{"id":11297,"date":"2012-01-24T06:30:03","date_gmt":"2012-01-23T17:30:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/?p=11297"},"modified":"2012-01-24T08:02:11","modified_gmt":"2012-01-23T19:02:11","slug":"tuesday-poem-ab-negative-the-surgeons-poem-by-brian-turner","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/2012\/01\/24\/tuesday-poem-ab-negative-the-surgeons-poem-by-brian-turner\/","title":{"rendered":"Tuesday Poem: “AB Negative (The Surgeon’s Poem)” by Brian Turner"},"content":{"rendered":"

AB Negative (The Surgeon\u2019s Poem)<\/h3>\n

Thalia Fields lies under a grey ceiling of clouds,
\njust under the turbulence, with anesthetics
\ndripping from an IV into her arm,
\nand the flight surgeon says The shrapnel<\/em>
\n cauterized as it traveled through her<\/em>
\n here, breaking this rib as it entered,<\/em>
\n burning a hole through the left lung<\/em>
\n to finish in her back,<\/em> and all of this
\nshe doesn\u2019t hear, except perhaps as music \u2014
\nthat faraway music of people\u2019s voices
\nwhen they speak gently and with care,
\na comfort to her on a stretcher
\nin a flying hospital en route to Landstahl,
\njust under the rain at midnight, and Thalia
\ndrifts in and out of consciousness
\nas a nurse dabs her lips with a moist towel,
\nher palm on Thalia\u2019s forehead, her vitals
\nslipping some, as burned flesh gives way
\nto the heat of the blood, the tunnels within
\nopening to fill her, just enough blood
\nto cough up and drown in; Thalia
\nsees the shadows of people working
\nto save her, but she cannot feel their hands,
\ncannot hear them any longer,
\nand when she closes her eyes
\nthe most beautiful colors rise in darkness,
\ntangerine washing into Russian blue,
\nwith the droning engine humming on
\nin a dragonfly\u2019s wings, island palms
\npainting the sky an impossible hue
\nwith their thick brushes dripping green\u2026
\na way of dealing with the fact
\nthat Thalia Fields is gone, long gone,
\nabout as far from Mississippi
\nas she can get, ten thousand feet above Iraq
\nwith a blanket draped over her body
\nand an exhausted surgeon in tears,
\nhis bloodied hands on her chest, his head
\nsunk down, the nurse guiding him
\nto a nearby seat and holding him as he cries,
\nthough no one hears it, because nothing can be heard
\nwhere pilots fly in blackout, the plane
\nlike a shadow guiding the rain, here
\nin the droning engines of midnight.<\/p>\n

(c) Brian Turner<\/p>\n

from Here, Bullet<\/em> by Brian Turner (Bloodaxe Books, 2007)<\/span><\/p>\n

Distributed in Australia by John Reed Book Distribution<\/span><\/div>\n
www.johnreedbooks.com.au<\/a><\/span><\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
Reproduced here with permission.<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
—<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n

\"\"<\/a>About the Poem:<\/strong><\/h4>\n

On January 7 I did a “Just Arrived” post<\/a> for two books of poetry, US poet Brian Turner’s Here, Bullet<\/strong><\/em> (Bloodaxe, 2007) and Phantom Noise<\/em><\/strong> (Bloodaxe, 2010.)\u00a0 As I said in that post: “I first heard of Brian when I was driving to one of the Autumn Poetry Readings of the Canterbury Poets\u2019 Collective in 2009 and tuned into a public radio documentary on contemporary war poetry. Brian Turner was one of the featured poets and I heard his poem <\/em>‘AB Negative (The Surgeon\u2019s Poem)‘ for the first time.”<\/em><\/p>\n

I found the poem deeply moving because of that connection it gives us to the frail humanity of Thalia Fields who is “about as far from Mississippi\/\/as she can get.”<\/em> Currently, I am slowly working my way through the Here, Bullet<\/strong><\/em> collection and it is full of poems that make that same connection. These poems are about the war in Iraq and the key adjective I would use to describe them is “observational.”\u00a0 The poems observe, record, note, but make no judgments outside of the personal—leaving the reader to make up his or her own mind on the subject of this war, its brutality and its human cost. In this sense, I am finding it war poetry in the tradition of the First World War poet, Wilfrid Owen, who wrote: “My subject is War, and the pity of War. The Poetry is in the pity.”<\/em><\/p>\n

On that dark autumn night in 2009, regardless of the right or wrong of this conflict, I felt fully the pity of Thalia Fields, dying 10,000 feet above Iraq about as far from Mississippi as she could get; I have felt it again with every poem I have read so far in Here, Bullet<\/em><\/strong>. I have chosen to feature “AB Negative (The Surgeon’s Poem)”\u00a0<\/em> today because it is the poem that introduced me to Brian Turner’s work. But as with Kathleen Jones’ Not Saying Goodbye at Gate 21<\/strong><\/em> (Templar Press, 2011) at the end of last year, I would like to share every poem I have read so far, if I could.<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n

\"\"<\/a>About the Poet:<\/h4>\n
\u201cBrian Turner served for seven years in the US Army. He was an infantry team leader for a year in Iraq from November 2003 with the 3rd Stryker Brigade Combat Team, 2nd Infantry Division. In 1999-2000 he was deployed to Bosnia-Herzegovina with the 10th Mountain Division. Born in 1967, he received an MFA from the University of Oregon and lived abroad in South Korea for a year before joining the army. His poetry was included in the Voices in Wartime<\/span><\/strong> Anthology published in conjunction with a feature-length documentary film. His collection Here, Bulle<\/strong><\/em>t (Bloodaxe Books, 2007) was first published in the US by Alice James Books in 2005, where it has earned Turner nine major literary awards, including a 2006 Lannan Literary Fellowship and a 2007 NEA Literature Fellowship in Poetry. In 2009 he was given an Amy Lowell Traveling Fellowship. His second collection, Phantom Noise,<\/strong><\/em> is published by Alice James Books in the US and by Bloodaxe Books in the UK.\u00a0 It was shortlisted for the 2010 T S Eliot Prize.\u201d<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
—<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
\"\"<\/a>To read the featured poem on the Tuesday Poem Hub<\/strong> and other great poems from fellow Tuesday poets around the world, click here<\/strong><\/a> or on the Quill<\/strong> icon<\/strong> in the sidebar.<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

AB Negative (The Surgeon\u2019s Poem) Thalia Fields lies under a grey ceiling of clouds, just under the turbulence, with anesthetics dripping from an IV into her arm, and the flight surgeon says The shrapnel cauterized as it traveled through her here, breaking this rib as it entered, burning a hole through the left lung to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11297","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11297","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11297"}],"version-history":[{"count":23,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11297\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11336,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11297\/revisions\/11336"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11297"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11297"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11297"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}