finished it and immediately started over. intimate and visceral. if there was ever a perfect book, this is it.
Published 2019. I read it today, March 2022, knowing that Ukrainians were being murdered while I read... but I could not hear them. Knowing also that somewhere in the U.S. today a white cop is murdering a Black soul, and I won’t hear that, either.
We can’t escape war; our choice is in how we respond to it. Active resistance? Nonviolent resistance? Kaminsky demonstrates, bleakly, a third option, one we in the U.S. might find familiar.
This is an incredible work. Narrative poetry that demonstrates the inutility of either narrative or poetry on its own (or even spoken/written language itself) when communicating ideas of oppression, resistance, and aggregation amid political instability.
Oh, and the collection is emotionally devastating. In addition to being intellectually clever the story Kaminsky tells here is guided by an emotional throughline that cannot be understated.
I've never read anything quite like this.
