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Letter Composed During a Lull in the Fighting
Goodreads Choice Award
Nominee for Readers' Favorite Poetry (2014)The award-winning author of The Yellow Birds returns with an extraordinary debut poetry collection.
National Book Award finalist, Iraq war veteran, novelist and poet Kevin Powers creates a deeply affecting portrait of a life shaped by war. Letter Composed During a Lull in the Fighting captures the many moments that comprise a soldier's life: driving down the Texas highway; waiting for the unknown in the dry Iraq heat; writing a love letter; listening to a mother recount her dreams. Written with evocative language and discernment, Powers's poetry strives to make sense of the war and its echoes through human experience.
Just as The Yellow Birds was hailed as the "first literary masterpiece produced by the Iraq war," this collection will make its mark as a powerful, enduring work (Los Angeles Times).
National Book Award finalist, Iraq war veteran, novelist and poet Kevin Powers creates a deeply affecting portrait of a life shaped by war. Letter Composed During a Lull in the Fighting captures the many moments that comprise a soldier's life: driving down the Texas highway; waiting for the unknown in the dry Iraq heat; writing a love letter; listening to a mother recount her dreams. Written with evocative language and discernment, Powers's poetry strives to make sense of the war and its echoes through human experience.
Just as The Yellow Birds was hailed as the "first literary masterpiece produced by the Iraq war," this collection will make its mark as a powerful, enduring work (Los Angeles Times).
96 pages, Hardcover
First published April 1, 2014
8 people are currently reading
1587 people want to read
About the author
Kevin Powers
20 books341 followersKevin Powers was born and raised in Richmond, VA. In 2004 and 2005 he served with the U.S. Army in Mosul and Tal Afar, Iraq. He studied English at Virginia Commonwealth University after his honorable discharge and received an M.F.A. in Poetry from the Michener Center for Writers at the University of Texas at Austin in 2012.
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October 12, 2021
War is terrible, not to be entered into lightly. When a soldier exchanges battle for pen, the poet has the most important job in the world. Poets have to make us consider the cost and awaken a desire to resist battle. “This is what war really is,” says the poet. “Do you really want to pay for this again?” Even more than pictures, precise words cut to the heart and their mark is permanent. When truth lies on the page, it can’t be changed or Photoshopped. The veteran poet tells the truth, and you must remember what he or she says the next time you decide to wage war.
In Interview Magazine, Powers explains how and why he wrote these poems:
“I wrote a lot of them before I started the novel, and some of them while I was writing it. Poetry was the beginning of my thinking, a way of asking, Is this even an answerable question? How do I approach it? I wanted to be honest about both the experience and the difficulty of talking about it. In a lot of ways, the task at hand for any poem is to approach something that defies exactness or definition with a kind of exactness or precision.”
That’s what I find so compelling about Powers’ writing. You can actually feel the fragility and vulnerability. He shows the reader what it’s like to be a solider in war, and yet he’s not quite sure how to deal with it himself. He’s literally coming to grips with the war on the very pages and the reader is given a peak into his own defenselessness. How profound it is - a soldier tasked with defending and preserving freedom, breaking cover and exposing his own thinness.
By far my favorite poem in this collection was “Blue Star Mothers”. I believe this poem is a reference to the organization of the same name. The organization is a support group for mothers with children in active duty. Like a yellow ribbon around the ole oak tree, mothers hang a blue starred flag in their window to represent their child in active service.
I’m not sure if this poem follows all the rules of poetic structure, but its power and imagery is lasting.
Blue Star Mothers
Compare my sins to this, for instance,
my mother refusing to have her picture taken,
always raising up her hands at the moment that
the shutter clicks, so that looking back
on the photographic
evidence of my life
one could easily be convinced
I was raised by a woman
whose face was the palm of a hand
This is not the case. I know that
in the seventies she wore
large glasses, apparently sat often enough
on cheap imitation teak couches
to be photographed on them more than once, sometimes
had her hair done up
in whatever fashion
wives of factory workers
wore in Richmond
and was beautiful
But after hanging her blue star up she covered it
with curtains. She stopped
going to the hairdresser
and took up gardening instead.
Which is to say that when she woke up
in the middle of the night
she’d stand in her nightgown
staring at a clump of dead azaleas
running down beside the house.
Later, she stopped sleeping.
Later still, her hair went grey
I had a picture of her
in my helmet, shuffled in
with other pictures.
I think it was in between
some cutouts from
a Maxim magazine and
a Polaroid of my girlfriend’s tits
with a note on it that said,
Sorry, last one, be safe, XOXO.
My mother told me
about a dream she had
before the sleeping stopped. I died
and woke her at her bedside
to tell her I was dead,
though I would not have
had to tell her because
I’d already bled on her favorite floral rug
and half my jaw was missing.
I don’t know what to make of that.
I like to think she caught
some other mother’s dream,
because she could take
how hard the waiting was,
and had all that practice
getting up her hands.
Powers was also asked about this poem in his interview:
“That poem is an acknowledgement of a strength I wasn't even aware of when I signed up: endurance. So many families have had to find out if they have that quality. It's staggering to think about it—that parallel tier, that parallel war.”
My other favorites were “Great Plains” and “Portugal”.
When Powers was asked why he thought people are less inclined to read poetry than prose, he replied:
“I think it's this idea that they have to decode it. That can be a really fascinating way of looking at a poem, but I don't think it's the only way. I'm always a little disappointed when I hear people say, "I don't understand it."
In “Great Plains”, an almost prose-like poem, he brings his ideas down to level of the average person/reader without being artless:
And when I say heel of boot I hope you’ll appreciate
that I really mean the gone foot, any one of us
timbered and inert and when I say green
I mean like fucking Nebraska, wagon wheels on the prairie
and other things that can’t be appreciated
until you’re really far away and they come up
as points of reference.
There’s no mystery here. It’s clear and open, just like Nebraska.
In sort of contrast, this stanza in “Portugal” displays his ability to employ language as an embellishment to his purpose:
When my mother spoke she gave
me consciousness. The black sight of
cormorants nesting in rocks, sea-bent
and flowering out of green water,
knees me to earth. Thus was I taught
to pray – root your knees in the earth.
In Interview Magazine, Powers explains how and why he wrote these poems:
“I wrote a lot of them before I started the novel, and some of them while I was writing it. Poetry was the beginning of my thinking, a way of asking, Is this even an answerable question? How do I approach it? I wanted to be honest about both the experience and the difficulty of talking about it. In a lot of ways, the task at hand for any poem is to approach something that defies exactness or definition with a kind of exactness or precision.”
That’s what I find so compelling about Powers’ writing. You can actually feel the fragility and vulnerability. He shows the reader what it’s like to be a solider in war, and yet he’s not quite sure how to deal with it himself. He’s literally coming to grips with the war on the very pages and the reader is given a peak into his own defenselessness. How profound it is - a soldier tasked with defending and preserving freedom, breaking cover and exposing his own thinness.
