Phantom Noise

by Brian Turner

Shortlisted for the 2010 T.S. Eliot Prize. Brian Turner's first book of poems, Here, Bullet, was a harrowing, first-hand account of the Iraq War by a soldier-poet. In Phantom Noise he pumps up the volume as he faces and tries to deal with the traumatic aftermath of war. Flashbacks explode the daily hell of Baghdad into the streets and malls of peaceful California, at the same time sending Turner's imagination reeling back to Iraq. If he thought he had written all he could of his Iraq experiences inHere, Bullet, he was mistaken, for what he saw and felt there affected him so profoundly that more poems had to be written, years later, from a place of apparent safety. Brian Turner writes a powerful poetry of witness, exceptional for its beauty, honesty and skill. Like Keith Douglas's poems from theNorth African desert in the Second World War, Turner's testament from the war in Iraq offers unflinchingly accurate description but no moral judgement, leaving the reader to draw any conclusions. Repetitive media reports show little of people's daily experience of the war and occupation. In Phantom Noise, as in Here, Bullet, we see and feel the devastatingly surreal reality of everyday life and death for soldiers and civilians through the eyes of an eloquent writer who served in the US Army for seven years,with a year's tour of duty in Iraq as an infantry team leader.

Genres: Poetry, War, School

72 pages, Kindle Edition

First published April 1, 2010

About the author

Brian Turner is the author of a memoir, My Life as a Foreign Country, and five collections of poetry— Here, Bullet and Phantom Noise; with The Wild Delight of Wild Things, The Goodbye World Poem, and The Dead Peasant’s Handbook due out from Alice James Books in Fall, 2023. He’s the editor of The Kiss and co-editor of The Strangest of Theatres. A musician, he’s written and recorded albums with The Interplanetary Acoustic Team, including 11 11 (Me Smiling) and American Undertow with The Retro Legion. His poems and essays have been published in The New York Times, The Guardian, National Geographic, and Harper’s, among other fine journals, and he was featured in the documentary Operation Homecoming: Writing the Wartime Experience, nominated for an Academy Award. A Guggenheim Fellow, he’s received a USA Hillcrest Fellowship in Literature, the Amy Lowell Traveling Fellowship, the Poets’ Prize, and a Fellowship from the Lannan Foundation. He lives in Orlando with his dog, Dene, the world’s sweetest golden retriever.

Reviews

[Sarah Smith · Rating 5 out of 5]

Phantom Noise is phenomenal work of poetry written by military veteran, Brian Turner. The poetry is real and not for the faint of heart. As someone that has never served in the military I have often wondered how service members process their myriad of experiences, and this work leaves nothing to the imagination. Haunting poems, such as "Homemade Napalm", are juxtaposed by the immense tenderness of poems such as "Helping Her Breathe." Works like this are the reason I read poetry.

[Andrew · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brian Turner was a rifle team leader in Iraq, and he draws on his own experience as well as the literary and political history of Iraq in this excellent collection of his poetry.

His most famous poems from this collection, "Al-A'imma Bridge" and "The Mutanabbi Street Bombing" place specific acts of violence, both intentional and not, within the context of a people ripping their own history apart while realizing they have not consciously chosen to do so.

The idea of deliberation rests heavily in these poems. As a team leader, Turner would have had little say in where he placed his fire team. In these poems, landscape appear before him. He's placed them, and us, into them, as opposed to deliberately seeking them out. We find ourselves on nighttime drives out of Fresno with Turner, but neither he nor us know why we're on the road or what we'll find when we get there.

Into these meaningless journeys, the ghosts of Turner's deployments walk back uninvited into his thoughts. They're not deliberately malevolent, but the lack of agency involved with their creation demands they return again and again.

[Karen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Phantom Noise is a fine follow-up collection to Brian Turner's first book, Here, Bullet. This book follows a soldier's experience in the Middle East with memories of growing up in the 1970s. At first, this may seem like a rather odd juxtaposition of subjects, until we think a bit more about the content. It is only natural that a soldier think of home and past life when exploring a strange and/or different culture. My favorite poem is "The Whale" where a narrator remembers an experience of seeing a dead whale blown up on a beach: "..and I remember everyone smiling/afterward, laughing, each of us amazed/the day a god was blown to pieces on the beach/and we walked away from it, unscathed."

