Limes with Orange

I was browsing through a largely fluffy series of articles at Boing Boing when I was stopped dead in my tracks by the review of "Here, Bullet," a book of poetry written by Sgt. Brian Turner, 3rd Stryker Brigade Combat Team, while he was serving in Iraq:

Here, Bullet
If a body is what you want,
then here is bone and gristle and flesh.
Here is the clavicle-snapped wish,
the aorta's opened valves, the leap
thought makes at the synaptic gap.
Here is the adrenaline rush you crave,
that inexorable flight, that insane puncture
into heat and blood. And I dare you to finish
what you've started. Because here, Bullet,
here is where I complete the word you bring
hissing through the air, here is where I moan
the barrel's cold esophagus, triggering
my tongue's explosives for the rifling I have
inside of me, each twist of the round
spun deeper, because here, Bullet,
here is where the world ends, every time.

What grabbed me was its honesty. I would have to argue with the Publishers Weekly review that claimed the verse in this book is not good, merely timely. Granted, Turner isn't Sigfried Sassoon, but then Iraq is not World War I. As Turner himself writes, "This is a language made of blood. It is made of sand, and time." So no comparisons to past war poets, please; judge these poems on their own merits, in our own time.

Labels: poetry, politics