By far my favorite poem in this collection was “Blue Star Mothers”. I believe this poem is a reference to the organization of the same name. The organization is a support group for mothers with children in active duty. Like a yellow ribbon around the ole oak tree, mothers hang a blue starred flag in their window to represent their child in active service.
I’m not sure if this poem follows all the rules of poetic structure, but its power and imagery is lasting.
Blue Star Mothers
Compare my sins to this, for instance,
my mother refusing to have her picture taken,
always raising up her hands at the moment that
the shutter clicks, so that looking back
on the photographic
evidence of my life
one could easily be convinced
I was raised by a woman
whose face was the palm of a hand
This is not the case. I know that
in the seventies she wore
large glasses, apparently sat often enough
on cheap imitation teak couches
to be photographed on them more than once, sometimes
had her hair done up
in whatever fashion
wives of factory workers
wore in Richmond
and was beautiful
But after hanging her blue star up she covered it
with curtains. She stopped
going to the hairdresser
and took up gardening instead.
Which is to say that when she woke up
in the middle of the night
she’d stand in her nightgown
staring at a clump of dead azaleas
running down beside the house.
Later, she stopped sleeping.
Later still, her hair went grey
I had a picture of her
in my helmet, shuffled in
with other pictures.
I think it was in between
some cutouts from
a Maxim magazine and
a Polaroid of my girlfriend’s tits
with a note on it that said,
Sorry, last one, be safe, XOXO.
My mother told me
about a dream she had
before the sleeping stopped. I died
and woke her at her bedside
to tell her I was dead,
though I would not have
had to tell her because
I’d already bled on her favorite floral rug
and half my jaw was missing.
I don’t know what to make of that.
I like to think she caught
some other mother’s dream,
because she could take
how hard the waiting was,
and had all that practice
getting up her hands.
Powers was also asked about this poem in his interview:
“That poem is an acknowledgement of a strength I wasn't even aware of when I signed up: endurance. So many families have had to find out if they have that quality. It's staggering to think about it—that parallel tier, that parallel war.”
My other favorites were “Great Plains” and “Portugal”.
When Powers was asked why he thought people are less inclined to read poetry than prose, he replied:
“I think it's this idea that they have to decode it. That can be a really fascinating way of looking at a poem, but I don't think it's the only way. I'm always a little disappointed when I hear people say, "I don't understand it."
In “Great Plains”, an almost prose-like poem, he brings his ideas down to level of the average person/reader without being artless:
And when I say heel of boot I hope you’ll appreciate
that I really mean the gone foot, any one of us
timbered and inert and when I say green
I mean like fucking Nebraska, wagon wheels on the prairie
and other things that can’t be appreciated
until you’re really far away and they come up
as points of reference.
There’s no mystery here. It’s clear and open, just like Nebraska.
In sort of contrast, this stanza in “Portugal” displays his ability to employ language as an embellishment to his purpose:
When my mother spoke she gave
me consciousness. The black sight of
cormorants nesting in rocks, sea-bent
and flowering out of green water,
knees me to earth. Thus was I taught
to pray – root your knees in the earth.
May 30, 2014
What strikes a newcomer to Powers is his restraint. He is the matte black of soundless, reflection-less pitch in which a cry does not resonate. His screams are visual things, and we readers have had our eardrums burst.
I read Powers’ debut book of poetry first and then by Section Three, read his poetry concurrently with The Yellow Birds, Powers’ classic story of wartime Iraq. I found that although up to now I do not commonly read poetry, Letter… nods to prose in a way that seems reassuringly familiar. And when I began his National Book Award winning novel The Yellow Birds, I saw a poetic sensibility in his prose. Perhaps the best writers of war fiction have poetry in their literary makeup, like Remarque, and Graves. (Some argue that sections of Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried is like a list poem.)
Poems are a sort of shorthand: an efficient economy of words. Much can be said but whatever is meant must be pared to its essence, carved close. It suits war…as a subject and as a propellant. Sometimes shorthand is all you can manage. Poetry can act as a grounding tool, rolling the words in the mind and the mouth until they come out making some kind of sense. It helps one to see, to really notice, and to organize one’s thoughts coherently.
In an interview with the magazine of the same name, Powers tells us:
Letter…, then, is one kind of art in the service of another. Powers mentions the work of printmaker and sculptor Käthe Kollwitz in "Death, Mother and Child", whose art is also used in the service of another: "Kollwitz was right. Death is an etching." Art doesn’t change the truth, but only gives it voice.
NPR’s Abigail Deutsch, in her review of Letters…, says that the collection is good, but uneven. She names one poem, “Improvised Explosive Device,” as having corny effects. I happened to like that one, which begins:
In the recent award ceremony for the PEN Hemingway Awards at the JFK Library in Boston, the author Geraldine Brooks mentioned that Ernest Hemingway once said that “War is the only subject there is, and those who don’t agree haven’t had a chance to experience it.” I guess perhaps that’s so, but war comes in many forms and Powers seems to understand that. “I wonder how do we justify the things that we do, because it always seems like we are doing terrible things.” [Powers in the Guardian interview]
Powers is writing a new novel, about the murder of a former plantation owner just after the American civil war has ended. The story involves the consequences of this murder and how it affects the community he lorded over.
_____________
May 30, 2014
Brian Turner reviews Kevin Powers in the Washington Post.
"The truth has no spare mercy, see."
-–from "Death, Mother and Child"
I read Powers’ debut book of poetry first and then by Section Three, read his poetry concurrently with The Yellow Birds, Powers’ classic story of wartime Iraq. I found that although up to now I do not commonly read poetry, Letter… nods to prose in a way that seems reassuringly familiar. And when I began his National Book Award winning novel The Yellow Birds, I saw a poetic sensibility in his prose. Perhaps the best writers of war fiction have poetry in their literary makeup, like Remarque, and Graves. (Some argue that sections of Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried is like a list poem.)
Poems are a sort of shorthand: an efficient economy of words. Much can be said but whatever is meant must be pared to its essence, carved close. It suits war…as a subject and as a propellant. Sometimes shorthand is all you can manage. Poetry can act as a grounding tool, rolling the words in the mind and the mouth until they come out making some kind of sense. It helps one to see, to really notice, and to organize one’s thoughts coherently.
In an interview with the magazine of the same name, Powers tells us:
"Poetry was the beginning of my thinking, a way of asking, Is this even an answerable question? How do I approach it? I wanted to be honest about both the experience and the difficulty of talking about it."He wrote the title poem before the novel and many of the ones in this book were begun during his writing The Yellow Birds. Poetry, the process of writing it, concentrates the mind, and forces one to choose words, and to picture the literary landscape.
