Letter Composed During a Lull in the Fighting: Poems - Hardcover

Powers, Kevin

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0316401080 ISBN 13: 9780316401081

Publisher: Little, Brown and Company, 2014

Synopsis

The award-winning author of The Yellow Birdsreturns 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).

About this title

About the Author

Kevin Powers is the author of The Yellow Birds, which won the PEN/Hemingway Award, the Guardian First Book Award, and was a National Book Award Finalist. He was born and raised in Richmond, Virginia, graduated from Virginia Commonwealth University, and holds an MFA from the University of Texas at Austin, where he was a Michener Fellow in Poetry. He served in the US Army in 2004 and 2005 in Iraq, where he was deployed as a machine gunner in Mosul and Tal Afar. Letter Composed During a Lull in the Fighting is his first collection of poetry.

From Booklist

Military veteran Powers’ acclaimed Iraq War novel, The Yellow Birds (2012), gripped readers with its close-to-the-bone story line, but his lyricism is equally meritorious. Powers now delivers on that strength in his first poetry collection: “For the silence that has filled your ears / again / and particles of light / funneled through the holes / made by metal meeting metal / meeting muscle meeting bone.” These revelatory poems capture war’s profound dualities as well as chaos: “Everyone is where they are / by accident; they will likely be as scared / as you are.” James reveals the strange counterpoint between the horrors of war and unexpected beauty: “Red, like a wound bled into water, / mixes with my mother’s voice.” He also considers the stoic words of a now-dead father, and the lasting influence of a modest community in West Virginia. Poem by poem, Powers travels an incredible journey through the thoughts and feelings of a veteran attempting to put the pieces together as he looks both forward and back, “hoping someday something will make sense.” --Mark Eleveld

About this edition

• Publisher: Little, Brown and Company
• Publication date: 2014
• ISBN 10: 0316401080
• ISBN 13: 9780316401081
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 112