>> From the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. ^M00:00:04 ^M00:00:23 >> Robert Casper: How you all doing? Thanks for coming out. Very excited to be kicking off this fall season of "Life of a Poet." Before I begin I'll tell you that Brian Turner has a reputation of being a very, very nice guy. And he came bearing treats from Orlando, Florida. And I was very proud to be the recipient of one Florida's original choco gator [laughter], so if that tells you of the sweet and dangerous conversation to come, you know, I agree with you. So thanks to Mary Anne [assumed spelling] and thanks to the Hill Center. Also to Diane Ingraham [assumed spelling] for hosting this series. It's been a lot of fun. As I told Ron, I always spend the 75 minutes in which he's talking to a poet, on the edge of my seat. And I'm looking forward to that opportunity tonight. Ron is amazing. If you haven't seen him talk to a poet before in this series, you're in for a treat. It's wild to hear him seemingly pull poems out of his hat, tell the poet something he or she doesn't know about his work or himself, in ways that no one else I've ever seen does. So, it'll be a real, a real wild ride. Let me tell you a little bit, also, about the Poetry and Literature Center. We're just down the street at the Library of Congress. We are home to the Poet Laureate Consultant and Poetry. Our current poet laureate is Juan Felipe Herrera. If you want to find out more about him and his project online which is called, "La Casa De Colores," you can go to the website, www.loc.gov/poetry. You can even contribute to his epic poem, "La Familia." We'll have a new feature called, "El Jardin," that's going to go up October 15th. So it's worth checking out. And you can see the other readings that we do like this and then and talks and symposium, and so on throughout the year, mostly down the street at the Library. So, and now I'd like to introduce Brian Turner for this fall kickoff of our series. Brian's latest book, "My Life as a Foreign Country, A Memoir," has been called, "achingly, disturbingly shockingly beautiful," by former Life of a Poet reader Nick Flynn. And if you know Nick Flynn, you know he knows what he's talking about when it comes to memoirs. Turner's also the author of two poetry collections, "Here, Bullet," winner of the Beatrice Hawley award from L.S. James Press and the Poet's Prize, as well as a New York Times Editor's Choice selection. And "Phantom Noise," which was short-listed for England's T.S. Elliott prize. Turner's honors include fellowships from the Lannon Foundation and the National Endowment from the Arts. In 2009 Turner was selected as one of 50 United States arts fellows. He traveled extensively with an Amy Lowell poetry traveling scholarship and to Japan in 2012 with a U.S. Japan Friendship Commission fellowship. His poems have been translated into many languages including Arabic, Chinese, Dutch, French, German, Hebrew, Italian, Polish, Serbo-Croatian, Spanish, Swedish, and more. Brian Turner earned his MFA from the University of Oregon before serving for 7 years in the U.S. Army. He was an Infantry Team Leader for a year in Iraq with the 3rd Striker Brigade Combat Team Second Infantry Division. Prior to that he deployed to Bosnia-Herzegovina for the 10th Mountain Division. And that was in 1999 and 2000. As well as an Infantryman, Brian has worked as a machinist, a locksmith's assistant, a convenience store clerk, and pickler, and maker of circuit boards, a dishwasher, an EFL teacher in South Korea, a low-voltage dot electrician as opposed to the high-voltage electrician, a radio DJ, a base guitar instructor and more. Of course when I wanted to find some juicy quotes to help lead you into this event I looked to the Washington Post. Summing up Turner's poetry collections our great paper stated, "These books are an unusual two-part portrait of a decade of war. Its strengths, its wounds, its fantasies or home and as it happens, this strange beauty of a stubbornly foreign culture." And as Turner himself said about writing the poems for "Here, Bullet," in an online Q and A for the Washington Post book world, "I had to listen for what was around me. I had to think within the soldiers' credo. Pay attention to detail. I had to be a witness to my own life and to the lives of those around me." We are lucky to have him tonight here with Ron Charles to help us further understand the impact of this essential work. Please join me in welcoming Brian Turner and Ron Charles. >> Ron Charles: Thank you very much. You're our first pickler [laugher]. >> Brian Turner: Do you know what that is? >> Ron: Someone who makes pickles? >> Brian: Well, that's what you think but it's actually when you take out pallets. And they reclaimed pallets. And my job the pickle's a pickle fork, it's like a long prybar. And you have to pry apart the pallets to reclaim the nails and the wood for low-income housing and things like that. >> Ron: No idea, nothing to do with pickles at all, really. >> Brian: Hard work, I haven't done in a while [Laughter]. >> Ron: The military service defines your public persona. It's what we think of when we think of you as a war poet. And it's got a long history in your family, right? Tell me about your grandfather and your father and how their experience influenced your choice. >> Brian: Sure. Something I'm still trying to figure out, but my father was in, he was a Russian linguist during the height of the Cold War, mid '60's. Would fly in, he was in the Army, then the Army Security Agency, which was a it's now defunct, but little-known agency where they would fly with Navy pilots in a Navy plane over Russian airspace. Migs would come up after them, that kind of thing. They had the windows blown out one time and >> Ron: Jeesh. >> Brian: But if he was killed it would have been a "training accident," in the report back home, kind of thing. This happens all the time, but that's part of the work that he did, while his younger brother was in Vietnam as a Vietnamese linguist, walking trails and working in some prisons in Ho Chi Minh City, Saigon at the time. >> Ron: They were following their father. >> Brian: Right, so, well, different side of the family actually. On my mother's side of the family my grandfather who I was very close to, he's in Fresno today. He's under hospice care right now, but he's doing pretty well actually. But he was in World War II as a Marine. He was a baseball player, semi-pro baseball player for the San Francisco Seals. He was getting some utility infield work at the time right at the end of high school. And then the war broke out with Japan. He enlisted, lied about his age, and went into the Marine Corps and fought in Bougainville, Guam, Iwo Jima, places like that. He was in the first wave on the beaches of Guam. And not too long ago, maybe, in the last 10 years I'd have to, sometime around 2007, maybe 2009, I remember being at my mother and father's kitchen. My grandfather was there. And he said, "I don't know if I've told anybody this," which was his code for I've never told anybody this [laughter] other than, you know, his wife would have known. Of course my grandmother. But he pulled up his sleeve, put his foot on a chair, and pulled up his boot leg, the pants, and it showed, there was a big scar that I'd never, I didn't know it was there. Very thick scar across [Inaudible], and that was from, that was from Iwo Jima. And he never got a purple heart or anything like that. And I asked him about that. He said, "Well, I wasn't going to say to the top or the First Sergeant, you know, I need a, I should get a purple heart, write up the paperwork, because guys' guts were being blown out next to him." >> Ron: Didn't feel worthy. >> Brian: Yeah, you know. >> Ron: It wasn't that bad. >> Brian: I get to go home, you know. Yeah. >> Ron: I want you to read a poem about your father. "Homemade Napalm." >> Brian: Something maybe a little more poignant, perhaps, is that my dad just passed away. >> Ron: I'm sorry. >> Brian: He died the 28th of August. On a full moon. He used to tell me, when I was a kid, he used to say that, because we lived out in the country in the Central Valley of California. And there was, when the moon would fill he would say that there was, I don't know where he got this from, but he said there was an old Arabic saying that the moon as it fills, it's filling with the light of the departed. And then once it's full, then it goes away to Paradise and delivers them. Comes back for more each time. So when he left, it was the Supermoon, you know? "Homemade Napalm." We followed a recipe for the poor