[Nicole · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars. I am trying to become more versed in poetry as it's not a genre that I pick up that often. Suffice it to say that I'm no expert on what would be considered "good" poetry, so take this review with a grain of salt. I picked this one up after I read that Turner would be at Spokane's "Get Lit" Festival. I enjoyed so many of his works in this book, although some left me a bit cold. Of particular beauty were "Helping Her Breathe" and "Ajal" - both just lovely in their simplicity and ability to say so much (why I am appreciating poetry more and more). So while some were not enjoyable, I did appreciate the process of sitting down and not rushing through, but just thinking about Turner's words, and how they made me feel. A good process, and one I would recommend.

[C · Rating 3 out of 5]

Read as 3.5 stars.

I loved Here, Bullet and have repeatedly sung its praises, so when I saw a new book from Turner, I was excited. Altogether, though, I didn't feel much "new" from this collection - in many ways, I simply felt like I was reading pages that had been culled from his first manuscript. In my opinion, these poems do nothing that takes us beyond his last book and many of them don't feel as finished to me. (These are, however, very heavily researched poems so maybe they are "over-finished," revised to the point of losing some of their life.)

I realize how negative this all sounds, but Turner is still a very gifted poet who has a lot to say that we need to listen to. I also felt that the final section of this book was its strongest and the point where Turner's narrative really started to stretch out, to become something else so I have a lot of faith that this author will continue to be a strong voice.

[William Reichard · Rating 3 out of 5]

I enjoyed "Here, Bullet" a great deal, and have taught the book many times. I was excited about a new book by Brian Turner. "Phantom Noise" is a good book. The poems are well-crafted, the language precise, but overall, there's not much to differentiate it from "Here, Bullet." True, Turner does move beyond the battlefield in this volume, but the poetry is, for the most part, about the same issues, ideas, and paradoxes Turner explored in his first book. I'd read one book or the other, but not both.

[Jonathan Tennis · Rating 5 out of 5]

After a number of attempts to find some good poetry, was fortunate enough to find this right after Blood Dazzler by Patricia Smith.

This collection was great, especially VA Hospital Confessional; At Lowe's Home Improvement Center; Howl Wind; Puget Sound; Zippo; Homemade Napalm; Insignia; In the Tannour Oven; One Square Inch Project.

From Homemade Napalm - "but I began to learn-to be a man is to carry things inside no one would ever understand."

There are not a lot of good collections of war poetry out there. This one is worth the read!

[Jose Perez · Rating 3 out of 5]

Upfront confession - I don’t understand poetry. Turner speaks from a reality that isn’t the traditional flowers and joy, but screams from the scars of war. Solid stuff, probably 4 stars if I wasn’t an oaf that keeps looking for rhymes. And my knuckles hurt from dragging them on the ground for too long.

[James · Rating 5 out of 5]

I am impressed almost as much by Turner's examination of Arabic literature as I am by his poetry.

Strong (and gentle) stuff here. Different from his previous "Here, Bullet". This volume is more surreal in many of its poems--something the cover strongly suggests--the juxtaposition of being in Iraq and being home or of being home and seeing Iraq; that intertwinedness of memory and reality, and more than a touch PTSD. Fine work. War poetry and yet more than war poetry.

[Sarah · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's really such a great collection of poems. So much sadness. A lot of things I don't understand, not being U.S. military or militart of any kind, but you can understand the emotion, or least try to. Thankful to the author for sharing such hard things.

[Richard · Rating 4 out of 5]

Tough stuff, great poetry. Army infantryman in Iraq. Might be better than his other book, "Here, Bullet". Rereading both now to decide, not that it matters, both are exceptional.

[Christian · Rating 5 out of 5]

Visceral, heartwarming and heartbreaking. I’ve read a lot of poetry but I couldn’t put this one down … Brian Turner is perhaps one of the most underrated poets of this century.

[Charis · Rating 4 out of 5]

Honest poems from a veteran.

