List given to choose from - Research Paper Example

Brian Turner is an American army veteran who served the army for seven years. He was assigned in Bosnia in 1999 and Herzegovina in 2000. Later, in 2004 he served as a team leader in the first Stryker brigade sent to Iraq, and was stationed near Mosul for much of 2004. As a poet, Turner’s contributions to war poetry, as Clover and Brouer note, are his earnest and proficient observations of war, which the audience would not find in a press release. In his poems, Turner provides his reflections of war apart from the Yeatsian style, which is said to “negotiate between the expectations of antiwar audience and the demands of American poetry as a national genre” (Metres 14).

Instead, Turner employs seriality in his poems. The term seriality was first introduced by Jean-Paul Sarte and was later used by Iris Marion Young to refer to the collectivity of women “based on social experiences” (Zack 139). In this paper, the term seriality is used not just to refer to women but to a group of people with the same experiences, particularly soldiers or promoters of peace. In “Here, Bullet,” one can conceive the seriality among soldiers, not just American soldiers. The persona in the poem is a soldier who challenges bullet in his body to take his life, saying, “I dare you to finish what you have started. ..

triggering my tongue’s explosives for the riffling I have inside of me” (8-9, 12-13). By talking to the bullet this way, the persona embodies every soldier’s view of life and death. Turner does not limit the identity of his persona to an American soldier. There are no descriptions to identify the soldier’s nationality. As such, the poem achieves universality as it deals with the struggles of soldiers for life. The seriality in Turner’s poems leads the audience to empathize with soldiers and feel resistance to war.

The poem does not limit the audience to share the author’s political view of war. Instead, the poem guide the readers to gain personal insights and understanding of the issue by submerging them into the experience and not just soliciting reactions or observations as other poems usually do. This view of the audience as active participants in the experience is in accordance with Adorno’s view (Metres 13). Specifically, in Turner’s award-winning poem, “Here, Bullet,” the author powerfully uses the first-person perspective to address a bullet that is supposed to cause the persona’s death.

The persona uses an implied personification and talks straight to the bullet, saying, Because here, Bullet,/here is where I complete the word you bring (9-10). As the readers recite the poem, they are led to assume the persona’s identity by the use of “I.” Addressing an inanimate object such as a bullet signifies a one-sided conversation that captures the interest of the readers to engage in the communication either as the persona or the addressee. Unlike in a monologue where the persona controls his/her thoughts as he/she addresses him/herself, the dialogue allows the audience to participate as either the persona or the addressee, thus achieving seriality not only among soldiers but peacemakers alike.

Turner’s use of polyvocal collage invites the readers to be active participants to the war experience or the journey. The term polyvocal collage suggests the use of different speakers in the