TimeNowEncore

On Stage: Theater of War, Beyond the Wall, Goliath “Thus with imagined wing our swift scene flies… …and the nimble gunner With linstock now the devilish cannon touches, [Alarum, and chambers go off] And down goes all before them. …

"The spirit of discovery and reflection may be as good as anything else we’ve got going today in terms of bridging the much-talked-about civil-military divide." From February 22, 2014. acolytesofwar.com/2014/02/22/w...

War Poetry: Brian Turner’s “A Soldier’s Arabic” “A Soldier’s Arabic” This is a strange new kind of war where you learn just as much as you are able to believe.  –Ernest Hemingway The word for love, habib, is written from right to lef…

"No one in either the war or the lit business saw Turner coming–a poet with such skill, imagination, and empathy married with front-line experience, so devoid of amateurish stylistic flourishes or naïve or polemical thinking." From February 15, 2014: acolytesofwar.com/2014/02/15/t...

War Film: Lone Survivor Lone Survivor joins a number of recent movies that portray unique or elite units at war in Iraq and Afghanistan:  The Objective, Zero Dark Thirty, and The Hurt Locker, for starters, and you might t…

"Speaking as someone who joined the Army almost solely for the chance to go to Ranger School, I did my own basking in sympathetic admiration for other men who sought out the hardest tests of strength and stamina they could find." From February 9, 2014. acolytesofwar.com/2014/02/09/w...

A Marine’s Poetry: Johnson Wiley Johnson Wiley is a former Marine now studying at Rutgers.  I heard him read last week at Pete’s Candy Shop in Brooklyn, NY, and asked him to send me one or two poems.  He did, and here they are.  I…

“'After the reading I was able to speak with another veteran who told me that he related very much to my poetry, and I hope that anyone else, and any other vets and service men and women who read it will also get something from it.'” From February 2, 2014. acolytesofwar.com/2014/02/02/a...

Two Nights on the Town in NYC: War Lit Readings at The Center for Fiction and Pete’s Candy Store Two readings in New York City last week—one by novelist Roxana Robinson and reporter David Finkel at the The Center for Fiction, a bookstore and library in midtown Manhattan, and another of new wor…

"In the tiny, dark performance space, on a night where temperatures outside hovered in the single digits...the authors spun webs of words that enveloped their listeners in a dreamy snare of story-telling enchantment." From January 25, 2014. acolytesofwar.com/2014/01/25/t...

Little Magazines 3: Prairie Schooner and Michigan Quarterly Review Two respected academic journals feature big time talents as guest editors of recent issues given over to war literature.  Prairie Schooner invited Brian Turner to assemble an all-star collection of…

"In 'From the Desert Wars: Introduction,' Busch writes, '…these are words chipped out of the dirt by survivors exploring themselves and their war, all of them leading you to the monster.'" From January 20, 2014. acolytesofwar.com/2014/01/20/l...

More Notes Toward a Supreme War Fiction: Ryan Bubalo, Fire and Forget, Phil Klay, Frederick Busch, 0-Dark-Thirty, Nikolina Kuludžan “Notes Toward a Supreme Fiction” is the title of a long Wallace Stevens poem that includes the lines: Soldier, there is a war between the mind And sky, between thought and day and night…

"Like Wallace Stevens writes, 'Soldier, there is a war between the mind / And sky, between thought and day and night.'” January 12, 2014. acolytesofwar.com/2014/01/12/m...

Yes, it was very exciting and seemed full of possibility. One reason I'm reposting all my blog entries from that period and before is to relive it in my own mind and for the benefit of any others who might be interested.

War Songs: Newsted’s Heavy Metal Tribute to Pat Tillman Here’s ex-Metallica bassist Jason Newsted’s new band performing a song called “Soldierhead” from their 2013 album Heavy Metal Music: Here is Newsted’s explanation of the lyr…

"My impression is that Tillman had a contemplative sereneness about him, while Newsted suggests he was full of anger and darkness. Who knows? That’s what art allows us to do, explore possibilities." From January 3, 2014. acolytesofwar.com/2014/01/03/w...

A Night Out with Photographer Bill Putnam A trip to DC allowed to reconnect with Bill Putnam, the former US Army combat cameraman and embedded journalist whose work I have featured many times in this blog. Bill and I first met in Kosovo in…

"For me, Bill’s pictures are so alert to their subjects’ eyes that they read like uncanny straight shots into whatever it is the subjects think most important. What they most want you to know, or what they most need to hide, or both." From December 30, 2013. acolytesofwar.com/2013/12/30/a...

