I don’t know about you all, but these days poetry is the lifeline that is keeping me sane. As the tsunami grows larger, I read more poetry. I don’t want to imagine what my life would be like if there was no poetry… thankfully, that will never be a reality because poets have me more than covered.

Recently, I heard a poem by Ilya Kaminsky ** Ilya is a “fairly new to me poet” and I have not been able to get that poem out of my head. It is eerily timely… despite being published in 2019. I am doubly fortunate that my library has a copy of Deaf Republic… I have been reading through it a few poems at a time each afternoon.

The opening poem, We Lived Happily during the War, sets the stage for the poems that follow. Poems that tell the story of Sonya and Alfonso and the town they live in. It is about community. It is about inclusion. (Ilya lost his hearing at age 4 and the book has some ASL images that allow the reader to be totally immersed in Ilya’s “world”) And, perhaps most importantly, it is about a view of things that are not at all familiar… at least to me… and that is exactly why reading poetry, especially right now, is so vital to me!

Here is Ilya’s poem:

We Lived Happily during the War

by Ilya Kaminsky

And when they bombed other people’s houses, we

protested
but not enough, we opposed them but not

enough. I was
in my bed, around my bed America

was falling: invisible house by invisible house by invisible house—

I took a chair outside and watched the sun.

In the sixth month
of a disastrous reign 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.

We Lived Happily during the War © 2019 Ilya Kaminsky. Published by Grey Wolf Press.

You can learn more about Ilya here and visit his website here.

Finally, stop and see who has gathered a poem to share with Bonny today!

** Yes, I listened to the Poetry Unbound episode when it aired, but back then this poem did not even make a blip on my radar. I am so glad Padraig revisited it in his Substack a couple of weeks ago!

Header photo by Polina Tankilevitch 

Related posts:

A Gathering of Poetry | 2.16.23 Thursday’s are for Poetry | 4.27.28 A Gathering of Poetry | October 2023 A Gathering of Poetry | February 2024