Here, bullet /

The verse in this book is not good, but it is, in a cultural moment that includes Cindy Sheehan, timely. Turner served seven years in the U.S. Army, including deployment to Bosnia-Herzegovina with the 10th Mountain Division, and a year spent as an infantry team leader with the 3rd Stryker Brigade Combat Team of the 2nd Infantry Division in Iraq. He, begins, after a prefatory poem ("This is a language made of blood./ It is made of sand, and time. To be spoken, it must be earned"), with poems whose titles precisely describe their contents: the nightmarish dispersal of "The Baghdad Zoo," the infamous "Hwy 1" ("the Highway of Death"), "The Al-Harishma Weapons Market," "Body Bags," "Najaf, 1820," "Dreams from the Malaria Pills," "Katyusha Rockets," "Observation Post #798," "2000 lbs." (in one bomb)-along with medevacs, translators, civilians and much more. Turner earned an M.F.A. from the University of Oregon before joining the army. His work is straightforward and direct. It highlights the violence and death of the war in a manner little seen elsewhere. (Nov. 1) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

The challenge Iraq war veteran Turner faced in writing this first collection was how to write beautiful poetry on the grim realities of war, about which there is nothing poetic. He aims to achieve his goal through simple description; the horror and the bloodiness of the war compel him to rely extensively on documenting its events, and his poems surrender to the power of narrative at the expense of the density and allusive imagery of poetry. Throughout, Turner attempts to capture the extreme experience of war by depicting the feelings it generates: the sense of loss, hatred, humiliation, love, uncertainty, and dreamy longing for a normal life among others. Symbols from Iraqi culture, such as Quranic verses, historical figures, and Arabic words, are cleverly employed throughout to enhance the effectiveness of the verse. The poems are strongest when Turner hints at and suggests functions that are vital to poetic language: "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." Recommended for large public libraries.-Sadiq Alkoriji, Tomball Coll. & Community Lib., Harris Cty., TX (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.