"This idea of this particular soldier [Bartle] with these particular concerns had occurred to me before I realized I wanted to write a novel. In fact it was seeing that these same thematic elements, these same questions kept appearing – essentially I was writing different versions of the same poem over and over again. I just needed a larger canvas." From June 2013 Guardian interview
Letter…, then, is one kind of art in the service of another. Powers mentions the work of printmaker and sculptor Käthe Kollwitz in "Death, Mother and Child", whose art is also used in the service of another: "Kollwitz was right. Death is an etching." Art doesn’t change the truth, but only gives it voice.
"You came homeIn this collection I felt a building of understanding. Whether that was Powers' skill or my own development, I cannot say, but somewhere shortly after halfway I was hammered by the experience of reading these deceptively simple poems. The accretion of awareness made me reach for his earlier novel, which I hadn't yet read, to see what I missed.
with nothing, and you still
have most of it left."
--from "Leaving McGuire Veteran’s Hospital for the Last Time"
NPR’s Abigail Deutsch, in her review of Letters…, says that the collection is good, but uneven. She names one poem, “Improvised Explosive Device,” as having corny effects. I happened to like that one, which begins:
If this poem had wires
coming out of it,
you would not read it.
…If this poem had wires coming out of it,
you would call the words devices…
In the recent award ceremony for the PEN Hemingway Awards at the JFK Library in Boston, the author Geraldine Brooks mentioned that Ernest Hemingway once said that “War is the only subject there is, and those who don’t agree haven’t had a chance to experience it.” I guess perhaps that’s so, but war comes in many forms and Powers seems to understand that. “I wonder how do we justify the things that we do, because it always seems like we are doing terrible things.” [Powers in the Guardian interview]
Powers is writing a new novel, about the murder of a former plantation owner just after the American civil war has ended. The story involves the consequences of this murder and how it affects the community he lorded over.
_____________
May 30, 2014
Brian Turner reviews Kevin Powers in the Washington Post.
October 17, 2016
I have not read Powers' notable novel The Yellow Birds, but feel I should. His experience as a veteran of the war(s?) in Iraq inform both the novel and these poems. I found these more moving than I expected. I'm actually not sure how I missed them when they came out in 2014.
Here is the title poem:
Letter Composed During a Lull in the Fighting
I tell her I love her like not killing
or ten minutes of sleep
beneath the low rooftop wall
on which my rifle rests.
I tell her in a letter that will stink,
when she opens it,
of bolt oil and burned powder
and the things it says.
I tell her how Pvt. Bartle says, offhand,
that war is just us
making little pieces of metal
pass through each other.
And here is a reading by the poet.
Here are a few more I liked:
Great Plain (you can read it at The Sun Magazine)
"...I’m talking about reality. I appreciate that too,
knowing
the hills were green,
knowing
someone else has paid him
for his scavenging, one less
exploding thing beneath our feet.
I appreciate the fact
that for at least one day I don’t have to decide
between dying and shooting a little boy."
Customs
"...The world has been replaced/ by our ideas about the world..."
Here is the title poem:
Letter Composed During a Lull in the Fighting
I tell her I love her like not killing
or ten minutes of sleep
beneath the low rooftop wall
on which my rifle rests.
I tell her in a letter that will stink,
when she opens it,
of bolt oil and burned powder
and the things it says.
I tell her how Pvt. Bartle says, offhand,
that war is just us
making little pieces of metal
pass through each other.
And here is a reading by the poet.
Here are a few more I liked:
Great Plain (you can read it at The Sun Magazine)
"...I’m talking about reality. I appreciate that too,
knowing
the hills were green,
knowing
someone else has paid him
for his scavenging, one less
exploding thing beneath our feet.
I appreciate the fact
that for at least one day I don’t have to decide
between dying and shooting a little boy."
Customs
"...The world has been replaced/ by our ideas about the world..."
June 5, 2018
The book is divided into 4 parts and contains 34 poems. Kevin Powers served in the US Army in Iraq in 2004-5 where he was deployed as a machine gunner. His poems are direct, their impact
immediate and lasting. His style is starkly beautiful, the beauty cuts like fashioned steel. I remember an old family saying which went something along the lines of “the toughest steel is proved in the fiercest fire”. Many of Kevin Powers’ poems are similarly proved.
The anger and sorrow is as unflinching as Wilfred Owen’s and some of this young American’s poems pierce the soul.
Having met him recently, a gentle, smiling self effacing man, it seem even more remarkable to me that he should have written these. A brief taster from the title poem:
‘I tell her I love her like not killing
or ten minutes of sleep
beneath the low rooftop wall
on which my rifle rests.
I tell her in a letter that will stink,when she opens it,
of bolt oil and burned powder
and the things it says.’
Here’s another few lines from his poem ‘After Leaving McGuire Veterans’ Hospital for the Last Time’:
‘….Count to ten whenever
you begin to shake. If pain of any kind
is felt, take whatever is around
into your hands and squeeze, push
your feet as far as they will go
into the earth. Burial is likely what
you’re after anyway.’
I’m looking forward to reading his two novels, one set in Iraq, the other during the American Civil War.
immediate and lasting. His style is starkly beautiful, the beauty cuts like fashioned steel. I remember an old family saying which went something along the lines of “the toughest steel is proved in the fiercest fire”. Many of Kevin Powers’ poems are similarly proved.
The anger and sorrow is as unflinching as Wilfred Owen’s and some of this young American’s poems pierce the soul.
Having met him recently, a gentle, smiling self effacing man, it seem even more remarkable to me that he should have written these. A brief taster from the title poem:
‘I tell her I love her like not killing
or ten minutes of sleep
beneath the low rooftop wall
on which my rifle rests.
I tell her in a letter that will stink,when she opens it,
of bolt oil and burned powder
and the things it says.’
Here’s another few lines from his poem ‘After Leaving McGuire Veterans’ Hospital for the Last Time’:
‘….Count to ten whenever
you begin to shake. If pain of any kind
is felt, take whatever is around
into your hands and squeeze, push
your feet as far as they will go
into the earth. Burial is likely what
you’re after anyway.’
I’m looking forward to reading his two novels, one set in Iraq, the other during the American Civil War.
February 12, 2021
One of these days I will get to Kevin Powers' much-lauded novel, The Yellow Birds, but I heard he was first a poet, so started here with poems about his tour of duty in Iraq as well as the aftermath -- that being his difficult return to "civilization." That being the country that taught him how to kill for his country, the time-honored practice of all nation states requiring armies as their raison d'etres
Mostly good stuff here, though his longer poems tend to meander, causing a reader to backtrack to see if it was he who lost the trail or the map maker. In any event, a smaller sample of Power's poetry:
Self-Portrait in Sidewalk Chalk
Once, when seeing
my shadow on the ground
I tried to outline it
in chalk. It kept moving
as I knelt, and as the sun
moved itself from horizon
to horizon, the chalk
was changed.
It ranged from arm
to curve of elbow,
from my altered
organs to the shadow
that a church bell cast
beneath the movement
of the sun.
It finally fell
and evening came
and dark spread
into the wide world.
