March 16: Reading Guide follow-up to March 10 discussion of Deaf Republic

From Deaf Republic : It is interesting to listen to the entire book (audio - libby) although helpful to follow along with the physical text. Although I will not be here in person,  March 16/17) these are some of the points to further discuss at O Pen:

Background

We discussed We lived Happily During the War on January 26.    The video is a must see with each word appearing as he speaks it. https://www.poetryfoundation.org/video/151644/ilya-kaminsky-reads-we-lived-happily-during-the-war 

 How would you define happiness? What is your reaction to "so-called happiness" ? to  living in ignorant bliss with our backs turned?  How do you understand "war" ?-which one? -perhaps some of the invisible ones

In this poem, the repetitions, enjambments, are powerful as is the parenthetical (forgive us), like Elizabeth Bishop in her poem "One Art".  "The Art of Losing is not too hard to master/ though it may look like (write it!) /disaster. What tone does this opening poem establish  and lead us to expect in the pages to come of this little book?  What helps lead you to pin it down?   Alone, by itself, the poem is a powerful commentary on America, the Vietnam War, but also about human nature... how it is, we can live "happily" (well-enough, in spite of circumstances) while others suffer. 

Kaminsky writes, "Deafness, here, is an insurgency, a state of being, a rebellion against a world that sees deafness as “a contagious disease.” There is also humor, or at least a profound set of ironies: “each man is already / a finger flipped at the sky.”

 

 We discussed Feb. 8-9 Such is the story made of stubbornness and a little air (P. 47)  How would you read this poem out of context of the book?  As final poem in Act I of the book Deaf Republic?How do you "borrow light from the blind"?  What kind of light/insight?

Poems from Deaf Republic:

Gunshot  (first poem)

That Map of Bone and Opened Valves  (p. 16)

Discuss different tones and directions of the not-quite parallel endings of these two poems. How can a moment convulse?

What does silence do to us? to soldiers?

What is "silence" to someone who is deaf?

3 Questions : 28, 46, 66

Yet I am (p. 67)

Eulogy (poem p. 45 (before second question)

Firing Squad p. 65 (before third question)

Deafness, an Insurgency Begins (p. 14)

And While Puppeteers are arrested (p. 61)

What We Cannot Hear ( p. 32)

Checkpoints (p. 22)

In the Bright Sleeve of the sky ( p. 41)

(the above poem follows "A City like a Guillotine Shivers on Its Way to the Neck".  The poem after:

To Live p. 42

In a Time of Peace p. 75-6

Question Poem:  Quiet the World