Deaf Republic, by Ilya Kaminsky, is a unique collection of poetry for people starting out in poetry, or moving into reading more after reading a lot of fiction. Straddling the border between fiction, poetry, and prose, it uses poems to tell the story of a time of political unrest in occupied territory, presumably drawing upon his own history of being born in Odessa in the former USSR before he became an American citizen. It is a hard book to talk about because the poems truly blend into one another in a linear fashion; they could not be ordered any other way, because the book has a plot I won’t spoil. The book touches upon themes of love, death, the body, war, and silence.
Deafness as Activism
A key part of the book is that the entire town chooses to go deaf and stop hearing the soldiers after the death of the deaf boy at the beginning of the book, as an act of protest, and by doing so, silence becomes its own character within the book. A key image is the recurring instruction to observe a moment as it convulses, and it is repeated multiple times in the book when emphasizing a key moment (As Soldiers March, Alfonso Covers the Boy’s Face with a Newspaper, 12). The word ‘convulses’ feels incredibly literal and human, harkening back to the boy who was just shot dead, who didn’t even have time to convulse or feel pain. Another device repeated multiple times to great effect is the poem “Question,” which asks what a child, man, or woman is, and answers itself by comparing a life to the hush that falls between two bombardments. The poem “Question” is repeated three times throughout the book, each time asking a different question, and those two lines make up the entire poem. Elsewhere, the author describes something wordless in us growing stronger the longer it goes unspoken, and is able to hone in on the rebellious power of silence when it is unexpected or goes against the norm in a way that to me, mirrored ideas of nonviolent protest popularized by men like Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. (Deafness, an Insurgency, Begins, 14). Silence very much feels loud in the book: at one point Kaminsky compares quiet to the hiss of a struck match going out the instant it hits water (Arrival, 26). It is a part of a prose poem which I enjoyed, and a very unique metaphor. I am unsure how to describe the sound of a match dropped in water but it felt fitting. Silence is not entirely about strength, however. In another poem, the townspeople’s refusal to intervene is described only as their silence standing in for them, used in a far more ambiguous context—is silence resistance, or is it a testament to how war and occupation divide people, and how the townspeople won’t even stand up for their fellow men (The Townspeople Watch Them Take Alfonso, 32). Does silence represent cowardice, survival, or strength? The ambiguity of how it can be interpreted allows readers to really think about what it means.
War
While silence is a strong motif in Deaf Republic, it is set during a war, which permeates all the poems. The very first poem in the book admits to a protest that was never rough enough, an opposition offered while other people’s houses were being bombed (We Lived Happily during the War, 3). This really struck me, the idea of being a bystander from the start. It reminded me of Martin Niemöller’s poem “First They Came For…”, where no one can speak for you because they have all been taken while you were silent. It also reminds me of what is happening today with ICE, and immigrants being detained, including the thousands of people who were held at Florida’s “Alligator Alcatraz” before the facility was finally shut down this summer, its detainees transferred elsewhere rather than released. This book remains incredibly relevant today, which is kind of sad, because we would like to believe we have moved past this. The presence of bystanders in war is a repeated theme. Another poem imagines a trial in which we finally ask God why all of this was allowed to happen, and the answer comes back only as an echo of the same question (A City like a Guillotine Shivers on Its Way to the Neck, 40). This again focuses on active vs passive resistance, and on how we have as much of a responsibility as any God to stop the atrocities occurring in front of us.
The Human Body
The human body plays a role in the poetry as well, both a repeated focus and a way of bringing life to the characters. The most visceral description for me was in the title of the poem “That Map of Bone and Opened Valves” on page 16, which was used to describe the face of a young boy who was just shot in the face and murdered. The idea of his face being nothing but this map was so vivid and well-done; this is how good metaphors in poetry are executed. In another poem, the soldiers who are occupying the town are described as something less than men—figures held up as if by crutches made of bone (Search Patrols, 63). I think it is fascinating that they are stripped of being men in this poem, and instead described through that image of bone crutches. The use of crutches to me brings about ideas of disability, similar to the deaf boy, which mirrors Kaminsky’s focus on disability as strength. It also evokes a certain idea of lost humanity that comes with complying with war crimes, as though they ceased to be men the moment they occupied a town and began disappearing and murdering its civilians. The idea that these soldiers are missing something and searching for it in violence is referred to in another poem, which suggests that the body gets blamed for all things, even for something that does not live in the body at all (Firing Squad, 64). The idea that we both blame the body for violence but also seek out something that does not live in the body—perhaps silence, peace, more violence—really speaks to me. Kaminsky is incredibly adept at using the setting of the war to drill down into human nature.
Love in a Time of War
While a lot of the themes in Deaf Republic are rather dark, Kaminsky also ensures that he focuses on the lighter aspects within the war: love. The main couple of the first part of the book have multiple poems as a testament to their love, and the most touching line for me was the question of who you can sit in water with—since anyone can be a lover, but only a few people know you well enough for that (While the Child Sleeps, Sonya Undresses, 29). The sheer intimacy of the two just sitting in a bath together, and the comfort of knowing one another that well is truly beautiful. It is not just romantic love, but familial love that is focused on. Sonya gives birth near the beginning of the book to a little baby, Anushka, and there is strength of the newborn Anushka as a sign of innocence and love, but also as motivation for our main characters. So much of what characters do in the second half is for Anushka, in the hopes of protecting her from the war and keeping her innocent.
Silence very much feels loud in the book—a quiet that hisses rather than simply falls.
Ilya Kaminsky’s Deaf Republic is one of the best books of poetry I’ve read in a long time, partially because it reads a bit like a novel—the kind of collection that belongs alongside the 10 collections that changed how we read. The only loose thread at the end is the fate of Anushka, who after the death of all the main characters, sort of disappears. I think that this fits with the book however; one last loss of innocence, mirroring the start of the book and the death of the other child. I also think that the structure of the book is fascinating: having read a lot of old Greek plays, I noticed that the townspeople act a bit like a Greek Chorus.