[Jessica · Rating 5 out of 5]

Phantom Noise, had a lot to live up to. It did not disappoint. In this book, Turner succeeds in haunting his readers with the echoes and phantoms that plague a soldier who is home from war. It begins with VA HOSPITAL CONVESSIONAL, with the words “Each night is different. Each night is the same.” Wherein a soldier is traveling the long road back and forth in his dreams, confessing the troubling images he can’t erase from his thoughts.

“I whisper into their ears saying,
Howlwin? Howlwin? Meaning, Mortars? Mortars?

Howl wind, motherfucker? Howl wind?
The milk cow stares with its huge brown eyes

The milk cow wants to know how I can do this to another human being.”

Turner takes us along for a veteran’s experience shopping in: AT LOWE’S HOME IMPROVEMENT CENTER where nails look like firing pins from M-16s, the swooping sound of plywood falling to the ground sound like mortars “the moment they crack open” and cash registers sliding shut sound like machine guns being charged. Ordinary sounds and shapes shift into ominous reminders of this far away war that can instantaneously reappear back at home.

That bridge from here to there is nowhere more haunting than a coupling of poems that appear side-by-side PUGET SOUND and AL-A’IMMA BRIDGE. The first is a poem about a soldier who strangles his wife and throws her body in the Puget Sound. Her body is found days later with eyes “grayed-out by what she’s seen.” The second is an epic about the kind of tragedy we can’t possibly imagine: Iraqi pilgrims who were trampled and drowned from the mere rumor of an eminent suicide bombing. Not a single shot fired, no explosion, but a panic–the kind that comes from living with a constant threat. From knowing the sound of breaking glass and the concussion of explosives ripping through bodies and metal and concrete. This kind of just-beneath-the-surface fear caused a crush over the Al-A’Imma Bridge, a railing gave way and 965 pilgrims were trampled and drowned to death, falling into the Tigris river. In the epic, Turner tells the history of Iraq with the falling of those bodies. The German Luftwaffe from 1941, back further and deeper to Alexander the Great and the Babylonians and Sumerians and Assyrians. He recalls the year 1258 when Baghdad was sacked and all her inhabitants massacred and thrown into the Tigris. The great House of Wisdom, one of the greatest collections of information of the ancient world was burned, scrolls thrown into the river. The falling bodies awake the djinn, spirit beings created out of fire. They sense and feed on emotions, and they want to claw and grab at the ankles of the falling bodies. “The Tigris is filling with the dead, filling/with bricks from Abu Ghraib, burning vehicles/ pushed from Highway 1, with rebar, stone, metal,/ with rubble from the mosque bombed in Samarra.” All the way back to Gilgamesh who knows that “each life is the world dying anew.” It is an epic that dares you to find out, to rediscover this history and its meaning, to learn about the people we’ve been at war with all these years.

This book slayed me. It was full of the same power and intensity as the first, but if it is possible, I think this one struck even more into the core of my emotions. Turner masterfully got into my head, with a tinnitus of rhythm in the title poem, PHANTOM NOISE.

“…This threading of bullets in muscle and bone this ringing

hum this ringing hum this

ringing.”

You can’t read that poem and not hear those metallic words plinking around upstairs.

In INSIGNIA, with complete sensitivity, Turner focuses in on the subject of sexual assault on female soldiers. In the poem, a woman is hiding under a truck from a Sergeant who has every intention of raping her. The voice in the poem seems to talk the Sgt. down, talks him out of it just for tonight. This poem is so delicately done, it almost feels like a bedtime story. But one that packs Turner’s signature punch.

“It’s you she’s dreaming of, Sergeant–she’ll dream of you

for years to come. If she makes it out of this country alive,
which she probably will. You will be the fire and the hovering

breath. Not the sniper. Not the bomber in the streets. You.
So I’m here to ask this one night’s reprieve.

Let her sleep tonight. Let her sleep…”

There are not many books that I will say this about, but honestly this is one that is worth picking up a copy of. Mine is marked up and worn and noted on and I love these poems again every time I read them.

[Meg · Rating 4 out of 5]

Phantom Noise is an emotionally engaging and intellectually refreshing volume of modern poetry. I enjoyed this collection because the collection, as a whole, finds a balance between the poems that focus on the war and the poems that focus on the life of the culturally re-assimilated solider, while even finding room for a few poems that stray entirely from Turner's central war-based themes.

