I wouldn’t say every book on Amazon’s list of best-selling poetry deserves the title. It begins with Seuss, then print and Kindle versions of Rupi Kaur’s Milk and Honey, some Mary Oliver titles, the Shel Silverstein classics, and that weird book of rhymes Lin-Manuel Miranda wrote. But just past Homer’s The Odyssey is a contemporary masterpiece: Ilya Kaminsky’s Deaf Republic.
This book is proof that in 2019 great poetry can enjoy tremendous popularity.
Most books of poetry are collections of disparate poems that have found homes in different poetry journals over time. And usually, once a poet decides those journal and magazine acceptances have reached a critical mass, they compile a collection and leave readers to bumble through it, trying to yank a theme out of many years’ worth of different poems.
But Deaf Republic is a complete artifact, similar to a novel written in a mix of prose and verse, which meditates on consistent themes through the experience of a few characters.
Kaminsky, 42, is from Ukraine and his first book, Dancing in Odessa, garnered numerous awards upon its release in 2004. He has joined the ranks of poets such as Joseph Brodsky and Charles Simic who, having mastered English as a second or third language, have put many native poets to shame.
Following the publication of Dancing in Odessa, 58 pages of immaculate verse, Kaminsky received the Whiting Writer’s Award, a great achievement for a young artist. Fifteen years later, after editing many anthologies and translating several volumes, his second long-awaited book is here.
In Deaf Republic, Kaminsky has agonized over the reader’s experience of his work. Eschewing most trappings of the mythical identity which generally befuddles readers, he includes a breakdown of the book through a dramatis personae near the beginning.
There we meet the three speakers of the poems: the townspeople of Vasenka; Alfonso Barabinski, a puppeteer and the first-person speaker of Act I; and Galya Armolinskaya, the owner of the puppet theater and the first-person speaker of Act II.
The genius of Deaf Republic lies in a compelling interior narrative bookended by poems that anchor the work as a whole in the context of American political discourse.
The book opens as a group of soldiers attempts to break up a protest and accidentally kills a young deaf boy. In response, the entire town feigns deafness in protest. Kaminsky includes illustrations of different sign language underneath his poems that serves as a symbolic language that overwhelms ordinary discourse in Vasenka.
From the first death, violence continues. Sonya, the wife of Alfonso, dies shortly after giving birth to their child amid suffering and hunger. Later, Alfonso attempts to avenge her death and also dies. Alfonso, a tragic hero, is driven to desperation by grief over the loss of his wife.
In the second act, Galya’s puppeteers begin murdering soldiers covertly, picking them off one by one, emphasizing how silence can cause dehumanization on both sides of a conflict.
Kaminsky’s book is a testament to the importance of language and discourse in preventing violence from overwhelming society.
The first poem, “We Lived Happily During the War,” and his last, “In a Time of Piece,” connect the story of a book to political movements such as Black Lives Matter while reminding readers that peace is always an ideal.
In the first poem he writes: “And when they bombed other people’s houses, we / protested / but not enough, we opposed them but not / enough.”
Later in the poem, he condemns our country as a house of money and begs forgiveness for it. It’s a harsh indictment of American culture followed through in the book’s final poem.
The book ends with a stark scene of police violence interrupted by the constant refrain, “It is a peaceful country.”
Kaminsky writes:
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.
We watch. Watch
others watch.
The body of a boy lies on the pavement exactly like the body of a boy —
It is a peaceful country.
Beyond the spare beauty of Kaminsky’s language, each line break accentuates America’s stilted response to violence in what we call our peaceful, advanced country.
The book is a great achievement and, as poetry continues to grow in popularity, should serve as a template for how to keep great poetry accessible to readers while maintaining artistic integrity.
In Deaf Republic, Ilya Kaminsky begs forgiveness for silence and pleads with his readers that only compassion will allow our country to truly hear.
Mark Naida is editorial page fellow at the Detroit News.
