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180Brian Turner And when they bombed other people%u2019s 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. 2013 510 Born in Ukraine in 1977, Ilya Kaminsky immigrated in 1993 to the United States, where his family was granted asylum. He has a BA from Georgetown University and a law degree from the University of California Hastings College of Law. Kaminsky helped to start Poets for Peace, which sponsors poetry readings throughout the world. His 2019 collection, Deaf Republic , was nominated for the National Book Award in Poetry. KEY CONTEXT This poem opens Deaf Republic and serves as a foreground for the narrative that the remainder of the collection tells of a deaf boy who prompts the revolution of an entire town against an oppressive government. Although the setting of Deaf Republic is akin to the Ukraine that Kaminsky%u2019s family fled, the oppressive government described in its poems bears some resemblance to the Nazi occupation during World War II. And while Kaminsky is himself deaf, the setting and events are fictional. The poems, including the one that follows, address the fundamental injustice of human rights violations everywhere. KEY CONTEXT This poem opens TalkBack We Lived Happily During the WarIlya KaminskyDimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images Entertainment/Getty ImagesIlya KaminskyCopyright %u00a9 Bedford, Freeman & Worth Publishers. Distributed by Bedford, Freeman & Worth Publishers. For review purposes only. Not for redistribution.