Point of View

The poems collected in Deaf Republic are written from a range of different first person points of view. The poem preceding Act One, "We Lived Happily during the War," and the poem following Act Two, "In a Time of Peace," are written from the first person perspective of an unidentified speaker. All of the first person poems, containing an "I" pronoun in Act One, inhabit Alfonso Barabinski's perspective. "The 'I' of Act Two," is Momma Galya Armolinskaya (7). The author identifies the "chorus, 'we' who tell the story," throughout the collection as "the townspeople of Vasenka" (7). All of these collective first person poems, therefore, are written from the collective voice of the citizens, and depict scenes or events occurring in the town's public spaces. The first person poems written from both Alfonso and Momma Galya's perspectives, often shift inside private interior spaces, describing scenes and interactions...