The Form of Poetry｜A Touch of Silence in "Republic of the Deaf"

[ Words written in the front: The first month of the new year is coming to an end, and the magazine "Zi Fu" has launched a call for submissions for the second issue. I hope to see your modern poetry. The Chinese characters in the poems have removed the character "女" or the character "女". Such words What kind of picture can it show? Submissions are welcome . A prize of 10,000 Architect LikeCoin is waiting for you to win! 】

I got a Travellogger by participating in an event on Twitter😎The event made me notice my handle that I had forgotten for a long time. My Twitter handle is zoyanka, which one of my best friends told me eleven years ago is the Russian endearment for your English name. I was forced to read some Soviet literary works since I was a child, from "How the Steel Was Tempered" to "The Story of Zoya and Shura". It was always strange that such long Russian names and nicknames could be Dasha or Sasha. I didn’t expect that I would have it later. It has been twelve years now, and she has always been by my side, whether I am happy or sad. My passion for Russian literature has never diminished, and I was fortunate to have her guidance on my growing interest in Japanese literature.

The war first reduced the individual's sense of existence and meaning to a very small size, crushing and replacing it with the feelings of family and country. Then, due to numerous tragedies, the individual's sense of existence and existence was immediately enlarged to the size of a person. , not even one home can bear it. After the war started, those individuals who had touched my life stood out clearly . They came towards me, and each of them seemed to have a kite tied behind them. The kite was the pattern of their country’s national flag, but there were There is more than one kite tied behind the person - his wife from Ukraine 🇺🇦 is from Moldova 🇲🇩, and his daughter lives in Belarus 🇧🇾; her family from Russia 🇷🇺 lives in Italy 🇮🇹, and so on. . In today's society, the concepts of nationality and extreme patriotism are gradually blurred. Who is not shuttling between several countries, especially Europe. It is becoming more and more difficult to define a person, a friend of mine, which is actually a good thing, at least I think so, because some of the more important meanings in life have emerged, and it is definitely not like in mainland China. , the cast list of a TV series must be marked with "Hong Kong, Macao, Taiwan, the United States, Canada and Macao".

Yes, this is the case in the 21st century. The entire earth is like a village. Using technological means, you can find any friend scattered at the end of the world, and anyone can get a Cosmopolitan ID card overnight. But who would have thought that in 2022, there would still be such a blatant invasion, there would still be discussions about whether children should be spanked, and marriage certificates could be issued to sex slaves chained... The epidemic has changed the cosmopolitan of many people The dream was shattered, but many people in Cosmopolitan chose to return to the same country after the invasion, uniting as never before to resist external aggression.

Everything happened so fast, invasion, a word that was quite surreal at the beginning of 2022, immediately became a reality. A person's life was cut open in front of everyone at once, and blood flowed gurglingly.

I think Ukraine's fierce resistance is so desperate in front of people of all countries and ethnic groups. However, facing such a big country that goes to other countries' capitals to "defend itself", the resistance is all on its own. How lonely is it? The entire war was unfolded and broadcast live before our eyes. This is the war of 2022. The details we see can be as specific as the relics of a fallen soldier. But why do I still feel speechless?

After seeing the opening poem of the widely circulated "Deaf Republic", I decided to read this long-unread work. After reading it, I breathed a sigh of relief. It turned out that Ilya Kaminsky's collection of poems "fits the occasion". War and people are made extremely clear in the two short poems that precede and follow his poem.

 The question is what is human?
Just a moment of silence between bombings.

Yes, war seems to have taken away people and their humanity all at once; at the same time, it also made a lot of humanity emerge more vividly. But what is a human being after all? Can human beings be truly human only in the quiet period between wars?

Kaminsky is an American poet born in the Soviet Union. His hometown is Odessa, Ukraine. This small collection of poems writes about what happened when the "Deaf Republic" was invaded. There is a character list like a script in front of the collection of poems. The collection of poems describes the experiences of a couple, their children, and the child's grandmother after the Republic was invaded. The whole family and the grandmother died tragically, leaving only the children.

 The question is what is a woman?
Just a moment of silence between bombings.

The squares, grasslands, and homes of the invaded republic were all dripping with blood in the poet's pen. Men and women all died in that voiceless republic. This collection of poems is illustrated in sign language. Because I am deaf, every few poetry chapters are followed by sketches in sign language. Finally, the Ukrainian poet said this in his annotation -

"Part of the sign language is derived from the Russian, Ukrainian, Belarusian and American sign language traditions."
"About silence: Deaf people don't believe in silence. Silence is an invention of hearing people."

I learned some knowledge about sign language from a former linguistics major. It turns out that sign language is really different from each place to other places, and the youngest language in the world is actually a sign language in Niaragua. Sign language was invented by a deaf village in the 1970s.

Therefore, when I saw Kaminsky’s explanation, I had mixed feelings in my heart. I thought that the sign language illustrations in the poetry collection seemed to be silently telling the world how painful and lonely the people of the invaded deaf republic were.

Poems sometimes have miraculous effects, especially ancient Chinese poems. The images and images in them always stay in the mind for a long time. While walking in the park, the poem I had read appeared in my mind, silently, and even the name, maybe because my grandmother had the same name as my friend, came to mind. In a daze, the green trees and red flowers around me seemed to be able to speak, telling them everything they had seen over the past few decades or hundreds of years, including wars, of course.

When I lowered my head, I saw a child's chalk drawings on the ground - dragonflies, butterflies, sky, white clouds. When I walked further, I saw a flagpole reaching into the sky👇

When I was in the war in 2014, I decided not to leave, not because I was determined to die, but because the rockets were aimed at the airport. One experience is that as a stranger in a war, it may not be a good thing to be immersed in news, app explosions or real-time intelligence on attack locations for a long time. The distress that war brings to people is indescribable, let alone insiders who have to run to shelter from time to time? Communicate more with local people and get their first-hand information and help. Even if you temporarily bury yourself in literature and poetry about war, you may be able to relieve yourself. After all, human emotions in words are connected.