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Letter Composed During a Lull in the Fighting

Poems

Contributors

By Kevin Powers

Formats and Prices

Price

$23.00

Price

$25.00 CAD

The award-winning author of The Yellow Birds returns with an extraordinary debut poetry collection.

National Book Award finalist, Iraq war veteran, novelist and poet Kevin Powers creates a deeply affecting portrait of a life shaped by war. Letter Composed During a Lull in the Fighting captures the many moments that comprise a soldier’s life: driving down the Texas highway; waiting for the unknown in the dry Iraq heat; writing a love letter; listening to a mother recount her dreams.

Written with evocative language and discernment, Powers’s poetry strives to make sense of the war and its echoes through human experience. Just as The Yellow Birds was hailed as the “first literary masterpiece produced by the Iraq war,” this collection will make its mark as a powerful, enduring work (Los Angeles Times).

  • Praise for The Yellow Birds
    "Extraordinary...A harrowing story about the friendship of two young men trying to stay alive on the battlefield...Brilliantly observed and deeply affecting." --Michiko Kakutani, New York Times
  • "Powers is a poet first, so The Yellow Birds is spare, incredibly precise, unimproveable."--Dave Eggers, Observer
  • "Kevin Powers has produced a masterpiece of war literature and a classic."--Hilary Mantel, London Times
  • "A powerful work of art....Put it way up on that high rare shelf alongside Ernest Hemingway and Tim O'Brien."--Anthony Swofford

On Sale
Apr 1, 2014
Page Count
112 pages
ISBN-13
9780316401081

Kevin Powers

About the Author

Kevin Powers is the author of The Yellow Birds, which won the PEN/Hemingway Award, the Guardian First Book Award, and was a National Book Award Finalist. He was born and raised in Richmond, Virginia, graduated from Virginia Commonwealth University, and holds an MFA from the University of Texas at Austin, where he was a Michener Fellow in Poetry. He served in the US Army in 2004 and 2005 in Iraq, where he was deployed as a machine gunner in Mosul and Tal Afar. Letter Composed During a Lull in the Fighting is his first collection of poetry.

Learn more about this author