“What a Trooper!”
Last Wednesday, Brian Turner appeared before an audience in the Adams State College Theater. As the famed author of the award winning Here, Bullet, he attracted an audience worth of his fame. That September 5th night at 7:00pm, he awed audiences with an epic and personal first-person glimpse of the war in the Middle East. The main stage in the ASC theater was brightly light, a contrast with the darkened rows of seats. Focus was on Brian Turner as he read from a selection poetry from his experiences abroad, fighting a war away from home, upon strange and foreign soils. His motive was to read poetry and to share his first-hand experiences of his timed served with the U.S. Military. Dry and monotonous are not words …show more content…
When the pieces are viewed as having a guised motive of anti-war, the collection of poems take on a new form. Sinister is a word that comes to mind when trying to wrap my mind around the thought of this type of manipulation. Perversion of a medium of writing I considered pure; transversing the typical bias associated with printed text. This depreciation of poetry was a shocking realization but it began to make perfect sense. What better way to sway the hearts of many than to do so in such an artistic method. My own view of the war has consequentially changed after reading these poems; likely for the better. What was once a picturesque scene of ad infinitum carpet-bombings with a few ground troops sweeping the area for half-charred survivors is now a more humanistic view of what goes on. Turner succeeded in swaying my view of the war from something appealing to the Nintendo Generation to what war actually is. I highly doubt that I was the only one who was ignorant of how war works. I think of someone who was seriously considering joining what he/she thought would be a more vibrant game of Pac-Man but read Turner's poems and reconsidered. Think of the ones who read the poems but was too late and already was in the armed services. This powerful method of persuasion serves it's purpose in illuminating the human element of war many may
Last Wednesday, Brian Turner appeared before an audience in the Adams State College Theater. As the famed author of the award winning Here, Bullet, he attracted an audience worth of his fame. That September 5th night at 7:00pm, he awed audiences with an epic and personal first-person glimpse of the war in the Middle East. The main stage in the ASC theater was brightly light, a contrast with the darkened rows of seats. Focus was on Brian Turner as he read from a selection poetry from his experiences abroad, fighting a war away from home, upon strange and foreign soils. His motive was to read poetry and to share his first-hand experiences of his timed served with the U.S. Military. Dry and monotonous are not words …show more content…
When the pieces are viewed as having a guised motive of anti-war, the collection of poems take on a new form. Sinister is a word that comes to mind when trying to wrap my mind around the thought of this type of manipulation. Perversion of a medium of writing I considered pure; transversing the typical bias associated with printed text. This depreciation of poetry was a shocking realization but it began to make perfect sense. What better way to sway the hearts of many than to do so in such an artistic method. My own view of the war has consequentially changed after reading these poems; likely for the better. What was once a picturesque scene of ad infinitum carpet-bombings with a few ground troops sweeping the area for half-charred survivors is now a more humanistic view of what goes on. Turner succeeded in swaying my view of the war from something appealing to the Nintendo Generation to what war actually is. I highly doubt that I was the only one who was ignorant of how war works. I think of someone who was seriously considering joining what he/she thought would be a more vibrant game of Pac-Man but read Turner's poems and reconsidered. Think of the ones who read the poems but was too late and already was in the armed services. This powerful method of persuasion serves it's purpose in illuminating the human element of war many may