Brian Turner: Soldier-Poet

Brian Turner is coming to my school to share poems that he wrote while in Iraq as a soldier. He put the poems into a book titled, "Here, Bullet." The poems are very moving, cutting out extra fluff that is often common among writers, to get to the very heart of the war and of the people involved. In an interview with Alice James Books, Brian Turner shared, "As a writer, I have a tendency to be overly musical and layered. I deliberately forced myself to write Here, Bullet in a more stripped-down, direct style—a choice I hoped would be honest to the events I was witnessing."

As I read some of the poems that are included in the books, I easily felt transported into the emotions that Turner was feeling--and the emotions of the people he was writing about. One poem, Eulogy, was written after a fellow soldier committed suicide.

Eulogy
It happens on a Monday, at 11:20 A.M.,as tower guards eat sandwichesand seagulls drift by on the Tigris River.Prisoners tilt their heads to the westthough burlap sacks and duct tape blind them.The sound reverberates down concertina coilsthe way piano wire thrums when given slack.And it happens like this, on a blue day of sun,when Private Miller pulls the triggerto take brass and fire into his mouth:the sound lifts the birds up off the water,a mongoose pauses under the orange trees,and nothing can stop it now, no matter whatblur of motion surrounds him, no matter what voicescrackle over the radio in static confusion,because if only for this moment the earth is stilled,and Private Miller has found what low hush there isdown in the eucalyptus shade, there by the river. PFC B. Miller (1980-March 22, 2004)



To read more of his poems, here is a good website with a few samples of Brian Turner's work:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5126583