We Lived Happily During the War

In Kaminsky’s poem, individual and collective sensibility fuse into one. Critic Will Brewbaker claims: “From the beginning, Kaminsky makes his intent clear: he will hold up a mirror to himself, and, if we happen to catch our own reflection, we would be wise to join him in owning our failures — political, personal, or otherwise.” For Kaminsky, this occurs through the expert way he works with the American lyric: “we opposed them but not / enough. I was / in my bed, around my bed America / was falling,” seamlessly shifting perspective between “we,” and “I” (Lines 3-6).

Brewbaker notes: “As the scope widens from ‘house’ to ‘street’ and all the way out to ‘our great country,’ the net of complicity widens, too, to include every reader and—importantly—the speaker himself.” The house becomes a symbol for shared reality and interconnectivity. Not only the speaker’s individual house and comfort of their bed, but “the disastrous reign” also takes place in a house: “a house of money” (Line 9). In this way, Kaminsky’s commitment to interrogate language in a time of crisis confronts the way language obscures and divides. As an alternative, he exposes and unites.

Kaminsky is obviously interested in how these the webs of connection are “invisible.” This is evident in the choice of language (“invisible house”) and is also seen in the polyvalence of the diction. Richard Osler, writing in The Literary Review, notes that there is a war “inside and outside America.” For Kaminsky, humanity is scrutinized under the pressures of reality to the point where the violence overseas or violence in which Americans are implicated might as well be done to America: “America was falling” (Line 6) when “other people’s houses” (Line 1) were bombed. The critic Karl Kirchway writes, “These poems bestow the power of sacred drama on a secular martyrology.” (Kirchway, Karl. “A Soldier Kills a Deaf Boy and Rebels with Silence.” 2019. New York Times). In the poem, the spiritual precept to treat others as one wants to be treated is turned on its head: what humans do to others is what they do to themselves.