BillyBlog's Favorite Poems, #23 ("The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner" by Randall Jarrell

I have reached a gap between the Poems I Believe Should Be Mentioned and the Poems That Must Be Mentioned.

There are a few pieces dangling like slabs of beef waiting to be inspected. This is a work in progress. I had the nagging feeling that I went out of town and left the iron on. I unfolded my telescope and peered into my memory’s chambers. With a little nudge, I remembered the following poem, which still elicits an inner gasp even today. I can only imagine what it must have been like when it was fresh and new like an open wound.

I feel like a bit of a cheater, selecting a poem that is widely-anthologized. Not a lot of single poems have their own wikipedia entries. But, that's the way it is.

Alas, the casualty is James Tate, a worthy poet I would have loved to laud here, but he’s been bumped from the green room into someone else’s Top Something List of Poetry.

The Death Of The Ball Turret Gunner
by Randall Jarrell

From my mother's sleep I fell into the State,
And I hunched in its belly till my wet fur froze.
Six miles from earth, loosed from its dream of life,
I woke to black flak and the nightmare fighters.
When I died they washed me out of the turret with a hose.

Listen: "The Death of The Ball Turret Gunner" (m4a) read by Randall Jarrell!
Previous Favorite Poems for National Poetry Month:

#24 - A Handful of Richard Brautigan
#25 - "A Buddha in the Woodpile" by Lawrence Ferlinghetti
#26 - "Separation" by W.S. Merwin
#27 - "The Flea" by John Donne
#28 - Poem Twenty from Pablo Neruda's Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair
#29 - "Magpie's Song" by Gary Snyder
#30 - "Eunoia" by Christian Bok