
May 28, 2023
I am not a very active reader of poetry, but this collection contains one of the poems I think about possibly more than any other: "We Lived Happily during the War." I first read it in the New Yorker magazine sometime before 2017, though I don't remember exactly when. I saw the poem circulating the internet again when Russian began to invade Ukraine. Kaminsky was born in the former Soviet Union, and the majority of the poems in this collection unfold a story of an Eastern European town occupied by enemy soldiers. Reoccurring characters tell of the violence and tragedy of this occupation: a newly married couple expecting a child, the owner of a puppetry theater, a young deaf child killed by soldiers, neighbors who defend and betray each other. Read it almost like a poetic play in two acts, relevant to our times.
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