Greetings from Oxford, friends. I’ve just spent a lovely evening in Kellogg College’s beautiful Victorian lodgings and will be heading off to class this afternoon. Our third residence for the Master of Studies in Creative Writing begins today, and I am excited to get feedback on my prose.
This week I’d like to discuss a poetry collection from our reading list: Deaf Republic by Ilya Kaminsky (2019). This phenomenal work not only achieves technical poetic brilliance but also tells a story. It’s a drama of sorts, organized in two acts. Set in a fictional occupied territory, the narrative begins when soldiers kill a deaf boy during a public assembly. After the gunshot, the citizens become deaf, communicating in a sign language the soldiers cannot understand. As the collection advances, we see into the lives of the locals via stories of love, loss, parenthood—and puppet theater.
Let’s discuss the opening poem in the collection, “We Lived Happily during the War.” Its provocative title calls for immediate engagement: how could one possibly live happily during a war? Yet after a moment’s reflection, we realize that we know all too well how this is possible.
If we take the poems in the collection to be a chronological narrative, this poem is uttered before the one that recounts the death of the little boy, possibly suggesting that the citizens “lived happily during the war” until the tragedy.
But since the poem stands alone before Act I begins, I read it as a kind of prologue. It announces the real-world implications of the story to come, addressing its living, breathing reader before plunging into the play. “We Lived Happily during the War” communicates the why of the collection. Its use of first-person plural reaches off the page to include us: this is not a story about someone else, this is a story about us. And it’s a real, true one.
From a technical perspective, one quality that struck me about the poem was its symmetry. Its first and second half are organized in the same configuration of four stanzas: one line, two lines, two lines, and one line. For me, this doubling evokes a mirror, as though the second half of the poem were a reflection of the first. The thing about mirror images is that they appear identical but are not: fittingly, when the title of the poem is repeated in the last two lines, an aside is added: “we (forgive us) / lived happily during the war.”
This mirror image effect, as well as the many repetitions in the poem, convey a vicious circularity consistent with the nature of denial. For the speaker, nothing has changed from the beginning to the end of the poem other than an increasing sense of guilt or shame. This maddening complacency calls out to us readers for change.
Salon friends, let us not live happily during the war.
Poet Ilya Kaminsky grew up in the former Soviet Union, in a region which is now Ukraine. As a young child, he lost most of his hearing after a case of the mumps that was misdiagnosed as a cold. He came to America with his family at age sixteen and is now an American citizen. I can’t admire him—and his work— enough.
I encourage you all to check out this beautiful multimedia experience of Deaf Republic in The New Yorker, with illustrations by Miwon Yoon. I’d love to hear your thoughts. Which poem spoke to you the most? How did listening to the recorded readings and observing the illustrations affect your experience of the poems?
Once I get back to Paris next week it’s straight to work on my year one creative writing portfolio and more recital preparation. The next month or two are going to be dense, so I’ll be so glad to chat with you all each week at Salon Nouveau. Do feel welcome to leave notes, comments, and thoughts!
Wishing you all a wonderful week of honest reflection.
à la prochaine !
Rachel
This sounds incredible. Another addition to my TBR pile!