The Whiteness of the Soldier-Speaker in Brian Turner's" Here, Bullet"

S Najmi - The Rocky Mountain Review, 2011 - JSTOR
The Rocky Mountain Review, 2011JSTOR
In Brian Turner's collection of Iraq War poems Here, Bullet (2005), the soldier-speaker
minimizes his white military subjectivity in order to preserve his own individuality. Turner
meets the representational challenges of first-hand war poetry through his emphasis on
narrative descriptions, his focus on natural objects and mundane particulanties, juxtaposed
with references to ancient Iraqi culture, and through the surrealism of his imagery. Together,
these poetic strategies enable him to process and articulate his experiences in Iraq without …
In Brian Turner's collection of Iraq War poems Here, Bullet (2005), the soldier-speaker minimizes his white military subjectivity in order to preserve his own individuality. Turner meets the representational challenges of first-hand war poetry through his emphasis on narrative descriptions, his focus on natural objects and mundane particulanties, juxtaposed with references to ancient Iraqi culture, and through the surrealism of his imagery. Together, these poetic strategies enable him to process and articulate his experiences in Iraq without succumbing to the paradoxically empowering and obliterating effects of his own uniformed whiteness in occupied Iraq. In the process, Turner gives space to a multiplicity of "observation posts" that decenter the lyric consciousness and enable the readers empathy.
JSTOR