Soldier Art, Just After the Heat of the Moment The picture above is called “Rough Day at Rushdi Mullah.”  The artist is Army Specialist ________.  It was sent to me by a friend who served alongside Specialist ______.  Here is the st…

"'But the moment that this picture was captured was that moment, when all the smoke had cleared, that you realized that these noble, hardened warriors were young boys from farms in Kansas and slums in Detroit, but they were brothers in arms.'" From Dec 24, 2013. acolytesofwar.com/2013/12/24/s...

All Along the Afghan Watchtower: Joydeep Roy-Bhattacharya’s The Watch Joydeep Roy-Bhattacharya’s 2012 novel The Watch registers many firsts in the burgeoning contemporary war lit genre.  It’s the first novel I know that’s set in Afghanistan.  The first set on a comba…

"He helps us understand the war, hating what it has done and made us do and be, but not hating those of us who fought it." From December 22, 2013. acolytesofwar.com/2013/12/22/a...

Her Own Private Ithaca: Jehanne Dubrow’s Stateside Jehanne Dubrow’s volume of poems Stateside portrays a stressful period in the marriage of the poems’ speaker before, during, and after the deployment of her husband, a Navy enlisted sailor or…

"The dream of a shared life—public, domestic, and intimate–trashed by the war, she now wonders about Penelope’s sterling rectitude in the face of her many suitors." From December 15, 2013. acolytesofwar.com/2013/12/15/h...

War Literati: Joydeep Roy-Bhattacharya, Phil Klay, and Roy Scranton I spent the better part of Saturday with three talented authors of contemporary war fiction.  In the afternoon, I viewed the War/Photography: Images of Armed Conflict and Its Aftermath at the Brook…

"In the afternoon, I viewed the War/Photography: Images of Armed Conflict and Its Aftermath at the Brooklyn Museum in the company of Roy Scranton and Phil Klay." From December 8, 2013. acolytesofwar.com/2013/12/08/w...

Juliana Spahr’s This Connection of Everyone with Lungs: Leftist-Postmodern-Feminist Non-Veteran War Poetry The recent American Literature Association War and Literature conference in New Orleans placed the  contemporary war lit scene under sharp academic focus.  On the fiction side, papers and panels ad…

"Looking back, we might remember that the publication of This Connection of Everyone with Lungs in 2005 was a major event in the poetry world—an important statement on war by a poet who mattered." From November 28, 2013. acolytesofwar.com/2013/11/28/j...

The Classical Roots of Contemporary War Literature: Been There, Done That, 2500 Years Ago Many contemporary war authors, artists, and thinkers have turned to classical Greece for subjects, themes, and inspiration.  A quick catalog might begin with Sparta, the recent novel by Roxana Robi…

"Where Penelope barely gets to say a word in The Odyssey, Tecmessa’s anguished voice resounds throughout Ajax, as she wonders what the hell has happened to her husband." From November 16, 2013. acolytesofwar.com/2013/11/16/c...

“Every Day is Veterans Day”: Time Now in the News Kevin E. Foley of Philipstown.info has written a thoughtful piece about Veterans Day that features Time Now and some of my own reflections on how the nation remembers its veterans.  Thanks, Kevin, …

Unfortunately, the link in this post to an article about Time Now and me is broken, and I can't find the article via other means. From November 16, 2013. acolytesofwar.com/2013/11/16/e...

Veterans Day Poem–Brian Turner’s “Wading Out” Brian Turner’s great poem “Wading Out” speaks of a semi-private reunion of veterans long after the battle that united them in spirit forever.  As I think about the flury of events…

"Most of the time, veterans carefully negotiate the terms by which they talk about war, with whom they talk about their experiences, and how they talk about what they have seen and done. On Veterans Day, they let their guard down a little." From November 11, 2013. acolytesofwar.com/2013/11/11/v...

Bill Putnam’s Sleepers, II Visit the post for more.

From October 27, 2013. acolytesofwar.com/2013/10/27/b...

