If one of us can write poetry in a language that isn’t his own, can we write a peace the same way?

Published October 15, 2023

Ilya Kaminsky’s “We Lived Happily During the War” is circulating again. I’m sharing it and thinking I can only spoil it by trying to add meaning to a 2023 reading of it. The term “gilding the lily” comes to mind, and even that doesn’t do justice to the inadequacy I feel. It sounds too fancy for how I will bruise this fruit.

Let’s get right to the the poem, then:

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.

Here is how the Poetry Foundation’s bio of Kaminsky begins: Poet Ilya Kaminsky was born in the former Soviet Union city of Odessa. He lost most of his hearing at the age of four after a doctor misdiagnosed mumps as a cold, and his family was granted political asylum by the United States in 1993, settling in Rochester, New York. After his father’s death in 1994, Kaminsky began to write poems in English. He explained in an interview with the Adirondack Review, “I chose English because no one in my family or friends knew it—no one I spoke to could read what I wrote. I myself did not know the language. It was a parallel reality, an insanely beautiful freedom. It still is.”

Imagine all of that.

I myself did not know the language.

It was a parallel reality, an insanely beautiful freedom.

Poetry and war are all around us. Sometimes I ask myself if poetry can help us eradicate war. It’s not an original question. I know that people who want others to fight their wars for them can be all too eager to eradicate art and free expression. Can we ever invert the power imbalance?

That big blue marble

My favorite version of Julie Gold’s “From a Distance” has always been the one by Nanci Griffith. She was the first to record it (and recorded several songs written by Gold). I was uncomfortable with the vibe that increasingly became a part of the more popular version at a time when war turned into a video game we all watched on TV. I even wrote a paper about it, comparing so much of the wall-to-wall coverage as breathless life-and-death versions of the John Madden CBS Chalkboard during football telecasts. That paper came to mind a few days ago. I wish I had kept it. A reading of it would probably reassure me about how critical I was of so many of our institutions.

Yes, from a distance, the world looks blue …

As expected, I’ve spoiled my presentation of Kaminsky’s beautiful poem, which I suggest you go back and re-read. I’ll sit with the headline I wrote for this post and with how I wish I had a better way to ask the question, and the ability to make it make a difference.

For me, at this moment, it says it all.

Peace.

Apollo 11 photo of Earth rising over the moon from Everett Historical via Shutterstock.

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