My shadow disappeared,
disloyal, and the chalk
showed only myself
strapped monstrously
into a chair.
Mostly good stuff here, though his longer poems tend to meander, causing a reader to backtrack to see if it was he who lost the trail or the map maker. In any event, a smaller sample of Power's poetry:
Self-Portrait in Sidewalk Chalk
Once, when seeing
my shadow on the ground
I tried to outline it
in chalk. It kept moving
as I knelt, and as the sun
moved itself from horizon
to horizon, the chalk
was changed.
It ranged from arm
to curve of elbow,
from my altered
organs to the shadow
that a church bell cast
beneath the movement
of the sun.
It finally fell
and evening came
and dark spread
into the wide world.
My shadow disappeared,
disloyal, and the chalk
showed only myself
strapped monstrously
into a chair.
January 10, 2021
Poetry books are not intended to be read entirely in one sitting....I don’t think. I’m not a poet but I enjoy and appreciate poetry and the depth and creativity required to express the depth of the thoughts and to find the words to give them meaning. Therefore when I read poetry I do so slowly, savouring each word to be certain to experience the delicate flavour created by the unique combination of diction.
Kevin Powers has written a very emotion filled collection of poems in this little book, drawing on the memories he cannot forget, before, during, and after his life altering experience as a soldier in Iraq.
The language of the poems is beautifully haunting. The words shift from time present and past connecting thoughts and emotions, trying to make sense of or give meaning to recurring images.
I felt like the body of each poem was defining the title, somewhat in the fashion that the words in a dictionary would give meaning to the bolded word which they followed. But for the title, the words might have an entirely different connotation. For me this type of poetry is exquisite! It displays great imagination and intensity. And much like a song, which has one meaning to the artist who wrote it, it may very well take on a different meaning to the listener who plays it over and over, or to the vocalist who who sings it in a different key or with a different cadence.
Powers bears his soul in his poems, giving us his raw emotions, his cherished memories and his horrific experiences yet his eloquence provides a calming essence to what should be shocking.
It has taken me some time to complete this short collection as I pick it up, put it down, start over, read, and re-read the deeply emotive pages of someone else’s thoughts and to try to give them the meaning they so aptly deserve. In the end I interpret them as only I can, as no one can know what this soldier has been through or how it has affected him, despite the clarity of his words, as such is the nature of words, of poetry.
These poems have left me with a better understanding of and appreciation for those who have served as soldiers, how it has changed them, the scars it has left. Wishing things could have been different won’t change mankind, but acknowledging their sacrifice and learning from their experiences might.
I urge you to read this precious poetic collection of emotions and memories
Kevin Powers has written a very emotion filled collection of poems in this little book, drawing on the memories he cannot forget, before, during, and after his life altering experience as a soldier in Iraq.
The language of the poems is beautifully haunting. The words shift from time present and past connecting thoughts and emotions, trying to make sense of or give meaning to recurring images.
I felt like the body of each poem was defining the title, somewhat in the fashion that the words in a dictionary would give meaning to the bolded word which they followed. But for the title, the words might have an entirely different connotation. For me this type of poetry is exquisite! It displays great imagination and intensity. And much like a song, which has one meaning to the artist who wrote it, it may very well take on a different meaning to the listener who plays it over and over, or to the vocalist who who sings it in a different key or with a different cadence.
Powers bears his soul in his poems, giving us his raw emotions, his cherished memories and his horrific experiences yet his eloquence provides a calming essence to what should be shocking.
It has taken me some time to complete this short collection as I pick it up, put it down, start over, read, and re-read the deeply emotive pages of someone else’s thoughts and to try to give them the meaning they so aptly deserve. In the end I interpret them as only I can, as no one can know what this soldier has been through or how it has affected him, despite the clarity of his words, as such is the nature of words, of poetry.
These poems have left me with a better understanding of and appreciation for those who have served as soldiers, how it has changed them, the scars it has left. Wishing things could have been different won’t change mankind, but acknowledging their sacrifice and learning from their experiences might.
I urge you to read this precious poetic collection of emotions and memories
February 24, 2014
“If this poem had wires coming out of it, / you wouldn’t read it. / If these words were made of metal / they could kill us all. But these / are only words. Go on, / they are safe to fold and put into your pocket. / Even better, they are safe / to be forgotten.” (p. 50).I don’t think this collection will be forgotten any time soon. I won an ARC of Letter Composed During a Lull in the Fighting: Poems through a Goodreads giveaway. Thank you Goodreads and Little, Brown and Company. My copy arrived at work on Friday. I brought it home and sat and looked at it, debating if I wanted to start, or if I wanted to wait. I wanted to do this collection justice, both in the reading and my review.
I’m not a huge fan of poetry. Most of the time, I don’t understand why line breaks appear where they do, why there is or is not punctuation in certain places, and that feeling of “what did the author really mean by that?” I suppose this is why I don’t have a MFA. In order to get myself past at least the first two issues, I read Letter Composed During a Lull in the Fighting: Poems aloud with my cat calmly perched in my lap, listening to me read and purring. I paused only to star poems I particularly liked and underline passages that resonated with me, of which there were many.
The poems in this collection are divided into four “books.” Book one and book two contained powerful poems describing what happens during – and after – the fighting. The result is thought provoking and melancholy, as can be expected from something as heavy as war: “So, I must be prepared. But I can’t remember / how to be alive. It has begun / to rain so hard I fear I’ll drown.” (p. 23). Letter Composed During a Lull in the Fighting: Poems made me realize with extreme clarity that Powers is a poet first, a novelist second. The poems in the first two books made me feel closer, in a way, to the myriad of things that a soldier experiences in a deeper way that the The Yellow Birds did not: Driving across Texas pre-deployment, children bringing unexploded mortars right up to troops for a mere $1 bounty apiece, being mortared, making life and death decisions, death and devastation, a soldier missing his weapon once he’s home, and a soldier coming to grips with what he experiences. “We no longer have to name / the sins that we are guilty of. / The evidence for every crime / exists. What one / must always answer for / is not what has been done, but / for the weight of what remains as residue […]” (p. 42). Each poem felt like a snapshot, like flipping through a photo album.
I explained the impetus behind my reading of The Yellow Birds. It also explains my continued interest in reading Letter Composed During a Lull in the Fighting: Poems. I have a sibling who served time in Iraq. Sometimes when someone shares his or her past experiences, particularly the more unpleasant-ish ones, it’s too much to process. But reading about them from an unaffiliated 3rd party’s perspective provides distance, less judgment, and greater understanding. One of my brother’s descriptions from his tour of duty that upset me the most was how he recounted shooting stray dogs while out on patrol. I remember being appalled – why would you even do such a thing?! Stray dogs aren’t hurting you! Powers offers a similar experience: “Think days of rest, how the sergeant lays / the .22 into your palm and says the dogs / outside the wire have become a threat / to good order and to discipline: / some boys have taken them as pets, they spread / disease, they bit a colonel preening for a T.V. crew / […] Think almost reaching grief, but / not quite getting there.” (p. 32 – 33). Maybe lyrical language describing the truth of it mollifies me more than plain language.
