Deaf Republic: Poems - Softcover

Kaminsky, Ilya

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1555978312 ISBN 13: 9781555978310

Verlag: Graywolf Press, 2019

Inhaltsangabe

Finalist for the National Book Award • Finalist for the PEN/Jean Stein Award • Finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award • Winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize • Winner of the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award • Winner of the National Jewish Book Award • Finalist for the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award • Finalist for the T. S. Eliot Prize • Finalist for the Forward Prize for Best Collection

Ilya Kaminsky’s astonishing parable in poems asks us, What is silence?

Deaf Republic opens in an occupied country in a time of political unrest. When soldiers breaking up a protest kill a deaf boy, Petya, the gunshot becomes the last thing the citizens hear—they all have gone deaf, and their dissent becomes coordinated by sign language. The story follows the private lives of townspeople encircled by public violence: a newly married couple, Alfonso and Sonya, expecting a child; the brash Momma Galya, instigating the insurgency from her puppet theater; and Galya’s girls, heroically teaching signing by day and by night luring soldiers one by one to their deaths behind the curtain. At once a love story, an elegy, and an urgent plea, Ilya Kaminsky’s long-awaited Deaf Republic confronts our time’s vicious atrocities and our collective silence in the face of them.

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Ilya Kaminsky was born in the former Soviet Union. He is the author of a poetry collection, Dancing in Odessa, and coeditor of The Ecco Anthology of International Poetry. He was a 2014 finalist for the Neustadt International Prize for Literature.

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Deaf Republic

Poems

By Ilya Kaminsky

GRAYWOLF PRESS

Copyright © 2019 Ilya Kaminsky
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-55597-831-0

Contents

We Lived Happily during the War, 3, 
Deaf Republic, 5, 
Dramatis Personae, 7, 
ACT ONE: THE TOWNSPEOPLE TELL THE STORY OF SONYA AND ALFONSO, 
Gunshot, 11, 
As Soldiers March, Alfonso Covers the Boy's Face with a Newspaper, 12, 
Alfonso, in Snow, 13, 
Deafness, an Insurgency, Begins, 14, 
Alfonso Stands Answerable, 15, 
That Map of Bone and Opened Valves, 16, 
The Townspeople Circle the Boy's Body, 17, 
Of Weddings before the War, 18, 
Still Newlyweds, 19, 
Soldiers Aim at Us, 20, 
Checkpoints, 22, 
Before the War, We Made a Child, 23, 
As Soldiers Choke the Stairwell, 24, 
4 a.m. Bombardment, 25, 
Arrival, 26, 
Lullaby, 27, 
Question, 28, 
While the Child Sleeps, Sonya Undresses, 29, 
A Cigarette, 30, 
A Dog Sniffs, 31, 
What We Cannot Hear, 32, 
Central Square, 33, 
A Widower, 34, 
For His Wife, 35, 
I, This Body, 36, 
Her Dresses, 37, 
Elegy, 38, 
Above Blue Tin Roofs, Deafness, 39, 
A City Like a Guillotine Shivers on Its Way to the Neck, 40, 
In the Bright Sleeve of the Sky, 4¢, 
To Live, 42, 
The Townspeople Watch Them Take Alfonso, 43, 
Away, 44, 
Eulogy, 45, 
Question, 46, 
Such Is the Story Made of Stubbornness and a Little Air, 47, 
ACT TWO: THE TOWNSPEOPLE TELL THE STORY OF MOMMA GALYA, 
Townspeople Speak of Galya on Her Green Bicycle, 51, 
When Momma Galya First Protested, 52, 
A Bundle of Laundry, 53, 
What Are Days, 54, 
Galya Whispers, as Anushka Nuzzles, 55, 
Galya's Puppeteers, 56, 
In Bombardment, Galya, 57, 
The Little Bundles, 58, 
Galya's Toast, 59, 
Theater Nights, 60, 
And While Puppeteers Are Arrested, 61, 
Soldiers Don't Like Looking Foolish, 62, 
Search Patrols, 63, 
Lullaby, 64, 
Firing Squad, 65, 
Question, 66, 
Yet, I Am, 67, 
The Trial, 68, 
Pursued by the Men of Vasenka, 69, 
Anonymous, 70, 
And Yet, on Some Nights, 71, 
In a Time of Peace, 75, 

CHAPTER 1

ACT ONE

The Townspeople Tell the Story of Sonya and Alfonso

 

Gunshot

Our country is the stage.

When soldiers march into town, public assemblies are officially prohibited. But today, neighbors flock to the piano music from Sonya and Alfonso's puppet show in Central Square. Some of us have climbed up into trees, others hide behind benches and telegraph poles.

When Petya, the deaf boy in the front row, sneezes, the sergeant puppet collapses, shrieking. He stands up again, snorts, shakes his fist at the laughing audience. An army jeep swerves into the square, disgorging its own Sergeant.

Disperse immediately!

Disperse immediately! the puppet mimics in a wooden falsetto.

Everyone freezes except Petya, who keeps giggling. Someone claps a hand over his mouth. The Sergeant turns toward the boy, raising his finger.

You!

You! the puppet raises a finger.

Sonya watches her puppet, the puppet watches the Sergeant, the Sergeant watches Sonya and Alfonso, but the rest of us watch Petya lean back, gather all the spit in his throat, and launch it at the Sergeant.

The sound we do not hear lifts the gulls off the water.

 

As Soldiers March, Alfonso Covers the Boy's Face
with a Newspaper

Fourteen people, most of us strangers,
watch Sonya kneel by Petya

shot in the middle of the street.
She picks up his spectacles shining like two coins, balances them on his nose.

Observe this moment
— how it convulses —

Snow falls and the dogs run into the streets like medics.

Fourteen of us watch:
Sonya kisses his forehead — her shout a hole

torn in the sky, it shimmers the park benches, porchlights.
We see in Sonya's open mouth

the nakedness
of a whole nation.

She stretches out
beside the little snowman napping in the middle of the street.

As picking up its belly the country runs.


Alfonso, in Snow

You are alive, I whisper to myself, therefore something in you listens.

Something runs down the street, falls, fails to get up.
I run etcetera with my legs and my hands behind
my pregnant wife etcetera down Vasenka Street I run it
only takes a few minutes etcetera to make a man.

 

(Continues...)

Excerpted from Deaf Republic by Ilya Kaminsky. Copyright © 2019 Ilya Kaminsky. Excerpted by permission of GRAYWOLF PRESS.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Graywolf Press
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2019
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 1555978312
• ISBN 13: 9781555978310
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 76
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Macmillan Publishers International Limited; generalproductsafety@macmillan.com; ; (1st Floor, The Liffey Trust Centre, 117-126 Sheriff Street Upper, Dublin 1; Dublin; Irland