The War Makes Everyone Lonely

By Graham Barnhart

In his first collection of poems, many of which were written during his years as a US Army Special Forces medic, Graham Barnhart explores themes of memory, trauma, and isolation. Ranging from conventional lyrics and narrative verse to prose poems and expressionist forms, the poems here display a strange, quiet power as Barnhart engages in the pursuit and recognition of wonder, even while concerned with whether it is right to do so in the fraught space of the war zone. We follow the speaker as he treads the line between duty and the horrors of war, honor and compassion for the victims of violence, and the struggle to return to the daily life of family and society after years of trauma.
            Evoking the landscapes and surroundings of war, as well as its effects on both US military service members and civilians in war-stricken countries, The War Makes Everyone Lonely is a challenging, nuanced look at the ways American violence is exported, enacted, and obscured by a writer poised to take his place in the long tradition of warrior-poets.

• Language: English
• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Release date: Apr 17, 2020
• ISBN: 9780226660639

Book preview

The War Makes Everyone Lonely

The War Makes Everyone Lonely

Graham Barnhart

The University of Chicago Press

Chicago and London

The University of Chicago Press, Chicago 60637

The University of Chicago Press, Ltd., London

© 2019 by The University of Chicago

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations in critical articles and reviews. For more information, contact the University of Chicago Press, 1427 East 60th Street, Chicago, IL 60637.

Published 2019

Printed in the United States of America

28 27 26 25 24 23 22 21 20 19    1 2 3 4 5

isbn-13: 978-0-226-66046-2 (paper)

isbn-13: 978-0-226-66063-9 (e-book)

doi: https://doi.org/10.7208/chicago/9780226660639.001.0001

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Barnhart, Graham, author.

Title: The war makes everyone lonely / Graham Barnhart.

Other titles: Phoenix poets.

Description: Chicago ; London : The University of Chicago Press, 2019. | Series: Phoenix poets

Identifiers: LCCN 2019008628 | ISBN 9780226660462 (pbk. : alk. paper) | ISBN 9780226660639 (e-book)

Subjects: LCSH: Afghan War, 2001—Poetry. | Iraq War, 2003–2011—Poetry. | War poetry, American. | LCGFT: Poetry.

Classification: LCC PS3602.A83445 A6 2019 | DDC 811/.6—dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019008628

This paper meets the requirements of ansi/niso z39.48-1992 (Permanence of Paper).

for T

You are not a witness to the ruin.

You are the ruin to be witnessed.

Robert Persons, General Orders No. 9

Contents

Acknowledgments

Belated Letter to My Grandmother

What Being in the Army Did

What’s It Like?

Call to Prayer

Aubade between Deployments

1900

Pissing in Irbil

The War Makes Everyone Lonely

Sewing

Goat in the Cleared Village

Notice and Focus Exercise

The Coffee Aisle

After Sterilizing the Canteens

My Pittsburgh

Telling You I Will Deploy Again

Days of 2009

Post 9/11 Gas Training (I)

How to Stay Awake on a Training Exercise

Survival and Evasion

Somnambulant

Breach

How to Stop the Bleeding

First Life

Medics Don’t Earn Killstreaks

Pashtu Refresher

Certificates of Training

Informant

Deserving (I)

Post 9/11 Gas Training (II)

Range Detail

Indiana-stan

Tinder Pic

Cultivating Mass

Downed Pilot

On the Evening Before My Departure

Pre-Deployment Chaplain’s Brief

The Road to Pol-e-Khomri

Tourists

Augury

0300

Blocking an Imagined War Movie

Medical Refresher

Failure Drills

A Fable

Shura

Days of Spring, 2016

Capabilities Brief

0500

Deserving (II)

How to Transition a Province

Self-Portrait with Wedding, Vineyard, and Gunshot

Unpracticed

Everything in Sunlight I Can’t Stop Seeing

Notes

Acknowledgments

Grateful acknowledgment is made to the following publications in which versions of these poems first appeared:

32 Poems: "Informant (formerly titled Informant [Name Redacted]) and Survival and Evasion"

Adroit Journal: "Goat in the Cleared Village"

Beloit Poetry Journal: "Call to Prayer, Pissing in Irbil, The Road to Pol-e-Khomri, and What Being in