I think one of Powers’ greatest literary strengths is his ability to describe the price war exacts from family: Mothers, fathers, significant others. My favorite poems out of the entire collection were “Blue Star Mother” and the titular poem “Letter Composed During a Lull in the Fighting.”* Mothers must remain equally as strong as their loved ones in combat when there are so many unknowns “[…] because she could take / how hard the waiting was / and had all that practice/ putting up her hands.” (p. 13). Significant others as well: “I will tell her in a letter that will stink, / when she opens it, / of bolt oil and burned powder / and the things it says.” (p. 5).
I’m not going to pretend I understood all of Powers’ pretty prose in book three and book four of the collection. To me, these poems revolve around his memories as a child, his sense of time, his sense of place, and his sense of his own place in time. Powers uses words in a very pretty way, no doubt, but I can’t shake the feeling that in some places, perhaps some of his subtler meanings slipped right past me.
I hope I have the chance to see Powers again. I’d love to hear him read his poetry, live and in person. I am but a poor substitute.
*Incidentally (and oddly, I thought) Pvt. Bartle from The Yellow Birds makes an appearance in this poem. Powers doesn’t explain why he’s mentioned.
December 31, 2020
Wow. This is an incredibly powerful collection of poems.
I read The Yellow Birds in 2015 and liked it very much, so I was excited to read Powers' poems as well. Goodness, the man can write. The war poems gave me chills at times, and while my attention flagged in the fourth section, where he seems to focus most on his hometown, I was absolutely riveted for the rest of the collection. Powers has an amazing gift for wrenching your heart with just the smallest, simplest phrases. I highly recommend this one.
I read The Yellow Birds in 2015 and liked it very much, so I was excited to read Powers' poems as well. Goodness, the man can write. The war poems gave me chills at times, and while my attention flagged in the fourth section, where he seems to focus most on his hometown, I was absolutely riveted for the rest of the collection. Powers has an amazing gift for wrenching your heart with just the smallest, simplest phrases. I highly recommend this one.
January 10, 2016
I haven't read Yellow Birds so it's hard for me to understand the praise heaped upon Letter Composed During a Lull in the Fighting. Perhaps Kevin Powers' fiction is better than his poetry. I have to assume so as Yellow Birds was a National Book Award Finalist. But about this book of poetry.
It does so much telling and so little showing that I wondered about who his poetry mentors and teachers were. The one thing every poetry teacher/mentor/writer has always pounded into my head it was "show, not tell". I appears Powers missed this lesson.
There are a couple of gems in the book, from Independence Day: "But I / believed the woman in Ward C of McGuires veterans' / hospital / who told me to dig / my feet into the ground as hard as I / could if I / ever doubted / the firmness of reality. / And I / had practiced digging down / and down into the earth / with my hands / with my elbows / with my body / with my eyes / gone wide, in fact I / have tried to become earth / many times, to be lower than earth, and I / have known many boys / who practiced it so much / that they stayed below the surface."
Unfortunately gems like these were few and far between. Overall I didn't care for this collection of poetry.
It does so much telling and so little showing that I wondered about who his poetry mentors and teachers were. The one thing every poetry teacher/mentor/writer has always pounded into my head it was "show, not tell". I appears Powers missed this lesson.
There are a couple of gems in the book, from Independence Day: "But I / believed the woman in Ward C of McGuires veterans' / hospital / who told me to dig / my feet into the ground as hard as I / could if I / ever doubted / the firmness of reality. / And I / had practiced digging down / and down into the earth / with my hands / with my elbows / with my body / with my eyes / gone wide, in fact I / have tried to become earth / many times, to be lower than earth, and I / have known many boys / who practiced it so much / that they stayed below the surface."
Unfortunately gems like these were few and far between. Overall I didn't care for this collection of poetry.
September 30, 2016
There’s a Hemingway/tough guy simplicity to Powers’s work that I think keeps me at an emotional distance from his writing about war. In place of artistry he goes for plain speaking and everyday metaphors. All the same, there’s some striking poems here; a favorite was “Photographing the Suddenly Dead.” Other stand-out lines include:
I appreciate the fact / that for at least one day I don’t have to decide / between dying and shooting a little boy. (from “Great Plain”)
Everybody knows / the number of things to be in love with / is reducing / at a rate more or less equal to / the expansion of the universe.” (from “Valentine with Flat Affect”)
The truth has no spare mercy, see. It is this chisel / in the woodblock.(from “Death, Mother and Child”)
We are born to be makers of crude tools. / And our speech is full of cruel / signifiers: you, me, them, us. I / am sure we will not survive. (from “While Trying to Make an Arrowhead in the Fashion of the Mattaponi Indians”)
If I’m honest, mine is the only history / that really interests me, which is unfortunate, / because I am not alone. (from “The Locks of the James”)
May 14, 2014
This book of poetry is divided into four parts. Parts one and two concern war -- before, during, and after. I thought these poems conveyed a sense of what it was like for a person to experience war. I was particularly struck by "Separation," which describes the reaction of a returned vet to "the boys at the end of the bar." That poem painted such a picture -- I could see the veteran, the bar, and the boys at the end, who had not a clue.
Parts three and four were, with the exception of "An Alternate History of the Destruction of Dresden by Fire," are not about war. I found it harder to make a connection with these poems.
Parts three and four were, with the exception of "An Alternate History of the Destruction of Dresden by Fire," are not about war. I found it harder to make a connection with these poems.
February 18, 2015
I'm obviously in the minority but I felt this collection was so. . . empty. He's writing about incredibly powerful stuff and yet there was zero connection / emotion for me as a reader. I have to wonder if this book got where it is more because of the subject matter than the poetry itself.
April 25, 2014
Manages to put a whole lot of silence into small spaces, and to reveal pain without self-pity. I loved many of the poems in this book, but "Blue Star Mother" most of all.
April 8, 2022
Who knew i would end up with a love for war poetry???
I seriously didnt know if i was going to like this collect, but it was actually really good????
5/5 stars bc i would recommend this to anyone that likes poetry
I seriously didnt know if i was going to like this collect, but it was actually really good????
5/5 stars bc i would recommend this to anyone that likes poetry
April 8, 2015
Kevin Powers has given us a fine novel of interrelated stories, The Yellow Birds, and a slender volume of relentlessly somber poetry, Letter Composed During a Lull in the Fighting: Poems. Each complements the other: the poems read like a gloss on the novel, the novel - which I read first - seems in retrospect a commentary on the poems.
Powers' poetic project is foreshadowed in the first piece and expanded upon in the following two selections. I defy anyone to read these three short poems and not continue through the remaining 88 pages (as I said, slender). The key is in the final three lines of the first, "Customs."