man's James Bond. My father mixing gasoline with bone meal and ivory soap, teaching me to shave a bar of soap with the flattened edge of the blade. My hands stung pink in the morning cold. He drank coffee saying nothing of my grandfather, the Marine, Guadalcanal, the flamethrower carried on his back. He didn't need to. There was a thick fog that morning he pulled the igniter and the gel burst into flame, sucking oxygen from the air. A strange kind of fire turning inward on itself. ^M00:10:02 My grandfather took shots of Kentucky bourbon. My father downed a 12-pack each night. And it was hard to understand why I'd find him in the living room sometimes, late, long after I'd gone to bed, waking to the sound of Josh White singing The Blues and the old-time vinyl. But I began to learn to be a man is carry things inside no one would ever understand. Things better left unsaid. Sung about maybe. Whose rare nights in winter alone, the world fuming with alcohol, spinning in the blue dark. >> Ron: Just sad, poignant poem. It's also a little crazy. To teach your 13 year-old to make napalm in the garage. There is a kind of craziness about that, isn't there? >> Brian: It seemed absolutely normal to me >> Ron: Did it really? [Laughter] >> Brian: I didn't really know what he did. >> Ron: Were the other kids in middle school making napalm? >> Brian: I never even talked to my - I think at the time I just assumed that they did stuff like that. You know? >> Ron: I didn't do that. I was selecting snails [Laughter]. >> Brian: Sure. We even made a 22 caliber zip gun. We had control measures [laughter] in the garage we'd put it in the clamp on the workbench and had a long string to the trigger for the first few shots, just because we weren't sure what would happen [laughter] with the round. And then we pulled it from outside the garage and then got closer as we could see how it was working or not. Yeah. And then, but I think about this. It was absolutely crazy because afterwards I remember just me at 12 or 13, or whatever I was, running around the backyard with a buddy of mine who was younger, shooting this little zip gun, shooting at watermelons and stuff out in this field. You know? I mean, who does that? >> Ron: So, was it just expected that you would enlist? Was that just the culture you were in? >> Brian: No, no, actually I believe is the opposite. >> Ron: Really? They didn't want you to go? >> Brian: Well, I just think they didn't expect me to join. I initially was, I was doing pretty good in school. I played the trumpet. I started taking some college classes. I think they thought I was just going to keep going to college and then figure out whatever I was going to end up doing. >> Ron: So why did you enlist? >> Brian: Well I almost, I almost enlisted twice in the Marine Corps when I was 19. And I, both times they said that I maxed out the test. So I thought that they were lying to me, surely, to trick me in. I thought maybe on a good day my verbal acuity maybe I might get lucky, but my mechanical aptitude, which I know they test for, not a chance in hell, you know. So they're either lying to me so that's not [Inaudible], or if they're telling me the truth, then I'm like the smart guy with mechanical stuff. So when the 50 cal goes down, it's "Turner," [laughter] this is a bad situation. You know [laughter]. Just, so I waited too and it just didn't make, and I started growing my hair out pretty long, half-way down my back, playing bass guitar in a band called, "Los Muertos Muchachos," "The Dead Guys," you know. And I used to wear a little scuba diver earring and that kind of thing. We went to a, you know I, I started continuing to go to college and playing in this band hoping the band would go somewhere. So I was following art more in my in my life. >> Ron: Were you writing poetry? >> Brian: I was. Mostly thinking and taking poetry classes, thinking they'll help me write lyrics for the band so we could tour Japan and go to, you know, be on Eurovision or something. None of that seemed to pan out. But when I was about 30, I remember the cutoff was 32 for joining the military. And I remember when I joined, I remember thinking that, I remember thinking, oh, I'm going to miss it. And I really wish I could, because it's getting to your question, I wish I could go back and ask that earlier version of me, surely you must have questions like this, too, in your life, at some point, maybe, truly not the same one, but if you could go back to your earlier self and say, "What are you going to miss? What exactly do you think's going to happen with that decision you're about to make?" You know. And I think part of it is going back to when I was maybe 7 or 9 or 11, when we were making napalm and when my grandfather, he didn't show me the scar there, but I could see another scar on his body that, you know, I could see the different scars that he had. I saw the scars that my father had, that they mostly didn't talk about. And I knew that, I could, they would drink and they would go out. They would separate from the family, it's a small tribe. They would go out in the front yard and the guys would talk to each other about military experience. And whenever I was around, it would shift. I knew the conversation was shifting because I was there. But it would mostly be the periphery of war, or military service. The beautiful island, the amazing ocean they went over, the sort of National Geographic version of combat, you know, minus everything that was >> Ron: Horrible. >> Brian: Yeah, right? And truly human and messy and ugly and awful and yeah. So I think partly I was learning in an early age and this was something I hadn't sussed out and I'm still working on now, is that I was learning that in order to become like those I most revered, I'd have to walk through a kind of test of fire. That old hero's narrative. And come back changed. >> Ron: And you did, in your service. >> Brian: Yeah. Yeah, but of course they're all so different. So it's my own path. You know? So it's yeah. >> Ron: Your own war, different kind of war. What was it like to be a lyric poet in the Army? [Laughter] Did your buddies know you were writing poetry? Did you share it with them? Were there other poets? >> Brian: There were, I didn't share it with them. I was in the military as a, as Rob has mentioned, 7 years, 1 month, and 29 days. And a total. And during that time I'd been in many different units and I knew that most of the guys in my platoon, like I wrote the poems in [Inaudible] when I was in Iraq in my notebooks. So I knew that most of them weren't going to come up to me and be like, "Hey, Turner, I heard you're writing poetry. Can I check them out?" Most of them are going to be like more like, "Hey, heard Turner writes poetry. He's a sensitive guy." You know, [laughter] and that sort of, and you know it's true. I am a sensitive guy. You know, and, but so are a lot of them. A lot of us put on this facade, this bravado because of fears underneath it. It masks itself with bravado, you know? What I ended, to get your question, I part of the reasons because I knew that I'd have to kick in a door later that night and I didn't >> Ron: Someone's house. >> Brian: Right. And in our unit, the Team Leaders lead from the front. So we might kick in the door. I'm going to be the first guy in the room. And then I have to make sure that my team gets out. And I didn't want, in some very small psychological way that we would never say to each other, but it would just be underneath the surface of things as things are in our lives, that the guys around me would think, they would undermine their belief that in my courage or my ability to deal with all the fear that I had within me, and that I'd make sure they get out of the room. I didn't want to undermine that. But, >> Ron: You mean if they thought you were a poet, >> Brian: Yeah, they're going to think >> Ron: That's not a great military leader. >> Brian: No, no, the guy, you know, he's writing about cherry trees and flowers and stuff. And you know that guy, that's not the guy you want to follow into rooms, is going to save your life, you know. Although, what's that? >> Ron: Yeah, King David. >> Brian: But when it came back, I found that, because they knew that I had been an English teacher before. >> Ron: Right. >> Brian: So I remember Forsman [assumed spelling] came up to me at one point and he had poems that he'd written in Quatrains and Tursets. And he was a young poet but as an English teacher he wanted my advice. So I was giving him some ideas of how he might work his poem. And then Boginns [assumed spelling] came up and he