from Eulogy

'You must speak not only of great devastation --

we heard that not from a philosopher
but from our neighbor, Alfonso --

his eyes closed, he climbed other people's porches and recited
to his child our National Anthem:

You must speak not only of great devastation --
when his child cried he

made her a newspaper hat and squeezed his silence
like two pleats of an accordion:

We must speak not only of great devastation --
and he played that accordion out of tune in a country

where the only musical instrument is the door.'
--IK

One of the most powerful collections I've read recently and 'Eulogy' is an example of how bleakness and a determination to hold onto hope both fit in the palm of the same hand. Kaminsky has written a modern parable that shows by the end, the work before us - fighting back but remembering that joy exists, the reason for fighting back. ( )

"At the trial of God, we will ask: why did you allow all this?

And the answer will be an echo: why did you allow all this?" ( )

Packs a punch! ( )

Ilya Kaminsky, a Russian emigre, a native of Odessa, now a US citizen, has written a haunting yet charming collection of poetry entitled Deaf Republic.

A town is taken over by a foreign army. A deaf boy becomes an early victim and the town's people resist by developing a sign language to express their opposition to the brutality thrust upon them. A puppet show serves as a front for the resistance. The women of Vesenka, heroines, entice enemy soldiers, ensnaring them to their own demise.

Kaminsky juxtaposes the range of experience: from the safety of the American suburbs where citizens take out their phones to record police brutality, to the war-torn streets of Ukraine where activism takes on a more elusive and creative force.

The world has gone nuts and Kaminsky gives voice to hope. He listens, like a witness, to the horrors that need to be exposed. ( )

A beautifully put together collection of poems. Ilya Kaminsky's Deaf Republic reads more like a stage play than just a collection of poems. It is a story. It is a parable. As the title suggests Deaf Republic explores silence in all its forms and specifically its more focused on politics and war and the effects of war and politics on a population. The story follows a town where after soldiers in the course of duties of crowd control of a protest kill a deaf boy the killing shot turns the entire town deaf. Thus Deaf Republic.

The collection poetry story is often beautiful and confronts the times we live in. At times tiresome but mostly beautiful. ( )