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    In Country
    In Country
    In Country
    Ebook122 pages49 minutes

    In Country

    By Hugh Martin

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    About this ebook

    Hugh Martin’s second full-length poetry collection moves within and among history to broaden and complicate our understanding of war. These poems push beyond tidy generalizations and easy moralizing as they explore the complex, often tense relationships between U.S. soldiers and Iraqi civilians. The speaker journeys through training to deployment and back again, returning home to reflect on the soldiers and civilians—both memories and ghosts—left behind. Filled with recollected dialogue and true-to-life encounters, these poems question, deconstruct, examine, and reintegrate the myths and realities of service.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBOA Editions Ltd.
    Release dateNov 6, 2018
    ISBN9781942683711
    In Country
    Author

    Hugh Martin

    Hugh Martin grew up in northeast Ohio and served six years in the Army National Guard as an M1A1 Tanker. A veteran of the Iraq War, Hugh is the author of In Country (BOA Editions, 2018), The Stick Soldiers (BOA Editions, 2013, winner of the A. Poulin, Jr. Poetry Prize) and So, How Was the War (Kent State University Press, 2010). He carries degrees from Muskingum University and Arizona State University. A recipient of a Wallace Stegner Fellowship from Stanford University, a Sewanee Writers’ Conference Fellowship, and a Yaddo Residency, he was the inaugural winner of the Iowa Review Jeff Sharlet Award for Veterans. His essays and poetry have appeared in PBS NewsHour, The New Yorker, The New York Times, Grantland, American Poetry Review, and The Kenyon Review. He was the 2014-15 Emerging Writer Lecturer at Gettysburg College and is currently teaching at Ohio University where he’s completing a Ph.D in creative writing.

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      Book preview

      In Country - Hugh Martin

      [image: cover]

      Copyright © 2018 by Hugh Martin

      All rights reserved

      Manufactured in the United States of America

      First Edition

      18  19  20  21  7  6  5  4  3  2  1

      For information about permission to reuse any material from this book, please contact The Permissions Company at www.permissionscompany.com or e-mail permdude@gmail.com.

      Publications by BOA Editions, Ltd.—a not-for-profit corporation under section 501 (c) (3) of the United States Internal Revenue Code—are made possible with funds from a variety of sources, including public funds from the Literature Program of the National Endowment for the Arts; the New York State Council on the Arts, a state agency; and the County of Monroe, NY. Private funding sources include the Lannan Foundation; the Max and Marian Farash Charitable Foundation; the Mary S. Mulligan Charitable Trust; the Rochester Area Community Foundation; the Ames-Amzalak Memorial Trust in memory of Henry Ames, Semon Amzalak, and Dan Amzalak; and contributions from many individuals nationwide. See Colophon on page 104 for special individual acknowledgments.

      Cover Design: Sandy Knight

      Cover Art: US Modern Flag by Hanaa Malallah

      Interior Design and Composition: Richard Foerster

      Manufacturing: McNaughton & Gunn

      BOA Logo: Mirko

      Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

      Names: Martin, Hugh, 1984- author.

      Title: In country : poems / by Hugh Martin.

      Description: First edition. | Rochester, NY : BOA Editions, Ltd., 2018. | Series: American poets continuum series ; no. 169

      Identifiers: LCCN 2018015162 (print) | LCCN 2018018261 (ebook) | ISBN 9781942683711 (ebook) | ISBN 9781942683704 (pbk. : alk. paper)

      Subjects: LCSH: Iraq War, 2003-2011—Poetry.

      Classification: LCC PS3613.A7788 (ebook) | LCC PS3613.A7788 A6 2018 (print) | DDC 811/.6—dc23

      LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018015162

      BOA Editions, Ltd.

      250 North Goodman Street, Suite 306

      Rochester, NY 14607

      www.boaeditions.org

      A. Poulin, Jr., Founder (1938–1996)

      For my mother,

      Katherine Knurek Martin

      (May 21, 1952–December 22, 2014)

      Contents

      • Title Page

      • Copyright

      • Dedication

      • In Country

      I

      1. Burn Detail

      2. Frisking Two Men in Sadiyah

      3. Indirect Fire

      4. Fort Knox

      5. Operation New Dawn

      6. Wave of Bombings

      7. Iraq Good

      8. All of This Ammo

      9. Sunday in the City of Oranges

      10. Suspicious Duffel Bag, LSA Anaconda

      11. Sorrow Awareness Training

      12. Man on a Cart

      13. Lana

      II

      14. .50-Cal. Gunner: A Sequence

      15. I. Anthem

      16. II. 0000–0400 Hours: Guard Duty with Elbow

      17. III. Sandbag Detail

      18. IV. Iraqi Civil Defense Corps

      19. V. Route Willow, Jalawla Bridge

      20. VI. ICDC HQ Building

      21. VII. Tigris Crossing

      III

      22. Mini-Mohammad

      23. Test Fire

      24. Civilian Notes

      25. The Leg

      26. Service

      27. On a Jalawla Street

      28. Intravenous

      29. Letter to Lieutenant Owen from the Twenty-First Century

      • Notes

      • Acknowledgments

      • About the Author

      • Colophon

      In Country

      Sad mothers gaze at the flagpole which is wetted

      by the sun. Stars forever. Stars at night.

      —Fadhil al-Azzawi

      we called it. Called it

      like my uncle called his months

      in Saigon. Slow addition

      of nights & days away

      from the States. Three-sixty-five

      and a wakeup, we’d say. The sand-

      box. The desert. Over

      there. Or just

      there. Where, missing my own mother,

      I pushed an Iraqi boy from a courtyard

      while his mother watched.

      Where I wore, sewn to the right

      shoulder-sleeve, the flag—real

      red, white, & blue, star field

      facing forward—

      like guidon bearers

      hoisting the colors

      in my country’s

      Revolution. When worn

      in this manner, Army Regs say, it gives the effect

      of the flag flying in the breeze

      as the wearer moves forward.

      In country,

      Mongols turned the Tigris red,

      then black with ink.

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