had what he called, "flow." He was a much more advanced poet. And I also tried to give him some ideas he might add to his work. And I knew that the Lieutenant was an English major at West Point, Miller, who committed suicide, I found out later, also wrote poetry. He was from New Jersey. So that's at least four out of the 48. I knew the doc, he played guitar. He played Blues guitar. >> Ron: Wrote lyrics. >> Brian: The thing is like there was, you know, the vast swath of America joins, especially in the enlisted ranks, and there are people who believe the idea of beauty is there. But we often don't see that in the uniform services. And then also, even those of us who are in the service, don't often allow that or recognize it in each other when we're there. >> Ron: Right. Why don't you read a poem about, >> Brian: Does that make sense? >> Ron: Yes. What every soldier should know. >> Brian: This starts with a quote from Rousseau which is, "To yield to force is an act of necessity, not of will. It is at best an act of prudence." Did you guys get it? This is amazing. I read this when I was there. To yield to force is an act of necessity, not of will. It is at best an act of prudence. "What Every Soldier Should Know." If you hear gunfire on a Thursday afternoon, it could be for a wedding or it could be for you. Always enter a home with your right foot. The left if for cemeteries and unclean places. Ogaftaottermik [phonetic] is rarely useful. It means "stop or I'll shoot." Saberhare [phonetic] is effective. It means "good morning." Inshallah means "Allah be willing." Listen well when it is spoken. You will hear the RPG coming for you. Not so the roadside bomb. There are bombs under the overpasses, in trash piles, and bricks, and cars. There are shopping carts with clothes soaked in fugas [phonetic], a sticky gel of homemade napalm. Parachute bombs and artillery shells, the carcasses of dead farm animals. Graffiti sprayed under the overpasses, "I will kill you American." Men wearing vests rigged with explosives walk up, raise their arms and say, "Inshallah." There are men who earn $80 to attack you, $5,000 to kill, small children who will play with you, old men with their talk, women who offer chai, and any one of them may dance over your body tomorrow. >> Ron: It's really powerful. And what strikes me about that poem is it is so practical that nothing about the advice, nothing about the practicality advice seems to have been sacrificed in the process of making it into a poem. ^M00:20:06 >> Brian: Yeah. >> Ron: I mean it really is good advice I suppose. >> Brian: You know, much of it I didn't know until I was there, of course. >> Ron: Yes. >> Brian: Right. That poem started began before I even knew I was writing a poem, of course. And that's when we were back at Ft. Lewis, Washington, prior to deployment. And about 800 of us were crammed into this large theater. And we were given a series of briefings over two or three days. And one of those briefings was a gentleman who came, an Iraqi gentleman who gave us some initial language training and some ideas on the culture. That's where it says never enter which foot you come into a house or that kind of thing. A little bit of language training setherhare [phonetic] which I still can't pronounce properly. But of course there was so much more we learned in country. You know the first day I was in Iraq, I hope this isn't going too far off the track, we were in Kuwait. We staged there prior to crossing the border. So the initial invasion went in March of 2003, we were going to be among the first replacements for those men and women. In December 3rd of 2003 we crossed the border, went into Iraq from Kuwait. So in the two weeks or so while we were training in the desert prior to going, we don't know who do we have to worry about? Who is it that might put that roadside bomb or the sniper, that kind of thing. Because there's no "front line." There's no trenches to lead our way up to like in World War I or World War II. So, and there's no uniform. So what do we look for? And we were told this in the monic [phonetic] they would say, we were told by our leaders and then we told our own soldiers, which was "see an AK 47 shoot it." Right? Because they're very distinctive weapon. Which was terrible advice. Like everybody in the country seems to have an AK47. When you drive through major cities, especially at that time because the country was in great turmoil, there were outside the banks there were sandbag positions with guys walking around with a black leather jackets, jeans, and AK47. They're guarding the bank. They're paid for, you know. So we would have been shooting people through every city we went through. >> Ron: Yes. Well, I want you to read another poem which dramatizes what you experienced. An interesting contrast between the advice of what soldiers were told and then what they experienced. It's called, "Two Stories Down." >> Brian: AAhh. Yeah. "Two Stories Down." When he jumped from the balcony, Hasan swam in the air over the Asher Street market, arms and legs suspended in a blur above palm hearts and crates of lemons. Not realizing just how hard life fights sometimes. How an American soldier would run to his aid there on the sidewalk trying to make sense of Hasan's broken legs, his screaming, trying to comfort him with words in an awkward music of stress and care. A soldier, he'd startle by stealing the knife from its sheath. The two of them struggling for the blade until the blood groove some deep and Hasan whispered to him, "Shukran sadik." [Phonetic] "shukran." Thank you friend, thank you. >> Ron: Nothing's going to prepare you for that. >> Brian: No. >> Ron: That's a remarkable image. And then >> Brian: What did Twain say? He said that "history doesn't repeat itself, but it rhymes." Yeah. And I have sometimes substituted the word, "history with war, war doesn't repeat itself, but it rhymes." You know, like these insane, unexpected things happen, where they've happened before but they're different this time. And I think that's why vets from different generations can, they bounce off of each other. And even in the same war with different experiences. >> Ron: Even though the wars are so different. Right. This experience here, "AB Negative, The Surgeon's Poem." >> Brian: Making me work here. >> Ron: Another experience that you couldn't possibly be prepared for. >> Brian: "AB Negative, The Surgeon's Poem." The Falia [phonetic] fields lies under a gray ceiling of clouds just under the turbulence with anesthetics dripping from an IV into her arm. And the flight surgeon says, "The shrapnel cauterizes as it traveled through her, here breaking this rib as it entered, burning a hole through the left lung to finish in her back." In all of this she doesn't hear except, perhaps, as music. That faraway music of people's voices when they speak gently and with care. That's an echo off of the other poem too. This is nice. A comfort to her on a stretcher in a flying hospital en route to Lonstool [phonetic] just under the rain at midnight. And Thalia [assumed spelling] drifts in and out of consciousness as a nurse dabs her lips with a moist towel, her palm on Thalia's forehead. Her vitals slipping some, as burned flesh gives way to the heat of blood that tunnels within, opening to fill her. Just enough blood to cough up and drown in. Thalia sees shadows of people working to save her but cannot feel their hands, cannot hear them any longer. And when she closes her eyes, the most beautiful colors rise in darkness. Tangerine washing into Russian blue with a droning engine humming on and a dragonfly's wings, island palms painting the sky an impossible hue with their thick brushes dripping green. Which is a way of dealing with the fact that Thalia feels is gone, long gone. About as far from Mississippi as she can get. 10,000 feet above Iraq with a blanket draped over a body, an exhausted surgeon in tears. His bloodied hands on her chest. His head sunk down. The nurse guiding him to a nearby seat and holding him as he cries, though no one hears it, because nothing can be heard where pilots fly in blackout. The plane, like a shadow, guiding the rain, here in the droning engines of midnight. I still feel to this day, you know, there's there are so many planes coming home with the dead, you know. And no one's paying attention to them. Or maybe they're not ours anymore, ours, who are ours? You know? We're at a country at war, actively in an air war for months now, and only until the Russians decide to jump in has it hit the news. I'm sure it's talked about here, in [Inaudible], but you go out