Here Bullet by Brian Turner

“Here Bullet” is a first-person account of the Iraq War by the soldier-poet Brian Turner. The collection of poems are based upon his year-long tour in while stationed in Iraq as an infantry team leader, which parallels the accounts of Hemmingway’s service as a journalist for the Spanish Civil War. He offers gracefully rendered, unflinching descriptions, yet leaves the reader to draw conclusions or moral lessons. He has a consistent mode of brisk, precise, and nonpartisan attention to both the terrors and the beauty he found among Iraq’s ruins.

In “A Soldiers Arabic” he used differences in language to parallel the differentiating war and taking it full circle with the element of time and history. He wrote:

The word for love, habib, is written from the right
to the left, starting where we would end it
and ending where we might begin,

where we would end a war
another night take as a begining
or an echo of history recited again.

Here, the differences in language are between Arabic and English, and not only are the arrangements of letters different, but they are read from different starting points. Thus, where one persons life or words hey have created, or night ends is where another begins in another language. However, what is not cyclical is death, maut, wherein (pending stubbornness) is an uncertain moment in mortal life.

Furthermore, Turner wrote, “This language is made of blood.” And a bold statement, indeed. But, is this personified or anthropomorphized? Personified means to attribute human nature or character to an inanimate object or an abstraction however anthropomorphized means to ascribe human form or attributes to an animal, plant, or object. But, the ambiguity comparisons transcending literary terms  parallels with the act of war outside the realm of organic human creations, such as literature and playing on the phrase ‘art of war’, and is incomprehensible, such as war. Perhaps, it plays on the difference between soldiers Arabic and Arabic to the native.

Additionally, in the same line, the use of blood shows that war is a social construct (arguably) necessary. For without language there would be no communication if ideas, intellectual growth, or miscommunications and arguments that lead to war.

Also, he wrote that language “is made of sand and time.” Thus it is an organic (versus processed) byproduct of people comparing things to their surroundings and coming up with words that are not so funny double entendres like orange and silver.

He doesn’t rely on gore tactics (which fail because people are good at distracting themselves). In “Trowel” he wrote:

Because Hussein’s arm is scarred
elbow to wrist from the long war with Iran,
he holds the trowel in his left hand, pushing
mud against a bullet-pocked wall, the cement
an appeasement.

The lack of concrete details allows the reader to not feel guilt or shame, as many anti-war groups resort to, but appeal to the senses as an image is haphazardly happening to the reader. Wherein, reflects the minimalesque of Hemmingway’s terse prose (where the obvious connection is made by quoting Hemmingway in “A Soldier’s Arabic” writing “This is a strange new kind of war where you learn just as much as you are able to believe”).

One thing that makes him more relatable to the average person is that he takes frequently used images and symbols and reinvents them to appease the literary elites. Metaphors that don’t make you wince and think he is over reaching or over writing. In “Eulogy” he wrote

The sound reverberates down concertina coils
the way piano wire thrums when given slack.
And it happens like this, on a blue day of sun,
when Private Miller pulls the trigger
to take brass and fire into his mouth.

One of the staples of undergraduate prose is the use of adverb and adjectives (a former professor of mine said ‘If the verb or noun needs to be justified than you need a better word’). However, reverberates redeems itself with concertina, for they have some form of analogous syntax to them I can put my finger on. And he reinvents the cliché of a sunny day by writing “on a blue day of sun” and a gun shot is “to take brass and fire into his mouth.” He continued, “the sound lifts the birds up off the water.” Again, instead of fear causing the birds to shriek at the loud sound, the sounds lift them up. In a way, he sidesteps the classic distinction between romance and irony, opting instead for the surreal.

Throughout the book, the cohesive techniques included using two or more vehicles that merge at one area to propel your poetry instead of haphazard metaphors and reinventing seemingly cliché symbolism.