The Dead Peasant's Handbook

"When I first heard Brian Turner has finally finished his long-awaited new book—I wanted to read it that very same day. Yes, I began reading right there, by the mailbox. I admire his work, yes. But why? Because in this book I can see how after artillery’s fire the veteran’s knowledge and regrets set the days to the rhythm and music of others’ bodies’ pain. But what moves me even more, as I linger among these beautiful poems is a widower’s wisdom and echoing heartbreak—Turner’s brilliant elegies for his late wife. What endlessly moves me, too, is the music of aged son’s watching his aged mother’s forgetfulness. Such humane music is this clarity on how 'things we do' are “ghosts we live with. How they call to us.” I love this book." —Ilya Kaminsky


"Brian Turner possesses the extraordinary capacity to transform grief into art, whether intimate or collective, immediate or historical, illuminating that anguish so that we may learn, survive, even flourish in its wake. Turner believes in the redemptive power of love against death, demonstrated by the wrenching poem “Wedding Vows,” and the refusal to speak the words “till death do us part” as part of those vows—a refusal only validated by death, since the love stubbornly refuses to die. Again and again, Brian Turner subjects his trauma to the demands of his craft, offering the gift of lyrical consolation even when that consolation is beyond the reach of the poet." —Martín Espada