December 6th, 2007

Brian Turner

Brian Turner’s debut book of poems, Here, Bullet, won the 2005 Beatrice Hawley Award and the New York Times “Editor’s Choice” selection. Turner has also been awarded the 2006 Northern California Book Award in Poetry, the 2006 Maine Literary Award in Poetry, the 2006 Sheila Margaret Motton Award, the 2006 PEN Center USA Literary Award in Poetry, a 2006 Lannan Literary Fellowship, a 2007 NEA Literature Fellowship in Poetry, and the 2007 Poet’s Prize.

Turner served seven years in the US Army, including one year as an infantry team leader in Iraq with the 3rd Stryker Brigade Combat Team, 2nd Infantry Division. Prior to that, he was deployed to Bosnia-Herzegovina in 1999-2000 with the 10th Mountain Division. Turner’s poetry has been published in Poetry Daily, The Georgia Review and other journals, and in the Voices in Wartime Anthology published in conjunction with the feature-length documentary film of the same name. He did his undergraduate work at California State University, Fresno, and earned an MFA from the University of Oregon.

Brian Turner’s Here, Bullet is a harrowing, beautiful first-person account of the Iraq war. The poems in this remarkable collection reflect Turner’s experiences as a soldier with penetrating lyric power, compassion, sensitivity, and eloquence, while deploring the violence and acknowledging the grief and terror of war. One poem, Eulogy, was written to memorialize a soldier in his platoon who took his own life. Adding his voice to the current debate about the US occupation of Iraq, in poems written in the tradition of such poets as Wilfred Owen, Yusef Komunyakaa (Dien Cai Dau), Bruce Weigl (Song of Napalm) and Doug Anderson (The Moon Reflected Fire), veteran Brian Turner’s affecting poetry of witness is exceptional for its beauty, honesty and skill. These gracefully-rendered, unflinching poems make Here, Bullet a must-read for anyone who cares about the war, regardless of political affiliation.

Hwy 1

I see a horizon lit with blood.

And many a starless night.

A generation comes and another goes

And the fire keeps burning.

—Al-Jawahiri

It begins with the Highway of Death,

with an untold number of ghosts

wandering the road at night, searching

for the way home, to Najaf, Kirkuk,

Mosul and Kanni al Saad. It begins here

with a shuffling of feet on the long road north.

This is the spice road of old, the caravan trail

of camel dust and heat, where Egyptian limes

and sultani lemons swayed in crates

strapped down by leather, where merchants

traded privet flowers and musk, aloes,

honeycombs and silk brought from the Orient.

Past Marsh Arabs and the Euphrates wheel,

past wild camels and waving children

who marvel at the painted guns, the convoy

pushes on, past the ruins of Babylon and Sumer,

through the land of Gilgamesh where the minarets

sound the muezzin’s prayer, resonant and deep.

Cranes roost atop power lines in enormous

bowl-shaped nests of sticks and twigs,

and when a sergeant shoots one from the highway

it pauses, as if amazed that death has found it

here, at 7 A.M. on such a beautiful morning,

before pitching over the side and falling

in a slow unraveling of feathers and wings.

Fresno Poets' Association

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December 6th, 2007

Brian Turner

Hwy 1

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