...I can tell you exactly
What I mean. The world has been replaced
by our ideas about the world.
This perspective Powers expands upon in his second poem, which is also the title of the book and which I reproduce in its entirety:
I tell her I love her like not killing
or ten minutes of sleep
beneath the low rooftop wall
on which my rifle rests.
I tell her in a letter that will stink,
when she opens it,
of bolt oil and burned powder
and the things it says.
I tell her how Pvt. Bartle says, offhand,
that war is just us
making little pieces of metal
pass through each other.
The third offering, "Great Plain," makes even more plain the Powers' philosophical perception that, yes, there's a big world out there, but even as we swan through it, we interpret it, and we use words to record those thoughts and the accompanying sense impressions, and it's the words that afterward linger in the air and await discovery by others. (Never mind that we all carry cameras around in our pockets and can also record the sounds of that world: these are poems, and we're not reciting Homer in the agora, we're reading them, perhaps aloud - I do - in our solitude.)
To my eyes, this first triad of unmetrical, unrhymed verse sets an unusually high bar - above all for perspective, use of language, and imagery - that Powers reaches relatively infrequently afterward, and mostly in the first two parts, which are unnamed but I think of as "The Home Front" and "In the Field and After" - of his four-segment volume. These war poems are lamentations: there's little of the jokey camaraderie that was at the center of The Yellow Birds, only the residual sorrow that hovers about after the demise of friends. Powers' verse is filled with loss, emptiness, meaninglessness, sadness. And throughout, his careful deployment of words picks through his emotions, laying them out very carefully, being extremely explicit about "what I mean": he withholds nothing, or very little. He doesn't deal in obscurantism. He says, precisely, what he wants to mean and, moreover, understands that it lives as words on a page. Hence, in "Improvised Explosive Device" - the collection's longest poem, 115 lines over five pages - which leads the second part:
If this poem had wires
coming out of it,
you would not read it.
If the words in this poem were made
of metal, if you could see
the mechanics of their curvature,
you would hope
they would stay covered
by whatever paper rested
in the trash pile they were hidden in.
...
And throughout, Powers registers strong points about what he draws as meaning from the war in which he served, again consciously couched in words: "Go on./ They are safe fold and put into your pocket./ Even better, they are safe to be forgotten." Poetry walks a fine line between artifice - irregular enjambments and line breaks, unusual indentation and punctuation, rhyme and metrical schemes - and the poet's desire for the words to colonize minds as though through osmosis, for "the poem as literary artifice" to call little attention to itself. The naturalness of Powers' language works unobtrusively; his sense that "these are words, people!" does not. The result, however, often hits us with great power, even as we're aware of the meta-effects in play.
Also very good and frequently strong are the volume's final two segments - I've named these "Flashbacks" and "History" - are mini-autobiographies of person and place, in and around recognizable Virginia locales and often in the company of family and friends. With the exception of the fine "An Alternate History of the Destruction of Dresden by Fire," there is no war in the collection's second half. But war lingers in the reader's mind from the first half: we know war lies in the future for the residents of this second half; Powers in effect foreshadows the earlier episodes of the narrator's life in chronological reverse, like a flipped Pinter play, with the reader knowing what will happen in the narrator's future, which is of course the reader's past, the words in our wake.
The conspicuously Eliotic "Grace Note" brings Powers' collection to the conclusion of affirmation implied in the final offering's title.
But that is not, I think, what will linger in the reader's memory.
Powers' poetic project is foreshadowed in the first piece and expanded upon in the following two selections. I defy anyone to read these three short poems and not continue through the remaining 88 pages (as I said, slender). The key is in the final three lines of the first, "Customs."
...I can tell you exactly
What I mean. The world has been replaced
by our ideas about the world.
This perspective Powers expands upon in his second poem, which is also the title of the book and which I reproduce in its entirety:
I tell her I love her like not killing
or ten minutes of sleep
beneath the low rooftop wall
on which my rifle rests.
I tell her in a letter that will stink,
when she opens it,
of bolt oil and burned powder
and the things it says.
I tell her how Pvt. Bartle says, offhand,
that war is just us
making little pieces of metal
pass through each other.
The third offering, "Great Plain," makes even more plain the Powers' philosophical perception that, yes, there's a big world out there, but even as we swan through it, we interpret it, and we use words to record those thoughts and the accompanying sense impressions, and it's the words that afterward linger in the air and await discovery by others. (Never mind that we all carry cameras around in our pockets and can also record the sounds of that world: these are poems, and we're not reciting Homer in the agora, we're reading them, perhaps aloud - I do - in our solitude.)
To my eyes, this first triad of unmetrical, unrhymed verse sets an unusually high bar - above all for perspective, use of language, and imagery - that Powers reaches relatively infrequently afterward, and mostly in the first two parts, which are unnamed but I think of as "The Home Front" and "In the Field and After" - of his four-segment volume. These war poems are lamentations: there's little of the jokey camaraderie that was at the center of The Yellow Birds, only the residual sorrow that hovers about after the demise of friends. Powers' verse is filled with loss, emptiness, meaninglessness, sadness. And throughout, his careful deployment of words picks through his emotions, laying them out very carefully, being extremely explicit about "what I mean": he withholds nothing, or very little. He doesn't deal in obscurantism. He says, precisely, what he wants to mean and, moreover, understands that it lives as words on a page. Hence, in "Improvised Explosive Device" - the collection's longest poem, 115 lines over five pages - which leads the second part:
If this poem had wires
coming out of it,
you would not read it.
If the words in this poem were made
of metal, if you could see
the mechanics of their curvature,
you would hope
they would stay covered
by whatever paper rested
in the trash pile they were hidden in.
...
And throughout, Powers registers strong points about what he draws as meaning from the war in which he served, again consciously couched in words: "Go on./ They are safe fold and put into your pocket./ Even better, they are safe to be forgotten." Poetry walks a fine line between artifice - irregular enjambments and line breaks, unusual indentation and punctuation, rhyme and metrical schemes - and the poet's desire for the words to colonize minds as though through osmosis, for "the poem as literary artifice" to call little attention to itself. The naturalness of Powers' language works unobtrusively; his sense that "these are words, people!" does not. The result, however, often hits us with great power, even as we're aware of the meta-effects in play.
Also very good and frequently strong are the volume's final two segments - I've named these "Flashbacks" and "History" - are mini-autobiographies of person and place, in and around recognizable Virginia locales and often in the company of family and friends. With the exception of the fine "An Alternate History of the Destruction of Dresden by Fire," there is no war in the collection's second half. But war lingers in the reader's mind from the first half: we know war lies in the future for the residents of this second half; Powers in effect foreshadows the earlier episodes of the narrator's life in chronological reverse, like a flipped Pinter play, with the reader knowing what will happen in the narrator's future, which is of course the reader's past, the words in our wake.
