Phantom Noise

by Turner, Brian

• ISBN13: 9781882295807
• ISBN10: 1882295803
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2010-04-01
• Publisher: Alice James Books

Summary

"The day of the first moonwalk, my father's college literature professor told his class, 'Someday they'll send a poet, and we'll find out what it's really like.' Turner has sent back a dispatch from a place arguably more incomprehensible than the moon-the war in Iraq-and deserves our thanks."- The New York Times Book Review , on Here, BulletIn the aftermath of best-selling Here, Bullet , Brian Turner deftly illuminates existence as both easily extinguishable and ultimately enduring. These prophetic, osmotic poems wage a daily battle for normalcy, seeking structure in the quotidian while grappling with the absence of forgetting.From "Discotheque":Late at night, Jackowski and I taped the flex-charge to the gate. I unspooled the shock tube, removed the safety. Hathaway radioed the countdown-and at zero-I pulled the pin. It was me, Sgt. Turner, who cracked the night open with explosives and wrote it all down, word by word.Brian Turner earned an MFA from the University of Oregon before serving with the US Army as an infantry team leader in Iraq. He has been featured on National Public Radio, The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer , and the BBC. He has received an NEA Literature Fellowship in Poetry, the Amy Lowell Poetry Traveling Scholarship, and a fellowship from the Lannan Foundation.

Excerpts

From "Discotheque":

Late at night, Jackowski and I taped the flex-charge
to the gate. I unspooled the shock tube, removed the safety.
Hathaway radioed the countdown—and atzero—

I pulled the pin. It was me, Sgt. Turner,
who cracked the night open with explosives
and wrote it all down, word by word.