About this item

A war memoir of unusual literary beauty and power from the acclaimed poet who wrote the poem The Hurt Locker. In 2003, Sergeant Brian Turner crossed the line of departure with a convoy of soldiers headed into the Iraqi desert. Now he lies awake each night beside his sleeping wife, imagining himself as a drone aircraft, hovering over the terrains of Bosnia and Vietnam, Iraq and Northern Ireland, the killing fields of Cambodia and the death camps of Europe.In this breathtaking memoir, award-winning poet Brian Turner retraces his war experiencepre-deployment to combat zone, homecoming to aftermath. Free of self-indulgence or self-glorification, his account combines recollection with the imaginations efforts to make reality comprehensible. Across time, he seeks parallels in the histories of others who have gone to war, especially his taciturn grandfather World War II, father Cold War, and uncle Vietnam.



About the Author

Brian Turner

Brian Turner is the author of a memoir, My Life as a Foreign Country (W.W. Norton & Company) , two collections of poetry: Here, Bullet (Alice James Books, 2005; Bloodaxe Books, 2007) and Phantom Noise (Alice James Books, 2010; Bloodaxe Books, 2010) . He is the editor of The Kiss anthology (WW Norton, 2018) --a book that began as a series he developed and curated at Guernica (working with Ed Winstead and Michael Archer) . He co-edited The Strangest of Theatres (McSweeney's, 2013) . His books have been translated into several languages, including Arabic, Croatian, Dutch, German, Italian, Polish, and Swedish. Turner earned an MFA from the University of Oregon before serving for seven years in the US Army. He was an infantry team leader for a year in Iraq with the 3rd Stryker Brigade Combat Team, 2nd Infantry Division. Prior to that, he deployed to Bosnia-Herzegovina with the 10th Mountain Division (1999-2000) . His poetry and essays have been published in The New York Times, National Geographic, Harper's, Vulture, The Guardian, Poetry Daily, The Georgia Review, Virginia Quarterly Review and other fine journals. Turner was featured in the documentary film Operation Homecoming: Writing the Wartime Experience, which was nominated for an Academy Award. He is a Guggenheim Fellow, and he's received a USA Hillcrest Fellowship in Literature, an NEA Literature Fellowship in Poetry, the Amy Lowell Traveling Fellowship, a US-Japan Friendship Commission Fellowship, the Poets' Prize, and a Fellowship from the Lannan Foundation. His work has appeared on National Public Radio, the BBC, Newshour with Jim Lehrer, Here and Now, and on Weekend America, among others. He founded and directs the MFA program at Sierra Nevada College.



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