in the country, it is not in the news. It's not being talked about. I asked some college students in Winterpark, Florida, about this a week ago. Right as, and people were like, they were, I said, "How many of you, when was the last time we were fighting in Iraq?" And then they started going back in time. They didn't know we were still fighting there. This country doesn't know it's at war. >> Ron: I want to talk about that in a minute. A poem like this, this woman dying on the plane. How do you keep from making it too pretty? >> Brian: Yeah. You know I think that's where, there's a point there where it says, "with the droning engines flying on and the dragon, droning on and the dragonflies, island palms painting the sky," you know it's getting painterly, >> Ron: Yeah, that's what I'm thinking. >> Brian: Overtly romantic. >> Ron: Yes. >> Brian: Then I try to stop myself, which is a way of dealing with the fact. As I think of, I think the poem if I listen to the poem and try to see what the poem tells me the answer to that question, I think the poem would say which is a way of dealing with the fact, sometimes we try to find beauty in the moment because she's coughing up and drowning in her own blood. And there's I think of Naruda [phonetic] at one point and I explain a few things that poem. He says, he's talking about children who died. And he says, "The children's blood ran like in the streets, like children's blood." And he can't find any other way to say it, you know? I'm trying to find some other way to say it, but then the poem stops and goes back to what's happening. Because I think we have to see the children's blood in the streets. You know. >> Ron: That's one of your most powerful poems. >> Brian: Thank you. [Multiple speakers] You know she was, I hope you don't mind just a little anecdote >> Ron: I assumed it was based on an actual experience. >> Brian: Yeah, but, of course I don't know her experience but I was at the Virginia Military Institute years ago and a gentleman came up afterwards in civilian clothes and said, "That's about so and so, isn't it?" Because the names change. Thalia was my babysitter when I was a kid and I just thought it was a cool name. And "Fields" is a gesture, a nod to Whitman, the idea of many, you know, fields. Because when I hear the word "fields" I think rolling fields or they continue the plural, you know, many. >> Ron: So how could he recognize? I mean people must have died in planes all the time if they were being taken to hospitals. >> Brian: Well he knew the unit address that I was second ID. He could figure out the time I was there. He's like, "Wait a minute, that's." And then he knew because he was, he came up and he said, "I was the one who put her on that bird." And he said, "The last word she said to me," as he put her on the bird where she ended up dying, is "go get those bastards." You know. And I read, I said that story at West Point to the cadets there. And they were looking at me like there was an Army guy, they're not so sure, so not like you guys. You know, they had their arms all crossed and they were leaning back in their seats kind of like, hum. You know. Who's this guy Turner? You know. When I said that line they were kind of, "Oh, yeah," because it's like a Hollywood line. >> Brian: You know, you'd pay good money for >> Ron: Yes. >> Brian: "go get those bastards," >> Ron: Yes. >> Brian: that kind of a line. You know. But I told them I said, you know, "Imagine those are the last words of your life. Is that the last note that you want to leave this world on?" You know. >> Ron: Of course it's all drowned out in the poem in the end. They don't hear anything but the roar of the engines. >> Brian: Yeah. >> Ron: This silent sobbing [sniffling]. Sorry, >> Brian: No, no, it's hard. You know she, the reason I thought about it, there were other people who died. And it was like who was I going to write a poem about? There were too many things to write about. And you know, for example, she was a cook. ^M00:30:01 So she was in the, and that's why I changed her name because I didn't want to, she has her own story. But I feel like there was part of it that could be shared, you know? A larger version. And when I would walk in sometimes she was at the Brigade Colonel's headquarters in Mosul, which is now under IS control, right? That city's about 2.7 million-ish, depending. Actually it's gutted out now so it's far fewer people now. But they're at the time, one of Saddam's palaces was taken over Brigade Colonel and so whenever we'd stop there for missions and stuff, we'd like to go to, the LT would go for mission briefings and stuff like, which gave us time to hit the chow hall. And the Colonel had catered desserts, they were great. So we liked going there to get these catered, we didn't get that at the post where we were at. So when we'd walk in the building, she was there. She's an American soldier cook but she would sit there and she had a clicker and she would count us as we walked in. And, does anybody here know why? What do you think, why do you think they did that, to count people as they walked in? Ahh, what's that? So there's two different answers there. And, right, because like if a bomb, right? Maybe because then you know like how many people are inside, you could save them. I wish it was that reason. I wish we were squared away like that. But we were not. It was actually your reason which is because money. Halliburton, Brahm and Root [assumed spelling] that she was a cash register for them. >> Ron: Oh, geez. >> Brian: And those meals are expensive, you know. And she also did, she was a 50 cal gunner on these cargo trucks that would ferry food out to outlying bases like where I was. And when she was on one of those missions, a roadside bomb went off. That's what ended up killing her. >> Ron: Geez. >> Brian: Yeah. >> Ron: This theme of betrayal runs through both poems that's you're fighting an enemy that's invisible, that's constantly kind of seducing you, or tricking you with friendship. It comes up in a poem called, "Ashbaugh," is that how you pronounce that? >> Brian: Oh, yeah, well, my pronunciation, I would defer to >> Ron: Not to me certainly. >> Brian: But according to interpreter that I worked with, he said that that was the word for "ghosts." It is actually tricky to find the word for ghosts. I kept going from interpreter to interpreter because they kept saying like, "You mean like the gin?" And there's a different kind of >> Ron: No, like genies, yeah. No, you mean dead people. >> Brian: Yeah. >> Ron: This is a very short poem, but very interesting. >> Ron: This is a very short poem, but very interesting. >> Brian: "Ashbaugh." The ghosts of American soldiers wander the streets of Belaud [assumed spelling] by night unsure of their way home, exhausted, the desert wind blowing trash down the narrow alleys as a voice sounds from the minaret. The soulful call, reminding them how alone they are. How lost. And the Iraqi dead. They watch in silence from rooftops as date palms line the shore in silhouette leaning toward Mecca when the dawn wind blows. >> Ron: What's crazy about that poem to me is how it highlights how different the war is for the Iraqis and for the Americans, both who are dead. >> Brian: Right. >> Ron: The dead Americans are just lost. But the dead Iraqis are leaning toward Mecca. And what a different conflict it is for each >> Brian: They have a kind of community. >> Ron: Yeah. >> Brian: I hadn't thought of that until, yeah, there's I knew a photographer here in the states prior to going to Iraq. And she was, she used to like to take photographs at the battlefield site for Gettysburg. So she, and of course, like most photographers, she liked morning and night. But she talked about how the presence of the dead was palpable to her. And she always had a very reverent sense for this face. >> Ron: From 150 years ago. >> Brian: Yeah. >> Ron: So you're there, there are literally bodies in the street. >> Brian: So that was, well, also me, right? I was thinking is that how it works? Right? If I'm killed here, if she's right, then I'll just sort of be here. And this will be my new home forever, or how ever long, however that works. I just remember thinking how sort of desolate that is in some way, not having a home. >> Ron: And yet in this poem, >> Brian: But having a new home, but it's not my country, yeah. >> Ron: Yes, and this is taking place in Eden, which is the weird, weird part of this whole conflict, or one of the weird parts. [Laughter] I can't pronounce it. >> Brian: It's called "Meiteraub" [phonetic] it's like the gateway to