The conspicuously Eliotic "Grace Note" brings Powers' collection to the conclusion of affirmation implied in the final offering's title.
But that is not, I think, what will linger in the reader's memory.
February 11, 2022
I am not a huge poetry fan, but having read Kevin Powers' extraordinary novel, The Yellow Birds, I had to give this a shot. It further confirmed my opinion that Powers is a writer of great emotional intensity. I had to read this in small bites. He made me feel the rawness, guilt, and vulnerability of a soldier's experience, and the ways in which a soldier's life is fundamentally changed by war.
February 28, 2015
I bought 'Letter composed during a lull in the fighting' in the spring of 2014 and for various reasons during the year, mostly to do with a lack of time was not able to do more than dip into it, selecting the occasional poem. I realised that was a hopeless approach and no way to treat someone's first collection. I I had to give the poems the time they deserved, to begin with the first poem and to carry on until I reached the end. Once I did this the poems came to life as a body of work.
I'd come to the poems straight from reading about and researching the first World War so Mr Powers was following in the footsteps of Owen, Sassoon, Blunden and David Jones. It is a testimony to the strength of his writing that once I'd begun I kept on reading his poems. His was a very different kind of war to their’s and this is a survivor's story about what it feels like to come back and how impossible it is to return home.
...You came home
with nothing, and you still
Have most of it left
from After Leaving McGuire Veterans Hospital for the Last Time
These are deeply felt personal poems as Powers tries to make sense of the experience of being out there in Iraq. Poems can be more effective than news items or journalist’s reports in getting across emotions including the bewilderment of the returning soldier
...I’ve wasted all those hours upon
hoping someday something will make sense
from Grace Note
Think almost reaching grief, but
not quite getting there
from Field Manual
I’ve read other reviews here and here
which suggest that Powers could have taken more of a moral stance about the America being at war in Iraq but as I see it what he wants to do in these poems is to tell it like it was for him and the other soldiers.
... … the way an ex-girlfriend of mine
once talked about the idea of a gun. But guns are not ideas
They are not things to which comparisons are made. They are…
The poets of the first World War wanted the civilians to understand their experience but many of them also wrote with the purpose of making the war stop. Powers isn’t necessarily making that sort of case but allowing his experience to speak for itself. He certainly wants to be understood and here he is writing about some ‘Young Republicans’ at a bar.
...…I want to rub their clean
bodies in blood. I want my rifle
and I want them to know
how scared I am still, alone
in bars these three years later when
I notice it is gone.
….. I screamed and
wept and begged for someone
to give it back. “How will I return
fire?” I cried. I truly cried,
from Separation
So we are in David Jones’ territory in Mametz wood, towards the end of In Parenthesis when he is wounded and has no choice but to leave his rifle. It takes three pages of that poem before he finally brings himself to do so –
‘leave it-under the oak.
Leave it for a Cook’s tourist to the Devastated Areas and crawl
as far as you can and wait for the bearers’
So in its essential details Kevin Powers’s war was not so different from theirs after all.
I'd come to the poems straight from reading about and researching the first World War so Mr Powers was following in the footsteps of Owen, Sassoon, Blunden and David Jones. It is a testimony to the strength of his writing that once I'd begun I kept on reading his poems. His was a very different kind of war to their’s and this is a survivor's story about what it feels like to come back and how impossible it is to return home.
...You came home
with nothing, and you still
Have most of it left
from After Leaving McGuire Veterans Hospital for the Last Time
These are deeply felt personal poems as Powers tries to make sense of the experience of being out there in Iraq. Poems can be more effective than news items or journalist’s reports in getting across emotions including the bewilderment of the returning soldier
...I’ve wasted all those hours upon
hoping someday something will make sense
from Grace Note
Think almost reaching grief, but
not quite getting there
from Field Manual
I’ve read other reviews here and here
which suggest that Powers could have taken more of a moral stance about the America being at war in Iraq but as I see it what he wants to do in these poems is to tell it like it was for him and the other soldiers.
... … the way an ex-girlfriend of mine
once talked about the idea of a gun. But guns are not ideas
They are not things to which comparisons are made. They are…
The poets of the first World War wanted the civilians to understand their experience but many of them also wrote with the purpose of making the war stop. Powers isn’t necessarily making that sort of case but allowing his experience to speak for itself. He certainly wants to be understood and here he is writing about some ‘Young Republicans’ at a bar.
...…I want to rub their clean
bodies in blood. I want my rifle
and I want them to know
how scared I am still, alone
in bars these three years later when
I notice it is gone.
….. I screamed and
wept and begged for someone
to give it back. “How will I return
fire?” I cried. I truly cried,
from Separation
So we are in David Jones’ territory in Mametz wood, towards the end of In Parenthesis when he is wounded and has no choice but to leave his rifle. It takes three pages of that poem before he finally brings himself to do so –
‘leave it-under the oak.
Leave it for a Cook’s tourist to the Devastated Areas and crawl
as far as you can and wait for the bearers’
So in its essential details Kevin Powers’s war was not so different from theirs after all.
November 8, 2016
Kevin Powers’s poems are often constructed like long sentences. This type of structure can be interesting and effective at creating flow and accessibility. However, many of the pieces had line breaks that seemed too inconsequential, which made many of the lines themselves feel like fillers. The best poems in the collection are rooted in his experiences as a soldier in the U.S. Army during the Iraq War in 2004-2005. In fact, several pieces are outstanding. Their impact is so immediate and memorable that I’m compelled to quote them. In “Great Plain,” he cautions: “But guns are not ideas. / They are not things to which comparisons are made. They are // one weight in my hand when the little boy crests the green hill / and the possibilities of shooting him or not extend out to me / like the spokes of a wheel.” In another standout piece called “Field Manual,” he suggests, “Think of not caring. Call this “relief.”” Later in that same poem he concludes, “Think almost reaching grief, but / not quite getting there.” Powers has a literary eye and a poet’s vision, but overall this volume is good, not great.
August 4, 2014
If I'm honest, I don't feel as if I have adequate tools with which to assess contemporary poetry. William Carlos Williams was as contemporary as I've gotten in school and the rules seem to change often. Nonetheless, I will endeavor to do my best here. Powers is very talented, having previously written a highly acclaimed novel which I greatly enjoyed. This is a small collection of his poetry written about his experiences, many of which have to do with the Iraq War. His most insightful, searing, and beautiful poems are the ones about his experiences with war. Somehow these are much more deeply felt than any of the other poems which are impressive in their own ways, but they feel as if they are being read from under glass with careful inspection and distance. Powers' war poems are much more naked and raw and real. Because he is so talented, I can only hope that he writes more and finds a way to connect as deeply as other subjects.
November 21, 2014
I don't review poetry, as a rule. It's a personal experience, an individual read. The experience of reading poetry can be different for me depending on my mood, my surroundings, heck, even depending on the weather. But in reading this collection by Kevin Powers I feel I got to know the man. It occurred to me in reading these poems that poetry is much more personal than fiction writing. To critique a person's poetry is to arbitrarily assign two or three or four stars to his or her life, and who am I to assign these stars?
