Meran Paul, Features Editor
Obscenities are used.
“Deaf Republic” is a poetry collection that chronicles the stories of citizens in a country where no one can hear anymore. Set against the backdrop of an occupied territory in conflict, it is written as a hybrid form of play and poetry. While breaking up a protest, a soldier shoots and tragically kills a young deaf boy, the gunshot deafening the entire town. What follows is silence and a carefully coordinated dissent using sign language illustrated throughout the book.
The main characters, whose lives and minds the book explores, are Alfonso and Sonya, a newly married couple expecting a child they name Anushka; Petya, the deaf boy who is Sonya’s cousin; and Momma Galya, the insurgency instigator and owner of the puppet theater. Along with them are all the townspeople (the collective “we” throughout the selection the soldiers, and the puppets who “hang on doors and porches of the families of the arrested.”
The book begins by addressing humanity’s instinct toward apathy and greed in the first poem titled “We Lived Happily During the War.” In an admission of complicity, Kaminsky observes, “When they bombed other people’s houses, we/ protested/ but not enough, we opposed but not/ enough.” The book announces catastrophe right from the start.Meanwhile, the poet in America, distant from the war, takes a chair and watches the sun as America is falling “invisible house by invisible house by invisible house.” The guilt of inaction is introduced when people realize that “in the house of money/ in the street of money in the city of money in the country of money,/ our great country of money, we (forgive us)/ lived happily during the war.”
The book is divided into two acts; the first deals with the couple and the second with Momma Galya. The death of a young deaf boy named Petya sets the narrative in motion. The gunshot turns the entire town deaf. “Our country woke up the next morning and refused to hear soldiers.” In this enforced silence, deafness takes the shape of an insurgency in the book. The townspeople, unified in their defiance, proclaim, “In the name of Petya, we refuse.” Kaminsky masterfully uses sign language as both a tool of resistance and a metaphor for solidarity in the face of oppression, as the characters frequently use it as a means of communication.
In a poem titled “Of Weddings Before the War,” Alfonso is watching Sonya in the shower, holding her breasts in her hands. Alfonso calls them “two small explosions.” This scene showcases the difficulty Alfonso faces in trying to take the violence of war out of his mind. Even in this intimate moment, the imagery of war seeps in, highlighting the inescapable presence of violence. Kaminsky’s use of the human body and sex becomes the means of exploring both vulnerability and the impact of violence.
Another example of this theme appears in the poem “Galya’s Puppeteers” from the second act, where one of Momma Galya’s puppets performs a sexual act on a soldier. After the soldier passes out, “she strangles him with a puppet-string”. She kills three soldiers in this way. This scene reveals how the body can be transformed into a tool for destruction, revealing the tension between vulnerability and violent defiance.
In another poem, titled “Soldiers Aim at Us,” a helicopter notices his wife and Alfonso observes in a rather humorous manner. “On earth/ a man cannot flip a finger at the sky/ because each man is already/ a finger flipped at the sky.” What is interesting in this quotation is the quick change from a sense of futility to the suggestion that human existence itself is an act of rebellion and resistance. This gesture is more than defiance; it is a declaration of our refusal to submit to oppression. Kaminsky’s use of silence as a form of rebellion, the human body as both victim and form of resistance creates a haunting portrayal of survival. “The deaf do not believe in silence,” Kaminsky writes. “Silence is the invention of the hearing.” Kaminsky’s use of silence as a form of rebellion and the human body as both victim and form of resistance creates a haunting portrayal of survival. “The deaf do not believe in silence,” Kaminsky writes. “Silence is the invention of the hearing.” “Deaf Republic” ultimately is an exploration of oppression and the capability of humans to resist it.