paradise. A meiteraub is also in some, when you look on the prayer rugs, sometimes you'll see an archway, like a doorway that's very ornate. Or like a mosque, sometimes they're sort of inset doorways with a shape. That's from my understanding, that's a meiteraub, a gateway to paradise. They say the Garden of Eden blossomed here long ago and this is all that remains, wind scorpions and dust crow-like jays cawing their raspy throats in memory of a song. A ghost of beauty lingering in the shadows, fall. Let me lie here and dream of a better life. Let what beauty there is be lifted up and given to the greater world as I listen to the mouths of termites eating of the earth, their bodies drumming a rhythm in the soil, undaunted in their blindness. By the millions raising a skylined architecture, the blood moon must recognize with light. Let me stay here with these birds and listen to their rough songs. If I say the desert is an after-image, that birds serenade us, that the moon is the heart of God shining in Heaven, that if there is a Heaven it is so deep within us we are overgrown, that the day brings only a stripping of leaves and by sundown we are exhausted, then let it be. Because if there is a definition in the absence of light and if a ghost can wander amazed at the days of its life, then it is me, here in the Garden of Eden. Where it is impossible to let go of what we love and what we've lost. Here where the breath of God is our own. >> Ron: Did you feel that when you were there? That you were really >> Brian: I wrote that when I was there, you know, yeah. >> Ron: You were at the sort of the cradle of western civilization. >> Brian: Partly, I had a wonderful anthology with me, "Iraqi Poetry Today," and it was phenomenal for many reasons. One of them led me to that poem and since it's in the footnotes, which are extensive, if you get a chance, it's out of King's College, London. It's a wonderful, "Iraqi Poetry Today," from 2003. It came out right at the eve of the, start of the war. And in the footnotes it mentioned that in the southern parts of Iraq where the Marsh Arabs are, and they're a nomadic, they move with the water and the seasons, that the thinking was that the paradise was there. The Garden of Eden was there but then it was lifted up and went to joint paradise in another place. And this is my rough understanding, right? But, I wondered about the space that remained. And it felt kind of like my own life in a way. Because I felt sort of, I had volunteered for the military so it's complicated answer that I'm giving and one that could be interrogated. But I felt like I had stripped myself away from my life and from, you know, I could go get a Chucko Frappuccino with whipped cream on top or something. But I was in this other space that was, that I had helped make dangerous and difficult and ghostly. You know. So it was very conflicted time for me. And, but there are a couple notes in there that to me sound very much like they come from the Felavene [phonetic] from his bluejeans. Like where the breath of God is our own and, you know, let what beauty there is be lifted up and given to the, while I stay here and listen to the mouths of termites eating of the earth. Let me be in Detroit. Let me be in Baltimore. Let me be in Fresno. There is that stream that's in me, that would rather, in the Koran there's a passage that talks about the gateway to hell. And it says that there are 19 angels, like angel-like kind of creatures that are guarding the gates of hell. But it says that we will argue about the number, so, [laughter] instead of, but their job is to keep the souls that are damned in hell. And there's similar things in the Bible as well where this idea of hell that's guarded over and they're contained. And I have a great problem with that. And that is >> Ron: Theologically or what do you mean? >> Brian: I like, I guess my concern is like those who've died and they're struggling and in pain, >> Ron: Yes. >> Brian: It's like that's where it seems like our attention should be most to find a way to take them out of the fire. Rather than turning away towards, "Oh, paradise, I could go there." So, that's, I think that's part of the intent in the poem. Is to think I'm part of the problem. I'm one of the angels that's come here to keep people in Hell. Does that makes sense? >> Ron: Yes. That's very troubling. >> Brian: It is. Yeah. I don't think of myself as an angel, but in that context [laughter] >> Ron: I want to talk about your most famous poem, "Here, Bullet." >> Brian: I'm glad you said that one, not other [laughter]. >> Ron: Why don't you read it first? >> Brian: How are you guys doing? You doing all right? I feel weird because I can't look back over this way but know that I'm with you guys. You know? Cool. If a body is what you want then here is bone and gristle and flesh. Here is the clavicle- snapped wish, the aorta's open valves, the leapthought makes it the synaptic gap. Here is the adrenalin rush you crave. That inexorable flight. That insane puncture in the heat and blood. And I dare you to finish what you've started because here, bullet, here's where I complete the word you bring hissing through the air. Here is where I moan the barrel's cold esophagus, triggering my tongue's explosives for the rifling I have inside of me. Each twist of the round spun deeper because here, bullet, here's where the world ends every time. ^M00:40:14 What the hell's that all about? [Laughter] >> Ron: It's so full of bravado, it's so >> Brian: Yeah, it's full of fear, right? >> Ron: Yeah. >> Brian: Yeah, that's what's underneath that. That's the real engine of that poem. >> Ron: It really hit a nerve, didn't it? >> Brian: Yeah. >> Ron: It was famous in a way very few poems are nowadays [multiple speakers] >> Brian: Nerve with me too [laughter]. And I still, you know, when I read the poem, it still draws water for me as a writer. Like I'm still learning from the poem. >> Ron: It was composed, I understand, very quickly? >> Brian: 12 to 15 minutes. There's a story told for a couple years and that was, and it's true, that I was listening to "Queens of the Stone Age, No One Knows," if you know that song, has a very insistent rock beat to it. And it was at base in Mosul and I was listening in headphones, more like wallpaper sound to block out the noise of the soldiers around me on the camp, you know? And it's the fastest poem I've probably ever written. I wrote three other lines but quickly excised them. One word was changed from finish to complete or something like that. So then I folded up, I put it in a Ziploc bag and I carried it in my chest pocket the rest of the time I was in country. So I actually knew and I trained, because we have side jobs. I was an Infantry Sergeant, so my job is to be able to patrol through streets and use a compass and things like that. But we did side specialties, so I was also the demo guy from my platoon. So I went to demolition school which actually harken back to my childhood. But learned how to blow stuff up and how to make the demo that would blow charges to blow doors and walls and things. I also went to mortuary affairs school. So to learn >> Ron: What was that? >> Brian: Mortuary affairs school. I went there for like three days or something. >> Ron: What kind of school is that? >> Brian: It was bizarre. The mortuary affairs specialist, he taught us how, like it would say if we came across maybe there had been an ambush and a squad had been wiped, all dead, and we immediately set up a perimeter and make it, you know, protect it with machine guns or whatever. And then I would, my job was to go in and to photograph where the bodies are on the battlefield. You can see this guy here is dead. My arm has been blown off and it's three feet over. One foot over. And there's nobody else around. There's another body over there. Different clothing altogether. And you know it's this guy's arm. But you can't do that. You have to, and normally you would put little flags in place where each of them are, mark it, annotate in the book. And then there are body bags that go, the body would be put in one, the arm would be put in another bag and tagged and marked and located in a map that is then all gathered together with the remains sent and processed further down the line. Because they'll have to do DNA testing the arm to make sure. They don't want to bury the wrong arm with the wrong, the incorrect body, for example. So I knew that that poem in my pocket, that you know when I first, I trained with him at Ft. Lewis, Washington. I saw him again in Kuwait and he said he was - I saw him in the chow hall - and he said he was going to set up shop there and we wouldn't see him again. But it got so busy for him I saw him again once I was up in Mosul. So it felt like, because he was kind of like death, you know? And it was like death was following me along the way. And we had this joke between us, "Hey, hope I don't see you again," kind of, that was our little food joke, you know, as we. And I remember wondering, because he would have been the first person to read that poem >> Ron: When they take your clothes off and go through the personal effects. >> Brian: Yeah. He might have been the first, that would have been a bizarre moment in history, unrecorded, but bizarre. But that poem, if you don't mind, what I didn't realize was that for a couple years I told that story >> Ron: Yes [sniffling] >> Brian: Something along those lines, and in the 12 minutes, 15 minutes. But actually it's the quickest poem I've ever written. And also one of the very longest poems I've ever, taken me to write. Meaning, if you rewind me back to when I had long hair and I was in that band, "Los Muertos Muchachos," walking across campus at Fresno State, I remember this very clearly. It was nighttime. Sprinklers were on. And the cones of light from the lights along the path towards the library or wherever I was going, I remember I had a backpack on. And Andres Montoya, a fine poet, he wrote, "The Ice Worker Sings, And Other Poems." He passed away very young. But he came up to me as we were walking and he shoved this poem in my hand. And it was from Phil Levene, [assumed spelling], "They Feed They Lion. That poem was so unlike any, most, the majority of Levene's work. Has this very strange compressed language that's, many of his poems have the very talkative kind of quality and very, you know, you can enter into them. But that, if you listen to my poem, "If a body is what you want, then here is bone and gristle and flesh. Here is the clavicle-snapped wish, the aorta's open valves, the leapthought makes it the synaptic gap, here is the adrenalin rush you crave." "Out of burlap sacks, out of bearing butter, out of black bean and wet slate bread, out of the acids of rage, the kinder of tar, out of creosote, gasoline, drive shafts, wooden dollies, they lion grow." You see what I mean? It's not syllabic and it's not, but there's a rhythmic beat pulse within the poem, kind of a kick drum. >> Ron: Yes. >> Brian: Underneath it that's, I'm part of the branch out of the tree. And Levene is someone that I tried, I've learned, so that poem was very important to me. And I didn't realize it. I don't have Harold Bloom's anxiety. You know what I mean? So [laughter] like I think we're lucky if we can be input. If we end up mimicking something, that's practice. That's the same thing I did on bass guitar learning how to play the bass. But at some point, the poetry that we carry within us and the voices from the past then are contemporaries, they can transmute, transmogrify through a trans, transform through us and we'll find our own music within the cannon you know. >> Ron: But it is hard to believe. It's like a kubla khan story, the kind of composition story you make up later. >> Brian: Yeah. Yeah, yeah. I mean this is me logically thinking back through it. >> Ron: [Multiple speakers] This doesn't come to someone in 15 minutes. >> Brian: I think it's partly because of that poem, having that poem. If I never read his poem, I never would have written this one. That's what I'm saying, you know. >> Ron: Why do you think it struck such a chord? Became famous? >> Brian: I can't, that's what I'd like to ask some other people [laughter]. I know that it's been passed around in the military, you know, folks have read it overseas [multiple speakers] while in combat. >> Ron: Military first, then, yeah, right. We published it as you know on the front of "Book World." >> Brian: Yeah, yeah. >> Ron: And it was already famous then. >> Brian: Well, the word "famous" is hard for me. You know, >> Ron: I know, but it's just not a word people use much with individual poems anymore. >> Brian: Sure, but they, but has been amazing. I had one of my great teachers, T.R. Hummer, he wrote a book that sadly discontinued and you should get it if you could, "Walt Whitman and Hell." Beautiful book. He's written many beautiful books. Underrate, he's poet's poet. And he emailed me one point, he said, "Now I don't recommend that you respond to your critics," which I think is good advice. You know, because when the work's out there it has to live and breathe on its own. >> Ron: Yes. >> Brian: You know? And fair enough. See how it lives. See how it does. And how it has to make its way in the world. But he said, "You know, this poem, there's a blog that was responding to it." And then, "You might want to check it out, you might want to respond." So I checked out the blog and it was a, it was an interesting critique. He was saying that I was a, because I'd been quoted in the "New Yorker" as saying, when asked why I didn't share the poems of my fellow soldiers, I was so inarticulate, as you can see is common, he said, I said at one point, "I didn't want the soldiers to my left and right think I was writing about flowers and stuff." >> Ron: Yes, I read that. >> Brian: So this guy said that I was effeminizing the art of poetry, which was an interesting, >> Ron: You were clearly just making a joke. At that interview. >> Brian: But the respondent, yeah, yeah, and the respondent to that said, and this is part of the blog that he was, this is where my teacher was saying you might want to respond, he said, "Hey, you better watch out because this guy, Turner, he will kick your ass." [Laughter] >> Ron: Nice. >> Brian: Where are these people, you know? >> Ron: Yeah. >> Brian: That's not, >> Ron: He makes his own napalm [laughter]. >> Brian: But the, disturbingly you don't know what, we don't know where our work and how it will end up in the world, so that poem for example has, there was one blog post from an American citizen who was talking about suicide and referencing this poem as sort of a reason of saying like I was giving the green light. Like, "Yeah, go for it." >> Female Voice: No, no, no. >> Brian: That's nowhere near where I'm coming from in the poem. But we, you don't know where your work, how it'll land in people. >> Ron: Yeah. Well read this poem. I think it relates. >> Brian: Which one? >> Ron: "Four Vultures" >> Brian: Oh yeah, >> Ron: This poem the bravado has drained away. >> Brian: I don't think I've ever read this poem in public. Alright, cool. "For Vultures a Dystopia." For their hunger, for their patience, for each circle traced in shadow and sunk down in the earth, I offer the remorse of flesh, unflowered and darkening, my life a gift of heat and steam. Today the sun is as high as the arch of the heavens will carry it. Let the vultures rise too. Let them witness every plume of smoke, every fallen soldier, every woman's last kiss for the ones they love. And even me when the time comes. Let the vultures feed on me. Let them tear me apart. >> Ron: All that "here, bullet" stuff is gone now. It's let the vultures come. >> Brian: I think you could see, that was, yeah, "Here, Bullet" was written in February. And I was a few months in. And this is summer of 2004, many months in. >> Ron: Much darker poem. >> Brian: Yeah, yeah. Very quiet and yeah, yeah. >> Ron: Yes, much more despairing. There's a journalistic quality to a lot of your poems where you describe events in a way that we might, you know, if we wrote it out in prose, you know, we might look perfectly comfortable. I want you to read a terrifying poem. ^M00:50:13 Oh, where did I go? The 16 Iraqi policemen. >> Brian: Yeah. "The Explosion Left a Hole." The explosion left a hole in the roadbed large enough to fit a midsized car. It shattered concrete, twisted metal, busted storefront windows in sheets and lifted a BMW chassis up onto a rooftop. The shocking blood of the men forms an obscene art. A moustache, alone on a sidewalk, a blistered hand's gold ring still shining, while a medic, Doc Lopez, pauses to catch his breath. To blow it out hard so he might cup the left side of a girl's face in one hand, gently, before bandaging the half gone missing. Allah must wander in the crowd as I do, dazed by the pure concussion of the blast. Among sirens, voices of the injured, the boots of running soldiers, not knowing whom to touch first. For the dead policemen cannot be found. Here a moment before, then vanished. >> Ron: You said in one of your, in a poem called, "The Ferris Wheel," you write that the history books will get this wrong. >> Brian: