Deaf Republic by Ilya Kaminsky
Deafness spread over a country like a blanket nestled in among the brutal murder of a young child in the street, the brief kiss of newlyweds just stepping out of the shower, the invasive checkpoints conducted by nameless soldiers, the birth of a daughter brought into the world with a piano serenade. The silence is pregnant with complicity and resistance- quietly building a barrier between what was and what is.
Ilya Kaminsky builds these worlds of fleeting joy and searing pain in his poetry collection, Deaf Republic. Most of the collection resides in two acts that explore a community ripped apart by war. It is easy to see the parallels between fictionalized Vasenka and Kaminsky’s Ukranian hometown, Odessa, or Warsaw, or Darfur, or any other city where the people were silenced.
“Observe this moment
-how it convulses-
….
the nakedness
of a whole nation.” (12)
The visceral image of a moment convulsing lends weight to the power of a community watching and remembering. The townspeople are actively protesting in this act of observation, “Our hearing doesn’t weaken, but something silent in us strengthens.” (14) Their resolve to witness and survive grows.
The first act of poems sets the stage for the story of Sonya and Alfonso. There are moments of sweetness like the daily rituals of newlywed love and creating a child, but there are also vivid atrocities like the town center displays of naked prisoners, public executions, and night raids.
In “Widower” Kaminsky introduces the idea that the townspeople are no longer people- like Sonya in the town square after her arrest, they are stripped bare, reduced to nameless bodies. After Sonya’s murder, Alfonso paints the message “PEOPLE LIVE HERE-,” but then the narrator comments Alfonso is “...like an illiterate/signing a document/he does not understand” (34). Alfonso still maintains resistance, but does not understand that everyone else has given over their identity through their silence.
Kaminsky brings in other types of silent resistance in the second act, which focuses on Mama Galya. Her theatre is her avenue of protest. She trains her girls to quietly invite soldiers in while performances happen. They play the part of submissive, but in actuality are resistors. But, when Mama Galya’s resistance brings more targeted violence to her girls, the townspeople turn on her. She is sacrificed because being silent is easier.
By the end of this act, the country has surrendered. There is nobody to perform the death rituals for Mama Galya. Knowledge of who the townspeople were before the war is disappearing. The narrator “...stands like a flagpole/without a flag.” (70) What existed before the war has begun to be forgotten. History is revised. But there are still some who remember, who “...teach their children to sign…,” who remember to resist with their silence, “...when the patrols march…,” and raise children to “...not be afraid…” (71).
Kaminsky does not reserve his commentary on deafness to just a fictionalized town. The first and final poems of the collection carry their own weight. If the drama of Vasenka could represent his childhood home, where he lost his hearing at the age of four, the two outlier poems are set in his adopted home of America, where he emigrated at the age of 16.
“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: indivisible house by indivisible house by indivisible house-
...in our great country of money, we (forgive us)
lived happily during the war.” (3)
It is painful to read these lines living in 2020 America, and even more painful to see myself in them. Americans are figuratively deaf and “...liv[ing] happily during the war.” We only protest enough to satisfy our conscience, but not disrupt our daily lives- a searing commentary when taken in concert with our current healthcare crisis.
Kaminsky again bears witness to the violence in America’s streets in the ironically titled, final poem, “In a Time of Peace.”
“Ours is a country in which a boy shot by police lies on the pavement
for hours.
…
We see in his open mouth
the nakedness
of the whole nation.” (75)
Echoes of the Black Lives Matter movement resonate in these lines. Michael Brown’s death sparked conversation about police brutality, racial equity, and economic disparity. There were protests. There was a call for legislation. There was a demand for justice. But then the lane became crowded with another cause. Again, we the people observed the dead body in the street, but did not act enough. We allowed ourselves to become deaf to the violence.
The end of the “Deaf Republic” narrative is a page with four of the repeated pictographs that pop up in the two-part Vasenska story. They loosely translate, “The Town watches the Earth’s Story.” Facing these signs are the lines, “We are sitting in the audience, still. Silence, like the bullet that’s missed us, spins-” (72).
The townspeople, like the Americans of the first and final poem, are still watching, recording, waiting to share their testimony.
About Carrie Honaker
Carrie Honaker is a writer currently based in Panama City Beach, Florida. She studied Literature at Florida State University, but has worn many hats including restaurateur and teacher. Carrie is a voracious reader and kitchen sorcery addict who found her inner writer at the Blue Ridge Writing Project in 2010. Most days you can find her plowing through a book, writing or dabbling with a new recipe.
Carrie’s work has appeared in ALCA Lines, Virginia English Journal, and Digital Is. She also regularly writes about experiences in the classroom, moments in the kitchen, and all things travel & restaurants on her site, StrawbabiesandChocolateBeer.com. Currently, she is revising her foodoir about life growing up on a farm in Vermont interspersed with family recipes. You can find her on Twitter: @writeonhonaker, Instagram: @corkdorkva, on Goodreads & Trip Advisor.