March 26, 2014
I won a copy of this book through a Goodreads giveaway.
I'm not a big fan of contemporary poetry so I was surprised by how many of these poems struck a chord with me. Written by an Iraq war veteran, these poems give a unique perspective on the war and on a soldier's life. Some of the standouts for me were Improvised Explosive Device, After Leaving McGuire Veterans Hospital for the Last Time, and Blue Star Mother.
I'm not a big fan of contemporary poetry so I was surprised by how many of these poems struck a chord with me. Written by an Iraq war veteran, these poems give a unique perspective on the war and on a soldier's life. Some of the standouts for me were Improvised Explosive Device, After Leaving McGuire Veterans Hospital for the Last Time, and Blue Star Mother.
April 23, 2014
This collection was very difficult for me to read, as my 21 year old son is a US Marine.
This admirable life changing, heart wrenching collection of poetic release gives
clarity to just what war can do to our military and their families.
As in Powers previous book "Yellow Birds", it was a wonderful window into my sons world...
One that I cannot bury my head in the sand and choose to ignore.
This admirable life changing, heart wrenching collection of poetic release gives
clarity to just what war can do to our military and their families.
As in Powers previous book "Yellow Birds", it was a wonderful window into my sons world...
One that I cannot bury my head in the sand and choose to ignore.
July 5, 2014
Fantastic talent! My favorite was the last poem "Grace Note" I really enjoyed Douglas Feil's review on this one. I don't think I would have read it otherwise. Im looking forward to reading his other book "The Yellow Birds".
March 6, 2014
Really sharp. I was especially struck by "Separation;" I'll keep coming back to it.
January 11, 2015
Really lovely. I'm glad I set to it on a day when I was feeling especially attentive. It deserves full attention. Might do a long review later.
June 21, 2015
Tre og en halv stjerne. På sitt beste helt fantastisk, men for ujevnt til at jeg føler jeg kan gi fire.
November 16, 2023
Phenomenal collection of poems.
April 17, 2014
". . . war is just us
making little pieces of metal
pass through each other."
making little pieces of metal
pass through each other."
February 24, 2019
When I found this book of poems, I was reading two other books of poems about relationships, I thought that this book was about fighting as in terms of a relationship. So when I discovered upon the first few poems that this was a book of poems about actual fighting I had to change my through process.
I felt that the first two section so this book of poems really captured what he and others had to go through when they went off to fight in the war. The poems were very emotional and powerful. I think the poems really illustrated the heaviness of war. The poems describe the significance of the war on all those who were involved.
I found myself not as able to understand or follow the poems in the last 2 sections (book 3 and 4). They seemed a little disconnected to the ones in the first two books. I had to look up that these poems in this section were not about war and found out that was purely the case. There was one poem in part 3 and 4 related to war and that was “An Alternate History of the Destruction of Dresden by Fire.” What I took away from section 3-4 was him describing memories that he had.
Poems/lines:
1. “If this poem had wires coming out of it, / you wouldn’t read it. / If these words were made of metal / they could kill us all. But these / are only words. Go on, / they are safe to fold and put into your pocket. / Even better, they are safe / to be forgotten.”
2. “ Mothers must remain equally as strong as their loved ones in combat when there are so many unknowns “[…] because she could take / how hard the waiting was / and had all that practice/ putting up her hands.” (p. 13). Significant others as well: “I will tell her in a letter that will stink, / when she opens it, / of bolt oil and burned powder / and the things it says.”
I felt that the first two section so this book of poems really captured what he and others had to go through when they went off to fight in the war. The poems were very emotional and powerful. I think the poems really illustrated the heaviness of war. The poems describe the significance of the war on all those who were involved.
I found myself not as able to understand or follow the poems in the last 2 sections (book 3 and 4). They seemed a little disconnected to the ones in the first two books. I had to look up that these poems in this section were not about war and found out that was purely the case. There was one poem in part 3 and 4 related to war and that was “An Alternate History of the Destruction of Dresden by Fire.” What I took away from section 3-4 was him describing memories that he had.
Poems/lines:
1. “If this poem had wires coming out of it, / you wouldn’t read it. / If these words were made of metal / they could kill us all. But these / are only words. Go on, / they are safe to fold and put into your pocket. / Even better, they are safe / to be forgotten.”
2. “ Mothers must remain equally as strong as their loved ones in combat when there are so many unknowns “[…] because she could take / how hard the waiting was / and had all that practice/ putting up her hands.” (p. 13). Significant others as well: “I will tell her in a letter that will stink, / when she opens it, / of bolt oil and burned powder / and the things it says.”
April 14, 2019
Did I grab this book because it was short, available now, on audio, and poetry? Yes. Was it exclusively so I could catch up on my 2019 reading goal? Not quite, but close. It was mostly a palate cleanser between memoirs. (Why on earth did queue back to back memoirs? Especially when I’m already starting to feel fatigued.)
I’ll admit, I experienced this book all wrong.
I believe that poetry is born to be read and recited, not passively (excluding slam poetry), to read it outloud to yourself and turn each word over on your tongue several times. And it deserves a slow pace, with meter analysis and careful pondering. At least, that’s how I see poetry. So this might be more of a chastisement for my flippant approach to this collection instead of scathing Powers or Letters Composed During a Lull in the Fighting. If I ever see this collection as I’m browsing the physical library stacks, I’ll probably give it another run.
Powers has a nice voice, but it was clear to me that he specializes in fiction. I’ll probably add The Yellow Birds to my “Want to Read” list.
Some favorites include “Great Plain”, “Photographing the Suddenly Dead”, and “Fighting Out of West Virginia”
But I need to read more poetry. I need to feel the quick hit of a stanza and the lasting lingering of a heroic couplet. I need to expand into this genre, but I’m hesitant to take on the “greats” without an appreciation of the “lessers”.
I’ll admit, I experienced this book all wrong.
I believe that poetry is born to be read and recited, not passively (excluding slam poetry), to read it outloud to yourself and turn each word over on your tongue several times. And it deserves a slow pace, with meter analysis and careful pondering. At least, that’s how I see poetry. So this might be more of a chastisement for my flippant approach to this collection instead of scathing Powers or Letters Composed During a Lull in the Fighting. If I ever see this collection as I’m browsing the physical library stacks, I’ll probably give it another run.
Powers has a nice voice, but it was clear to me that he specializes in fiction. I’ll probably add The Yellow Birds to my “Want to Read” list.
Some favorites include “Great Plain”, “Photographing the Suddenly Dead”, and “Fighting Out of West Virginia”
But I need to read more poetry. I need to feel the quick hit of a stanza and the lasting lingering of a heroic couplet. I need to expand into this genre, but I’m hesitant to take on the “greats” without an appreciation of the “lessers”.
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