Yeah. >> Ron: What is it that poetry is getting that the history books are not going to get? >> Brian: Hum. I have to backtrack myself too, because when I was 7 years old the very first job I ever wanted to, like occupation I wanted to aspire to, was an historian. I wanted to be an historian. Then I switched to professional baseball player, but I was initially the [multiple speakers] historian [laughter]. I think partly, you know based on the histories of warfare that I often had come across, several, there's several things. Oftentimes they miss, like history seems to be from the bird's eye view a lot of times. And it's the Schwartzkoff and the sort of wide sweeps of movement and change that happens across a battlefield, for example. But it's not like, history isn't down inside of history, as often as it needs to be. Like what's the price of bread? And how hard was it to get across town for a lot of people? And you know, you know like this building here was a hospital, right? Where during the, did you guys know that? Right. But what happened? Like I don't know what happened in this room. Like what, were there amputations taking place, where they, you know, so there's so much, seems like, and then for example, like the when you go to a cemetery you'll see on people's stones oftentimes their name and then you'll see when they were born and when they died. And oftentimes it's in parenthesis, like the birthdate and the death. In parenthesis. You open a history book to any war in western in the western tradition. And you'll see the name of the war and oftentimes in parenthesis the same way, you'll see when it was born and when it died. 1939, depends on the country, 1941 to 1945, that has a name, right? And it's given a birth, but they're all wrong. All the historians are wrong. Like you can go to Fresno, meet my grandfather's day and you can be in the presence, sometimes during the day like, he'd be like, "Oh," like you wouldn't recognize it, I'm in the presence of World War II. >> Ron: Right. >> Brian: And then maybe he'd slip back into contemporary time, you know. There's so many ways history gets it wrong. But I think one of the specifics is the individual lives within this place. Now this books does try, I try to give a gesture or nod to the reader. There's a series of poems in the book called, "OP" or observation post poems. And there's just a few of those. I'd written more but those are the ones that made it in the book. And I, they, like OP71, OP 98, I was, the gesture to the readers is say like if that's there, well where is 72, 73, 841? >> Ron: Right. >> Brian: You know, like there are millions of poems that aren't in this book. It's an incomplete book. Like this is a, these are few slices of possible history or you know. And I think part of it too is like the human. Like the emotional content that is, in very good history sometimes you get a bit of that. But it's usually about the anxiety and stress of battle or something. But it's not like the pain of what, usually there's this violent, like people are attracted to fire and explosions. But that's usually only the start of things. And then like historians don't seem to take enough time paying attention to the, and I think that reflects on a wider culture like when we go to war we don't think, okay, oh, we're going to go to war. We should be ready for the next couple generations to deal with what we're about to do. >> Ron: Right, no. It [Inaudible] over by spring. >> Brian: Yeah, yeah, right. >> Ron: We'll be welcomed as liberators. History is a cloudy mirror made from dirt and bone and ruin, you write. >> Brian: Yeah. Thank you. >> Ron: It's a great line. >> Brian: The editor wanted me to cut that one. >> Ron: Geez. [Laughter] Never listen to your editor. >> Brian: She's a fine editor, but there were some cases. >> Ron: We've had war, we've had poetry as long as we've had war, right? I mean, we know of the ancient wars only through poetry. And Vietnam and World War II and World War I, the Civil War, all these previous wars poets spoke to a nation that had been at war and knew battle intimately. That, as you said earlier, is no longer the case. I mean you write about a war that most people don't even know is going on, let alone know anything about. It's very, very different for a war poet now, isn't it? >> Brian: Yeah, I think it is and maybe in a wider lens, maybe it's not. And what I mean by that is, and I'm not sure if this is true or not. The National Endowment for the Arts did an Operation Homecoming and there's an anthology and there's a documentary film that kind of thing. But the thing that I found, I actually thought this, there was like censors, and I submitted because it said you could submit up to 50 pages worth of material. And they said regardless of whether it was accepted or not for publication in the anthology, all of the material up to 50 pages would go into the National Archives. Here somewhere in D.C. right? And so somewhere there's this vast trove possible genius and moments of, very human moments that are maybe brilliantly recorded, that will be available for historians in the future. So we may be sitting on a time of just prolific outpouring of insight and focused attention on these things. But it doesn't feel like it now. In our everyday discourse around the country so I'm absolutely with you, you know, and the actual. And that's part of the reason, I mean, I don't mean to sound, I travel a lot. And I've been traveling for the last 10 years around the country reading these poems and talking to people about these things. And it's psychically pain, difficult, >> Ron: Sure, yes. >> Brian: And draining, you know. >> Ron: You want to move on, sure. >> Brian: I do. I want to write the way into the rest of my life. >> Ron: There are other things to write about. >> Brian: Yeah. And I keep thinking maybe now, okay, maybe it'll happen now. But I keep seeing, like I just said, I went to Winter Park last week and the kids didn't even know we were at war. [Multiple speakers] We're bombing people, people are dying with American-paid bombs. Whether you agree with it or not, just knowing that it's happening. >> Ron: Right. >> Brian: You know. So it feels like part of the writer's job is not only to witness but part of the job is also to, I think it was Matthew that said, "So not to suppose those solutions to the question, but to ask the questions more clearly." So I try to do that. To ask questions, weird questions, and as often as I can. And to startle people a bit. >> Ron: So when I asked you in your memoir how many people did you kill? And you paused and say about 1 point 2 million. >> Brian: Yeah, right. >> Ron: That's a startling and provocative answer. >> Brian: Yeah, you know I was in west Texas with a poet, John Balaban and we were at this party at a house with Patricia Smith and we were all sitting around just having dinner and stuff. And he turned to me at one point, he'd been in the Vietnam War as a conscious, check out John Balaban if you don't know him. But phenomenal, very unusual story and amazing writer. But he turned to me and he said, he said, "You know, you seem okay. I mean, I don't understand." He's being really nice but he's just really quiet moment between two, nobody else in the party hears but he's just like, "You seem okay." >> Ron: As though you should be, what? In some way, >> Brian: Don up [phonetic] you know, you should be like really damaged you know. And so we were recently at a conference and he and I were reading together. And I brought back that story again. And I asked him if he remembered and he did remember. And then I said to the audience and I share with you too, and I said pretty much the same thing. I said, you know, "You seem okay." You know. "You seem alright." You know. >> Ron: Let's talk about that. You write some poems but that are very powerful. You say in your memoir, "How does anyone leave a war behind them, no matter what war it is. And somehow walk into the rest of his life." You've got a great poem called, "At Lowe's Home Improvement Center." [Laughter] Remember this poem? >> Brian: Yeah, I do. Yeah. Based out of Fresno. But. >> Ron: Don't want to say it's funny, but it's kind of, it's grimly witty I guess I would say. >> Brian: Yeah. Standing in aisle 16, the hammer and anchor aisle, I bust a 50 pound box of double-headed nails open by accident. ^M01:00:01 Their oily bright shanks and diamond points like firing pins from M4's and M16's. In a steady stream they pour onto the tile floor, constant as shells falling south of Baghdad last night. Where Bosch kneeled under the chain