Deaf Republic

The Literary Review calls Ilya Kaminsky’s Deaf Republic a “novel in poems.” Published in 2019, the collection of lyric poems tells the story of the fictional town of Vasenka, which is occupied by an oppressive military force. When soldiers kill a deaf boy, the townspeople show their dissent by feigning deafness, and using their own unique form of sign language to organize their insurgency. Kaminsky was born in Odessa (now Ukraine) in 1977. He became deaf at the age of four, when a Soviet doctor misdiagnosed a case of mumps as a cold. In 1993, Kaminsky’s family fled anti-Semitism in Ukraine and immigrated to the United States. There, at the age of 16, hearing aids restored much of Kaminsky’s hearing. In a concluding author’s note to Deaf Republic, Kaminsky writes “The deaf don’t believe in silence. Silence is the invention of the hearing.” In Deaf Republic, Kaminsky explores themes of war, tyranny, resistance, loyalty, and the power of silence. Deaf Republic is a Finalist for the 2019 National Book Award for Poetry.

A prefatory poem begins the collection. In “We Lived Happily during the War,” an American speaker, comfortable in a “great country of money” offers only token opposition to the bombing of “other people’s houses.” The poems that follow are divided into two acts. Kaminsky also includes a list of dramatis personae. For the “we” point of view, he employs a Greek chorus of Townspeople as the primary speakers. In Act One, Alfonso Barabinski, a puppeteer, is the first-person speaker.

“Gunshot” opens Act One. Newlyweds Alfonso and Sonya are giving a puppet show in Central Square, even though public assemblies have been prohibited. Soldiers enter the square and tell the crowd to disperse. Petya, a deaf boy and Sonya’s cousin, spits at the Sergeant. The Sergeant shoots him. The chorus says, “The sound we do not hear lifts the gulls off the water.” Alfonso covers the boy’s face and Sonya replaces his glasses. In “Deafness, an Insurgency, Begins,” Momma Galya, the owner of the local puppet theater, writes on the soldiers’ barracks that “No One Hears You.” The townspeople protest Petya’s death by refusing to hear the soldiers. They point at their ears to indicate they are deaf. The chorus observes, “Our hearing doesn’t weaken, but something silent in us strengthens.”



To communicate with each other in a language the opposition does not understand, the people of Vasenka speak in hand gestures and signs. Deaf Republic is peppered with illustrations of these gestures. The signs include steepled fingers for “Town,” and hands closed together that open up for “Story,” as well as images for “Kiss,” “Hide,” “Army convoy,” and others.

The soldiers begin arresting people. Families those arrested hang homemade puppets outside their windows. Petya’s body is left on the concrete in the square. In the poems “Of Weddings before the War,” and “Still Newlyweds” Alfonso describes his great physical and emotional love of Sonya, who is pregnant and close to delivery. The soldiers eventually take Petya’s body away and fire on the crowd. They erect checkpoints and order deaf citizens to report to quarantine, arresting them even as Sonya and Alfonso teach signs.

Alfonso and Sonya’s daughter, Anushka, is born. Three days later Sonya is arrested. She is displayed in Central Square and shot. In “I, This Body” Alfonso laments that “in the empty streets of our district, a bit of wind / called for life.” Alfonso mourns and the town responds with a “public killing.” Alfonso knifes a soldier to the cheers of the people. But in the poem “A City Like a Guillotine Shivers on its Way to the Neck,” the chorus observes, “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?” The soldiers take Alfonso away while the town watches: “each of us / is a witness stand:” Alfonso is hanged, and the soldiers take baby Anushka.



Act Two tells the story of Momma Galya Armolinskaya. Even though she is 53, she is having more sex than anyone in Vasenka. The soldiers visit her puppet theater nightly to see her unequaled breasts and visit “Galya’s Girls.” The poem “Galya’s Puppeteers” describes how one of the beautiful girls uses sex and drink to incapacitate soldier Ivanoff and then strangle him. The puppeteers drag the body outside into the alley and invite the next soldier behind the theater curtain. Momma Galya avoids arrest and cares for Anushka, whom she rescued from the soldier’s checkpoint, smuggling her out in a basket of laundry. The poem “Soldiers Don’t Like Looking Foolish” shows the repercussions of Momma Galya’s and her girls’ actions. The soldiers arrest every woman on the street and bomb a business every day for each soldier murdered. As Momma Galya raises Anushka, more women are executed. One day, the people turn against Momma Galya, blaming her insurgency for the losses of their loved ones. “The Trial” finds the people taking Anushka away and slashing Momma Galya’s face: she dies.

The country surrenders in “And Yet, on Some Nights.” The chorus knows that, years in the future, “some will say none of this happened,” and on other evenings, they will “teach their children to sign.” The final poem is a series of four images: the symbols for “Town,” “The crowd watches,” “Earth,” and “Story.” The last poem, “In a Time of Peace” closes the collection. It returns to the modern time of the opening poem. In a peaceful country, a cop shoots a man through his car window while ordinary citizens go about their lives. The speaker concludes, “I do not hear gunshots, / but watch birds splash over the backyards of the suburbs. How bright is / the sky / as the avenue spins on its axis. / How bright is the sky (forgive me) how bright.”