Deaf Republic
by Ilya Kaminsky
Graywolf Press, 2019
Review by Adam Crittenden
We don’t often get a chance to read narrative poetry that overtakes us—narrative poetry that eloquently transports the reader into another world—but Ilya Kaminsky’s Deaf Republic does just that. Kaminsky creates a world so bleak and relentless that we cannot, and should not, look away. This poetry collection traverses the arc of a war-torn village and how the townspeople use sign language to rebel against a violent and overbearing outside military force. While navigating this fictional world that Kaminsky has created, the parallels to our own real-world issues become frighteningly obvious.
Kaminsky begins the collection with the poem “We Lived Happily during the War.” The poem demonstrates how complacency allows fascism to rise. Kaminsky writes:
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. (1-7)
Throughout Kaminsky’s collection, the devastating results of inaction and complacency are clear, but as the characters move forward in each narrative, they discover a way to oppose the soldiers: sign language. When Petya, a deaf boy, is killed by soldiers for spitting at a sergeant, the townspeople begin using sign language to communicate. Kaminsky efficiently lets the story play out line by line—sometimes in blocks of prose and other times in verse—and the sign language is also displayed through images, adding yet another dynamic layer to the poetry.
There are several gritty and captivating poems throughout the collection, but “The Townspeople Watch Them Take Alfonso” is a pivotal poem and the driving force of Deaf Republic. Kaminsky writes, “Vasenka watches us watch four soldiers throw Alfonso Barabinski on the sidewalk. / We let them take him, all of us cowards” (3-4). The tension of doing nothing versus taking action overwhelms the town, and the reader constantly feels the struggle of the townspeople: how can we fight back when doing so means death? Kaminsky finishes the poem with the following lines: “They take Alfonso / and no one stands up. Our silence stands up for us” (15-16). From one perspective, the townspeople are standing up for themselves by signing and banding together; however, from another perspective, their silence does nothing to stop the violence. Kaminsky is asking the question: how can simple people overturn a violent power-structure?
Act One ends without true resolution, but Act Two finishes with a semblance of resistance. In the poem “And Yet, on Some Nights,” Kaminsky presents a thought that is both haunting and hopeful at the same time: “When patrols march, the avenues empty. Air empties, but for the squeaks of strings and the tap tap of wooden fists against the walls” (71). The quiet in the air and the emptiness of the town haunts us insofar that the townspeople have surrendered, but at the same time we see the image of the puppets fighting the walls—breaking down the restrictive regime. Additionally, Kaminsky writes that some townspeople still teach their children to sign, indicating that the fight is not over.
The final poem of the collection, “In a Time of Peace,” appears to contextualize the story of fictional Vasenka with real-world abuses of power: “Inhabitant of earth for fortysomething years / I once found myself in a peaceful country. I watch neighbors open // their phones to watch / a cop demanding a man’s driver’s license. When the man reaches for his wallet, the cop / shoots. Into the car window. Shoots. // It is a peaceful country” (3-6). The notion that “It is a peaceful country” in spite of this gross abuse of power further highlights Kaminsky’s message—complacency and silence in the face of injustice will not bring peace. In a fitting close to the collection, Kaminsky writes, “The deaf don’t believe in silence. Silence is the invention of the hearing.” Deaf Republic is a provocative work that begs the reader to consider the price of silence.