RaveSugar House ReviewThe craft and the moral weight of this work left this reader in awe ... The poems center on several themes: how to resist, how poetry can or cannot address violence, despair, hope, and complicity. These are not small topics but explored via Kaminsky’s deft hand, images, and humor, we get...a conflict inherent in this work: can poetry be used to describe the horrors of occupation? Obviously, the book is evidence he believes it can, and yet, one of the strongest moments in the book refutes poetic tools ... line breaks simultaneously delight in their layering of meaning and point to the horror of our own culpability. Kaminsky makes sure structure matches meaning ... a dramatic poetic fable for our time. We are now in a deaf republic where so many are willingly deaf to others. These poems help us to listen.
Hala Alyan
RaveThe CollagistThe images are surreal, yet full of tenderness and danger ... In most of these poems, Alyan uses long lines or avoids lineation all together as she does in the collection\'s prose poems. These choices let story and tone come through most strongly. Her lines are so vivid I often feel as if I\'m watching a documentary ... a book of triumph, the worlds courageously explored, the speaker, and the reader, changed.