guns of helicopters stationed above. Their tracer fire a synaptic geometry of light. At dawn when the shelling stops, hundreds of bandages will not be enough. I hope you don't mind the interjection. That comes from an email from Bosch who went back with the next deployment. And on the American side, not a scratch. But at dawn when the shelling stops, hundreds of bandages will not be enough. Bosch walks down aisle 16 now in full combat gear, improbable, worn out from fatigue, a rifle slung at his side. His left hand guiding a 10-year old boy who has seen what war is and will never rid it from his head. "Here," Bosch says, "take care of them. I'm going back in for more." Sheets of plywood drop with the airy breath of mortars the moment they crack open and shrapnel. Mower blades are just mower blades and the Troy-built self-propelled mower doesn't resemble a Blackhawk or an Apache. In fact, no one seems to notice the cal [Inaudible] collection center dock high marks out in ceiling fans aisle 15. Wounded Iraqi's with IV's sit propped against boxes as 92 sample paradise fans hover in a slow revolution of blades. The forklift driver overadjusts, swinging the tines until they slice open gallons and gallons of paint, sienna dust, lemon sorbet, and ship's harbor blue, pull in the aisle where Sergeant Rampley walks through, carrying someone's blown-off arm, cradled like an infant. Handing it to me saying, "Hold this, Turner, we might find who this belongs to." Cash registers open and slide shut with the sound of machine guns being charged. Dead soldiers laid out at the registers on the black conveyor belts. And people in line still reach for their wallets. Should I stand at the magazine rack reading "landscaping with stone?" Or the "Complete Home Improvement Repair" book? What difference does it make it I choose tumble travertine tile, botticino marble, or black absolute granite. Outside, palm trees line the asphalt boulevards. Restaurants cool their patrons who'll enjoy fireworks exploding over Bass Lake in July. But inside, aisle number 7, is a corridor of lights. Each dead Iraqi walks amazed past the tiffany posts and Bavarian pole lights, motion-activated incandescents switch on as they pass by, reverent sentinels of light welcoming them to Lowe's Home Improvement Center, aisle number 7, where I stand in mute shock, someone's arm cradled in my own. The Iraqi boy beside me reaching down to slide his fingertip in retro colonial blue, an interior latex, before writing "t" for tourniquet on my forehead. >> Ron: That's fantastic blending of the, you know, ordinary details of shopping with flashbacks of battle. >> Brian: You know I was in Fresno and I had to, my house there was some project I had to do with some nails. I needed some nails. So I went to Lowe's and I walked in. And you know they have that long row and it's like impossible number of nails, not like your mom and pop where there's three or four boxes or something. So as I was looking I can across, like it says in the poem, I come across the wrong stuff. They're about this long and they have the double-headed ones that you see used for like scaffolding and stuff. And, but it looked almost exactly like the firing pin in my M-4 that I used to carry. And the firing pin is crucial because it strikes the primer which creates a little explosion that then sends the bullet out into the world. Right? So I remember thinking like a poem had announced itself to me. And I could have just thought, okay, store that in my head and then maybe later I'll write a poem about it. Because I've got to get nails and go work on this project. But I thought, no, and I had time to be able to do this. So I went out to the car, got my notebook, went back into Lowe's and just started walking around and listening for the poem and trying to find not sound rhymes but what I'd call more like they're imagistic rhymes. The fan blades making me think the imagistic rhyme with the helicopter rotor blade, >> Ron: It's very natural through the whole poem. >> Brian: Right, right, so as I'm walking around I remember this guy walked up. I must have looked like I knew what, how to do stuff or something. And he's like, "So when you're working with building plaster," And I was like, "Whoa, I'm a poet," you know [laughter] and he kind of looked, >> Ron: Poet, aisle 10. >> Brian: And he looked at me like I was a grapefruit or something. Both like blinking at each other, you know, like [laughter]. But I recommend [Inaudible] because I know there are a lot of writers here, a lot of you write. And when you, when a poem or an idea starts to announce itself, if you can, try to take a moment and pay attention to the world because it's your imagination is calling something to you. This is an opportunity to learn. And that's what I try to do as often as I can. You know. >> Ron: I just thought it was a fantastically clever way to express to us who haven't been there, what it's like to bring all that home and to see everything you're experiencing through that. >> Brian: You know, if I were, I've never been to Afghanistan. So if I tried to learn from that poem how to write a poem about Afghanistan, then I might do something different. I might research and find some of the accoutrements of war, the detail, the language of war. So maybe through the machines and things like, do some research through newspapers and books and maybe YouTube, whatever, to try to find that language. Like I was doing wandering through the store. >> Ron: Right. >> Brian: But, what I might do is what I call the poetry of negation. Saying what's not there. Like there's one poem in the book where I say, "Sergeant, there were no bombs in the streets. No panic in the streets." Something like that. And it says, "Sergeant Gutierrez didn't, didn't hold the cut." There's a poem called, "Curfew," can I look at that last stanza? Find it real quick, wait, wait. "Sergeant Gutierrez didn't comfort an injured man who cupped pieces of his friend's brain in his hands." Like he didn't do that. Sergeant Gutierrez didn't comfort that guy who did this. And I guess what I'm saying, poetry negation is saying like, "I'm not finding Afghanistan in the supermarket. When I walk among the cabbages, I don't see the heads in the soil." I guess what I'm saying is how do you find your way into the things that maybe you didn't have a direct experience of, but you're curious and fascinated by and you need to learn about. You know? So this might, these poems are teaching me possibilities that I might, myself use, but I share with you because I'm sure there's a lot of writers in the room, you know. >> Ron: This is a haunting poem in which your girlfriend finds you at 3 in the morning in the backyard digging graves. >> Brian: Yeah. >> Ron: Just an incredibly powerful image. We can't leave on those notes [laughter]. >> Brian: In the moonlight with all lined up and not enough space to >> Ron: Aagh, just devastating. I want you to read "Night in Blue." It's not exactly a pick-me-up, but >> Brian: It's the last poem I wrote when I was in Iraq. >> Ron: Really? >> Brian: Yeah. I wrote it as if I was on the plane and already looking down. But I was waiting in a sandbag bunker, thinking about being on the plane and writing about going home. >> Ron: Well, it's the last poem you're going to read tonight [laughter]. >> Brian: Thank you, Ron. Thanks for all of this. >> Ron: Great. >> Brian: Make me read poems I never read and stuff like that. It's good because it wakes me up. Appreciate. "Night in Blue." At 7,000 feet and looking back, running lights blacked out under the wings and America waiting. A year of my life disappears at midnight. The sky a deep viridian. The house lights below small as match heads burned down to embers. Has this year made me a better lover? Well I understand something of hardship, of loss. Will a lover sense this in my kiss or touch? What do I know of redemption or sacrifice? What will I have to say of the dead? That it was worth it? That any of it made sense? I have no words to speak of war. I never dug the graves in Telfar. I never held the mother crying in Ramadi. I never lifted my friend's body when they carried him home. I have only the shadows under the leaves to take with me. The quiet of the desert, the low fog of Belaud, orange groves with ice forming on the rinds of fruit. I have a woman crying in my ear late at night when the stars go dim. Moonlight and sand is a resonance of the dust of bones and nothing more. >> Ron: Thank you. ^M01:08:50 [ Applause ] ^M01:08:56 >> This has been a presentation of the Library of Congress. Visit us at l-o-c dot gov.