Personalizing the war

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Cpl. Jason Dunham was labeled "expectant" by doctors in a military hospital in Iraq, meaning they assumed his severe head injury was soon going to claim his life.

But then, "Oh my God, he just squeezed my hand."

And with that, Wall Street Journal reporter Michael Phillips left an entranced crowd of more than 100 students and faculty in McKeldin Library on a cliff-hanger at the end of his first reading on Wednesday night.

Phillips, along with poet Eleanor Wilner, kicked off the semester's "Writers Here and Now" series, which is coordinated by the Program in Creative Writing and the Jiménez-Porter Writers' House.

The "War & Representation of War" readings were part of the war theme of the semester, which includes the First Year Book, War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning, by Chris Hedges.

Wilner, who began the presentation, read selections of what she considers "citizen's poetry." While many of her poems are political in nature, Wilner prefers the term "citizen" because "there's a prejudice against political poetry in America," she said.

Wilner described her reading selection as a mix between the "hard-edge, topical kind" of war poems and the ones that offer more hope and reconciliation.

"It's not the bullet that matters in the end," Wilner said. "Life wins."

Phillips, who has covered the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan since 2001, read two excerpts from his book, The Gift of Valor. The book is the true story of Dunham, a Marine who received the Congressional Medal of Honor when he saved other Marines in his patrol by placing his helmet over a grenade.

Before the talk at McKeldin, Phillips had a question-and-answer session with Writers' House students in the basement of Dorchester Hall, where he spoke with them about his experiences as an embedded reporter in Iraq.

"The Pentagon is like a Cuisinart: they're spinning you so hard, but here on the front, you're like a fly on the wall," Phillips said at the session. "No one has time to spin you."

In response to Phillips' reading at McKeldin, sophomore English major Robert Hayunga said, "His style made you feel for the characters. It made you feel almost as if you were there."

Pura López Colomé and Jeffrey Renard Allen will hold the next reading on Oct. 8 at 7 p.m. at McKeldin Library.

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