Resistance Literature: Deaf Republic

Name: Resistance Literature: Deaf Republic
Start: 2026-04-19T11:30:00-04:00
Location: Time & Space Limited

Ilya Kaminsky

Book Discussion with Kim Barke

Sun Apr 19, 2026 at 11:30 am

Occupation, complicity, what silence costs – the best resistance poetry of this century. Purchase or borrow from your library.

Our country woke up the next morning and refused to hear soldiers.
In the name of Petya, we refuse.
At six a.m., when soldiers compliment girls in the alley, the girls slide by, pointing to their ears. At eight, the bakery door is shut in soldier.

Ivanoff’s face, though he’s their best customer. At ten, Momma Galya chalks No One Hears You on the gates of the soldiers’ barracks.
By eleven a.m., arrests begin.
Our hearing doesn’t weaken, but something silent in us strengthens.
In the ears of the town, snow falls.

—from “Deafness, an Insurgency, Begins”

Winner of the National Jewish Book Award for Poetry. Finalist for the National Book Award, PEN/Jean Stein Award, National Book Critics Circle Award, Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award, and Los Angeles Times Book Prize. Named an Atlantic Best American Poetry Collection of the 21st Century.