Interview

Oronte Churm of Inside Higher Ed interviewed Brian Turner – and posted a list of readings recommended by Turner, which can be found at the link below.

According to Churm, the 65 pages of poems in Here, Bullet are "surreal, lovely, violent, sad, smart, and disturbing—an anatomy of what we too might have learned or come to believe if we had served in Iraq and had the eyes of poets."

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Critical Review

Dana Goodyear's 2005 review in The New Yorker locates Turner in a tradition of war poets.

"William Butler Yeats had strong opinions about the poets of the First World War: Rupert Brooke, he said, was 'the handsomest young man in England'; Wilfred Owen's stuff was 'all blood, dirt & sucked sugar stick.' It is interesting to imagine how he would have sized up Brian Turner, a thirty-eight-year-old former Army sergeant from Fresno, California, and the author of a book of poems about a year he spent deployed in Iraq. Turner describes himself as five feet nine and a hundred and eighty pounds, with short but unbuzzed hair and a growing-out goatee: 'Not the best-looking mug in the world, but I do what I can with it.' His début collection, Here, Bullet, is more sandy than muddy, has plenty of blood (as well as 'Grease guns, pistols, RPGs' and 'all the fucks and goddamns / and Jesus Christs of the wounded'), and offers its share of sweetness, in the form of date palms, chai tea, and off-hours prostitutes observed through the lenses of high-powered binoculars..."

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News Blog

The New York Times' "Home Fires Blog" follows five Iraq War veterans "on their return to American life." One of those veterans is Brian Turner. Read his posts and see comments on this website.

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