War Photos: Bill Putnam’s Sleepers A few posts back I wrote about soldiers dozing, or sitting silently and thinking, on their flights back to the United States after deployment. I asked photographer Bill Putnam for a picture to acco…

"Which brings us back to Bill Putnam’s pictures of the dark, sleepy in-between times of a combat tour. I hope you enjoy them as much as I do." From October 24, 2013. acolytesofwar.com/2013/10/24/w...

Class War: Roxana Robinson’s Sparta Several good books about the contemporary wars have been written by graduates of an ingenious program that opens up United States Marine Corps Officer Candidate School to rising college seniors, wi…

"It’s hard not to think that one thing that really eats at Conrad...is his inability to admit that his decision to join the Marines was an act of class betrayal, a big huge self-inflicted mistake..." From October 17, 2013. acolytesofwar.com/2013/10/17/c...

Where’s the War in Contemporary War Novels? The past few weeks brought two significant additions to the contemporary war literature conversation. The first was a long review essay by Michael Lokesson in the Los Angeles Review of Books called…

"Here may be the gold waiting for extraction by future war novelists: not scenes of valor, but scenes of the mind as it decides what to do next, continuously, again and again, in difficult circumstances with important consequences." From October 7, 2013. acolytesofwar.com/2013/10/07/w...

This is one of my favorite posts for how it braids my own experience with consideration of several talented writers and important ideas. It was a pleasure revisiting it.

Veterans Writing Matt Gallagher’s latest post on the New York Times At War webpage explains the structural fault lines that divide the veterans writing community. Gallagher notes that veterans writing worksho…

"All stories need telling, whether they find many listeners or not. It’s a social catharsis, enacted individually but resonating collectively." From September 29, 2013. acolytesofwar.com/2013/09/29/v...

The Aesthetics of Traumatic Injury In October I will present at the American Literature Association War and Literature Conference on the portrayal of badly-wounded and disabled veterans in contemporary war literature. Two stories th…

"Lameness, blindness, and impotence…. Disability activists would say those are good examples of how our language is infested with figures of speech that stigmatize the handicapped. Hmm…." From September 8, 2013. acolytesofwar.com/2013/09/08/t...

War Photography: Ed Drew’s Wild Blue Yonder Ed Drew is a US Air Force staff sergeant who is receiving publicity for his arresting photographs of fellow members of his helicopter squadron in Afghanistan.  He speaks engagingly about his photos…

"This post is dedicated to all the Air Force personnel with whom I served at Camp Clark and FOB Lightning, Afghanistan, 2008-2009." From September 1, 2013. acolytesofwar.com/2013/09/01/w...

War Poetry: W.H. Auden on the FOB In an Atlantic magazine article, author Caleb Crain touts the virtues of memorizing poetry, and for him in particular the mid-20th century British poet W.H. Auden’s “In Praise of Limestone.&#…

"My battle-hardened neighbor then told me that he knew the poem by heart and that he recited it to himself—all 99 lines of it–almost every day." From August 25, 2013. acolytesofwar.com/2013/08/25/w...

“Thank You for Your Service”: Ben Fountain’s Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk Most vets know that queasy ambivalence that comes when a well-meaning American tells them, “Thank you for your service.” The sentiment is sincere, but also a little bit feeble, maybe even something…

"Getting laid is the only token of gratitude from a grateful nation that Billy really wants...." August 18, 2013. acolytesofwar.com/2013/08/18/t...

In the Rear with the Gear: David Abrams’ Fobbit Often compared in reviews to Catch-22 and M*A*S*H, David Abrams’ Fobbit portrays the Forward Operating Base, or FOB, as the material manifestation of the conceptual perversity and corruptness of th…

"I’ll speculate that Abrams has taken it easy on the Army out of an affection borne of 20 years of service as an award-winning Army journalist. Were the tone serious, the bloodletting would be merciless and unbearable." From August 8, 2013. acolytesofwar.com/2013/08/08/i...

James River Blues: Kevin Powers’ The Yellow Birds Kevin Powers’ acclaimed The Yellow Birds features many scenes set in Iraq, Germany, and Fort Dix, New Jersey. The latter locale intrigues me, for I served two years at that backwater post and it pl…

"Like Poe’s raven, the doomed canaries represent an idea that torments narrator John Bartle as he recounts the story of his criminal complicity in a war crime and his subsequent deterioration during and after his deployment to Iraq as an infantryman. July 29, 2013. acolytesofwar.com/2013/07/29/j...