18 pages • 36 minutes read
Ilya KaminskyWe Lived Happily During the War
Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 2013A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Literary Devices
Form and Meter
The poem is written in free verse, meaning there is no consistent adherence to traditional verse structures. However, for Kaminsky—similar to T. S. Eliot—no verse is completely free. Meter and line length are intentionally and precisely employed to create specific effects for the reader. In an interview with The Hopkins Review, Kaminsky writes: “So when we speak about form, to my mind, we don’t just speak about end rhyme, and other such devices, we speak about patterns and ways in which the patterns intensify urgency” (Interview with Ilya Kaminsky, April 2, 2019, The Hopkins Review).
Although the poem is not structurally an ode the poem resembles the strophe, antistrophe, and epode of classical Greek odes. Each of these units alters line length, meter, and line break to create distinct, energetic units that grow in urgency. The first strophe adopts a relatable motif of moral responsibility and guilt, punctuated by the second sentence: “America / was falling: invisible house by invisible house by invisible house” (Lines 5-6).
The repetition holds incredible urgency. However, the antistrophe contrasts in a formidable way: “I took a chair outside and watched the sun” (Line 7). The use of iambic pentameter and balanced syntax lifts the line from the poem and complicates the reader’s view of private joy. Finally, with the use of repetition, the epode “In the sixth month” (Line 8) revisits the earlier urgent tone. However, the poem does not function as an ode. Instead, it uses the form to set up the core tensions of the book, drawing the reader into the complex sensibility and reassessment of values necessary to happily live.
Imagery
In a television interview, Kaminsky shared how being deaf transformed his perception of the world. He credits the inability to hear as the reason he read into reality as a visual language:
I was a child who saw the world through images. If you’re walking on a street and you can see people’s lips move. But you also see branches move. You also see the cat walk on top of the car. The birds fly down on the branch. It’s all a language and you don’t necessarily make a difference because the language of the birds and the language that you read on people’s lips (“Ilya Kaminsky, Anisfield-Wolf Poetry Honoree Profile.” Youtube, uploaded Ideastream Public Media).
The sparse simplicity of the language allows the imagery of houses to give the reader a totalizing perspective on the relationships between safety and violence, and money and power. One of the most powerful ways imagery functions is through the way domestic simplicity relates to other images: “I was / in my bed, America was falling” (Lines 4-5). However, if the purpose of imagery is to help the reader see what is out of sight, Kaminsky leaves the reader with a kind of honest language within the complexity of reality. The houses falling may be invisible, but they are still falling—which is disastrous.
Repetition
As a multicultural artists’ center, the music and literature of Odessa shaped a vibrant part of Kaminsky’s life. The core building blocks of music are repetition and the variation of the repeated patterns. In Kaminsky’s case, repetition is used to create a disturbing effect of urgency. The repetition also gains force thanks to its frequency. The terms “money” and “house” occur five times in the poem. The repetition of invisible house three times feels complete and impending. But the repetition of “of money” five times in a row pushes the poem forward in one of its most disturbing revelations. Poets tend to employ repetition to insist the reader focus on a singular idea or concept; in this way, Kaminsky commands attention on the myriad notions associated with “money” and with “house.”
