The Stick Soldiers

by Hugh Martin, Cornelius Eady (Foreword by)

Overview

"…thoughtful recollections, scary memories, articulate reflections, and the resolve of a man who has been there."—Publishers Weekly

At age nineteen, Hugh Martin withdrew from college when his National Guard unit was activated for a deployment to Iraq. After training at Fort Bragg, Martin spent 2004 in Iraq as the driver of his platoon sergeant's Humvee. He participated in hundreds of missions including raids, conducting foot patrols, clearing routes for IEDs, disposing of unexploded ordnance, and searching thousands of Iraqi vehicles. These poems recount his time in basic training, his preparation for Iraq, his experience withdrawing from school, and ultimately, the final journey to Iraq and back home to Ohio.

Hugh Martin holds an MFA from Arizona State University. He is a Stegner Fellow at Stanford University.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781938160066
Publisher:	BOA Editions, Ltd.
Publication date:	04/02/2013
Series:	New Poets of America , #35
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	88
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 8.80(h) x 0.10(d)

About the Author

Hugh Martin is a graduate of Muskingum Universityand completed his MFA at Arizona State in May, 2012. He served six years in the Army National Guard as an M1A1 Tanker and spent 11 months in Iraq. His poetry centers on the narratives that crossed his path as a soldier, with a goal "to make each section vivid and strong enough to give the reader a clear idea of what each soldier is like as a human being."

Martin's work has appeared in CONSEQUENCE Magazine, Mid-American Review, Nashville Review, and is forthcoming in Gargoyle, Third Coast, and the American Poetry Review. His chapbook, So, How Was the War? (Kent State UP, 2010) was published by the Wick Poetry Center, and was selected as part of the 7th Avenue Streetscape Series in downtown Phoenix, Arizona. In the summer of 2011 he taught introductory creative writing classes at the National University of Singapore. He will be a Stegner Fellow at Stanford Universityin the fall of 2012.

Table of Contents

Foreword 7

M-16A2 Assault Rifle 11

I Spring in Jalula 15

The Stick Soldiers 17

The Global War on Terrorism 19

The Jalula Market 21

Responding to an Explosion in Qarah Tappak 24

First Engagement 25

II Nights in the Quadrilateral Pool of Sawdust and Sweat 29

The Summer of Crawling 31

The Range 32

Basic Training 33

Full Moon, M2 Machine Gun 34

Tomorrow, We Go Up North 36

Four-Letter Word 38

III Observation Post 45

Raid 47

Nocturne, Traffic Control Point 49

Friday Night, FOB Cobra 50

Pictures of the War 54

After Curfew 55

The Rocket 56

Causeway Overwatch 57

Desert Nocturne 59

IV The War Was Good, Thank You 63

Demobilization 65

Home from Iraq, Barking Spicier Tavern 66

Barracks Dream 67

Firework Elegy 68

First Snow 69

V Doc's Kill 73

Ways of Looking at an IED 75

Green Dreams 78

Site 947: A Situation Report 79

The Burn Pit Detail at FOB Cobra 81

This Morning, We Carry Body Bags 83

Nocturne with Sandstorm 85

VI Nostos: Quinn's Bar, Cleveland Heights 89

Acknowledgments 99

About the Author 101

Colophon 104

Editorial Reviews

"The Stick Soldiers reveal[s] Iraq in all its real and imagined dangers in a language that is somber, angry, deeply reflective, but also intensely, if not darkly humorous.” The collection is an “approachable, necessary volume of poems about what it was like to prepare for war, serve in Iraq, and return to Ohio ‘a body / much less / without the plated-vest, the ammo.’” -M.K. Sukach, War Literature & the Arts

“The Stick Soldiers is a journey you don’t want to miss. Especially if you care about the soldiers our country sent to war and if you want to help them come home.” -Bookscover2cover

“The Stick Soldiers deserves a wide audience. It has much to tell us about the cost of war on our veterans.” - Rain Taxi

“As America’s withdrawal from Iraq fades amidst more recent events, it becomes even more important to read books like The Stick Soldiers to give voice and image to just what contemporary war constitutes for soldiers like Martin.” —Mark Allen Jenkins, American Microreviews and Interviews

"Martin’s book, The Stick Soldiers, released in 2013, is filled with this kind of comédie noire, a knowing authority which seems deeply suspicious not only of its own attempts to reduce the war to language but also of the capacity of its civilian audience to comprehend this language."-Los Angeles Review of Books

From the Publisher