Military Poetry

The Iraq War, now in it’s sixth year, has produced its own literature.

Brian Turner was focused on staying alive, not poetry, when he served as an infantry team leader in Iraq. But he quickly saw that his experience — “a year of complete boredom punctuated by these very intense moments” — lent itself to the tautness of verse.

The result was a collection called “Here, Bullet,” with a title poem inspired by Mr. Turner’s realization during combat patrols that he was bait to lure the enemy.

If a body is what you want,

then here is bone and gristle and flesh,…

because here, Bullet,

here is where the world ends, every time.

“Poetry was the perfect vehicle,” said Mr. Turner, who had a master’s in fine arts from the University of Oregon before joining the Army. “The page was the place where I could think about what had happened.”

via A Well-Written War, Told in the First Person – NYTimes.com.