Phantom Noise

My grandfather used to tell me and my siblings stories about World War II all the time. But he never talked about Alsace-Lorraine. He never talked about whether he heard the potato masher that filled him with shrapnel. He never talked about if he saw from where the bullet came that shredded the nerves in his right arm. He never talked about how he was presumed dead, like everyone else in his unit by the German army that day. He never talked about crawling through the woods while trying to keep his consciousness. He never talked about the year in a British hospital. He never talked about why he hated fireworks, or backfiring cars or popping birthday balloons. He never talked about why he woke up every night of his life in a sweat until he was 75. He never talked about the small pieces of metal that would work their way out of his skin and end up next to him in bed some mornings. He never talked about a lot, but he wrote a lot of it down, in the margins of his bankbook, in a photo album, scratched onto the back of his Purple Heart.

My grandfather used to tell me and my siblings stories about World War II all the time. But he never talked about Alsace-Lorraine. He never talked about whether he heard the potato masher that filled him with shrapnel. He never talked about if he saw from where the bullet came that shredded the nerves in his right arm. He never talked about how he was presumed dead, like everyone else in his unit by the German army that day. He never talked about crawling through the woods while trying to keep his consciousness. He never talked about the year in a British hospital. He never talked about why he hated fireworks, or backfiring cars or popping birthday balloons. He never talked about why he woke up every night of his life in a sweat until he was 75. He never talked about the small pieces of metal that would work their way out of his skin and end up next to him in bed some mornings. He never talked about a lot, but he wrote a lot of it down, in the margins of his bankbook, in a photo album, scratched onto the back of his Purple Heart.

Brian Turner, author of Phantom Noise, and his previous collection Here, Bullet, manages to talk about a lot of things: smells, sounds, how the word for “mortar” sounds like “howl wind.” He talks about dreams you have when asleep in a desert, where “On a mattress of sand and foam, there / in the motor pool, she waits to kiss bullets into your mouth.” He talks about

Sgt Rampley walking through –
carrying someone’s blown-off arm cradled like an infant,
handing it to me, saying, Hold this, Turner,
we might just find who it belongs to.

Turner’s book of poems is something that transcends poetry, and any attempt to review or critique it. Do the poems work? Yes, they do, because Turner is a good poet. But more important than that is that this book, like its predecessor, is a document of our times. It’s a first person account of a history that new high school freshman have never not known. When the class of 2014 graduates, will any of them be able to recall a time before the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq? Will they ever remember what the New York skyline looked like on September 10, 2001?

To review Phantom Noise as just poetry is something that I am unable to do. This week my cousin, who deployed a few weeks ago, posted a Facebook message from his FOB somewhere in Afghanistan: “i think i lost like 20 pounds on patrol yesterday. But it was a good one cause im still alive.” Anything I can say about enjambment or nice turns of phrase seems rather unimportant in the long run. What I can say is that reading this book is like watching someone else’s house burn down: it is in turn beautiful, and dangerous, and all you can do is stand by and thank God it isn’t yours. Especially when it gives you dreams where

Sometimes the gunman fires into the house.
Sometimes the gunman fires at me.

Every night it’s different.
Every night the same.

Some nights I pull the trigger.
Some nights I burn him alive.