Abstract

In the years following September 11, 2001, critical perspectives about the Iraq War were censored in mainstream media by a type of journalism called “embedded reporting,” which structured the narratives about the Iraq War in support of the U.S. military effort (Butler 2009, 64). This article examines how Brian Turner’s 2005 book of poems Here, Bullet reflects the way embedded reporting framed the Iraq war during this period. Through close readings of four pairs of poems in Here, Bullet, this article shows how Turner’s poetry reiterates the embedded reporting that framed the war effort as a fight against terrorism, while also exposing the shared albeit unequal precariousness of both Iraqis and Americans in Iraq. In the process, this essay argues that, by providing representations of this unequal precariousness, Here, Bullet suggests that the war effort is maintained by sustaining military Orientalist norms of recognition for grieving and valuing bodies. More specifically, the soldier-speaker in these poems exposes the way American soldiers are disciplined within a military culture that views itself as a civilizing force with norms about who to value and mourn.

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