Synopses & Reviews
In 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.
Review
"In Phantom Noise, the speaker recognizes the degree to which language is a co-creative of reality...and as such, these poems begin to interrogate the speakers entanglement in acts that he had heretofore largely only recorded.”The American Poetry Review
"[Turner's] writing is crisp, reportorial, earnest... [He] challenges us to experience war at its worst and confront its human costs without ideology or nationalism."The Georgia Review
"In many ways, this is not a collection for the faint-hearted, dealing as it does with deaths and mutilations. However, its scope is broader than that, as it also skillfully looks at history, culture, love, and family."The North
"[Turner's] is a poetry of horror, but also one of love and loss, infused with the restless spirits of the dead who hover over the living on both sides...His is a voice of honesty and despair, of imperfection and a self-awareness that most of us can only pretend to possess."Connotation Press: An Online Artifact
"Turner's book of poems is something that transcends poetry..."New Pages
"Turner's second book, Phantom Noise, continues to bear witness...looking on with equal parts courage and concern, but also as a poet whose language is always drawing comparisons, shifting the picture to encompass not just one tragedy, but a world's worth..."Salamander
"Turner's resilient, humane poems remind us of war's impact but also provoke and question."The Guardian
"It's hard to think of a better way around ideology than poetry like this. Turner shows us soldiers who are invincible and wounded, a nation noble and culpable, and a war by turns necessary and abominable. He brings us closer to our own phantom guilt and speaks the words that we both do and do not want to hear."The Washington Post
"...we need [Turner's] bracing bullet-borne language” as he tries to reconcile the chaos of Iraq with the demands of the poetic line."The New York Times
Review
"Michael Casey. W. D. Ehrhart. Yusef Komunyakaa. Bruce Weigl. The Vietnam War produced many soldier-poets. So far only one soldier-poet of the Iraq war has come to the fore -- Brian Turner. His first book, Here, Bullet (Alice James, 2005), revealed a strong new voice. "If a body is what you want, then here is bone and gristle and flesh," he wrote in the title poem. Now, five years later, Turner finds a new focus -- a veteran trying to survive the war that continues in his psyche." John Bradley, Rain Taxi (Read the entire )
Synopsis
In the aftermath of his bestselling collection "Here, Bullet," Turner deftly turns his attention to the war in Iraq. These prophetic poems wage a daily battle for normalcy, seeking structure in the quotidian while grappling with the absence of forgetting.
Synopsis
A soldier struggles to reintegrate, exploring the foundations of the psyche and how history instructs identity.
About the Author
Brian 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 was deployed to Bosnia-Herzegovina in 1999-2000 with the 10th Mountain Division. His poetry has been published in Poetry Daily, The Georgia Review and other journals. He received a NEA Literature Fellowship in Poetry, the Amy Lowell Traveling Fellowship, and a Fellowship from the Lannan Foundation. His work has appeared on National Public Radio, the BBC, Newshour with Jim Lehrer, and Weekend America, among others.