Here, Bullet by Brian Turner
This week at Moving Poems we’re marking the 15th anniversary of the US Congress’ nearly unanimous passage of the Authorization to Use Military Force on September 14, 2001, which launched the modern era of essentially endless, unlimited war. How better to begin than with Iraq War veteran Brian Turner‘s justly famous poem “Here, Bullet“? In an interview recorded at the 2009 Poetry International Festival at Rotterdam, Turner acknowledges the influence of Philip Levine’s poem “They Feed They Lion.” The video concludes with his recitation of the poem.
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Dave Bonta is a poet, editor, and web publisher from the Appalachian mountains of central Pennsylvania.
Thanks, that’s a wonderful story he tells about the gestation of that poem and his later realisation of how it was conceived long before he had imagined.
Yeah, not a lot of poets would be that honest and forthcoming about an influence like that. But I studied East Asian classical literature at university, so to me, echoing and imitating famous older poets is a good part of what poetry ought to be.