POEM: Brian Turner's 'A Soldier's Arabic'
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- Written by Fran Lucientes
This poem by Brian Turner, who is known to writing circles in the Pacific Northwest, was featured in the Voices in Wartime newsletter on Apr. 26. -- Turner earned an MFA in Creative Writing (poetry) from the University of Oregon and then served in the U.S. Army for seven years. -- He was deployed to Bosnia-Herzegovina in 1999-2000 with the 10th Mountain Division, and was an infantry team leader in Iraq for a year beginning November 2003, and served with the Stryker Brigade Combat Team, 2nd Infantry Division. -- He left Iraq in October 2004 and came off active duty on April 1, 2005. -- He has published poetry in several literary reviews, and a volume of his poems entitled Here, Bullet will be published by Alice James Books in November 2005. -- Here, Bullet was recently named the winner of the 2005 Beatrice Hawley Award....
QUOTATION: Aldous Huxley on how we use language to suppress and distort war's realities
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- Written by Hank Berger
In this passage from a well-known and often reprinted essay written in the 1930s, Aldous Huxley analyzes the ways in which people use language to help them tolerate what would be intolerable if its full reality were confronted: modern war. -- The "information operations" of contemporary military organizations far surpass those of Huxley's day, but the principles involved remain, for the most part, the same....
SONG: John Fogerty's 'Déjà Vu (All Over Again)' annotated
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- Written by Mark Jensen
John Fogerty's song "Déjà Vu (All Over Again)" seems likely to be one of the most enduring antiwar songs of our time.[1] It can be heard free of charge at the web site below. -- Extensive notes on the song follow.[2] ...