I found this volume of poetry different than a lot of modern poetry and it was appealing for that reason. My first thought was that Turner doesn’t read like your typical bourgeois MFA professor-poet. But Turner does have an MFA and he is a professor. He is able to transcend boxes and designations that society heaves upon us, and it comes through in each of these poems. Neither he nor his speakers are just a war veteran or professor or poet or father or lover or survivor or witness to trauma - there is an amalgamation of all. His speaker's are fully fleshed human beings weaving intense narratives that are capable invoking emotive empathy.

Given the highly polarizing subject, Turner's poems are never polemic or didactic. His most sacred duty as a poet is as a witness and in this capacity he vigilantly serves the reader as genuinely as he has served his country. This was a fantastic volume of poetry that I will be reading and re-reading for some time to come.


Highly Recommended!

[Amy · Rating 3 out of 5]

The poems in this volume are expertly arranged. Many reside in the category "soldier home from war." The final section arcs from the speaker's difficulty re-assimilating to his salvation and hope, a figuring out how to navigate his return to his former life now that he's a different man. Closing lines of The One Square Inch Project:

"When I return to California,
to my life with its many engines--I find myself changed,
the city somehow muted, frenetic and fully charged with living, yes,
but still, when gifted with this silence, motions have more
of a dance to them, like fish in schools of hunger, once
flashing in sunlight, now turning in shadow."

[Nan · Rating 4 out of 5]

War IS the thing that gives Turner meaning. He also sees that gives us meaning, too. I loved "At Lowe's Home Improvement Center" where visions of the battle left behind haunt the speaker and "Dead soldiers are laid out at the registers,/on the black conveyor belts,/and people in line still/reach for their wallets..." Turner can also write about the world at peace with the same compaction and precision he uses in his war poems.

[Bronson · Rating 3 out of 5]

I zipped through this collection almost as fast as his last collection, Here Bullet. Turner is an excellent war poem, and the best poems in this collection (in my opinion) touch on the subject of veterans returning home after fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan. The poems themselves aren't as strong and don't have the sort of historical importance that made the Here Bullet poems sticks, but I still enjoyed the collection.

[Lisa · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars. Nearly 4. I loved Turner's first book, "Here Bullet," and, clearly, he has found an important subject matter and a life's work. It's great to read intelligent poems about the Iraq War. Some of his images or lines are a bit too precious, but I loved "At Lowe's Home Improvement Center" and other poems that explore what it's like for a soldier to return to civilian life.

[Mitchell · Rating 5 out of 5]

I rarely read whole books of poetry -- the work of Brian Turner being the exception. In his newest collection I especially love At Lowe's Home Improvement Center, Sleeping in Dick Cheney's Bed, and Insignia. And I loved the title piece of his last collection: Here, Bullet.

[Amber Jensen · Rating 5 out of 5]

This collection didn't wow me quite as much as "Here, Bullet," but maybe because I was expecting it. It was wonderful overall, with a lot of amazing moments and raw truth. Very good. I'm thankful for books like this.

[Sunny · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brian Turner is a remarkable poet who takes the reader into places and emotions we thought we knew, but in his hands, those places and emotions become surprisingly fresh and almost new. I reviewed this book for Bookin' with Sunny: http://bookinwithsunny.com/phantom-no...

[Paul · Rating 4 out of 5]

More great war poems from Turner that can be read as a companion piece to his other book, Here Bullet.

[Pascale Petit · Rating 5 out of 5]

Superb marriage of powerful content and language

[Erin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Slightly less "something" than HERE, BULLET, Turner's first collection. But PHANTOM NOISE still doesn't disappoint. Wonderfully wrought.

[Beatrice · Rating 5 out of 5]

We need to send more poets to war, at least you would be give. Then the truth would be told.

[Miranda · Rating 2 out of 5]

I personally couldn't really get into it, but there were a couple of poems that I did enjoy.

[Whitaker · Rating 3 out of 5]

Available from KOBOBOOKS

[Ross Ritchell · Rating 5 out of 5]

Blends past and present impeccably. Beautiful language and imagery, haunting message. A master.

[Mark]

My review of this book should appear in a little magazine soon.