Stick Soldiers

Hugh Martin is a graduate of Muskingum University and completed his MFA at Arizona State in May, 2012. He served six years in the Army National Guard as an M1A1 Tanker and spent 11 months in Iraq. His poetry centers on the narratives that crossed his path as a soldier, with a goal "to make each section vivid and strong enough to give the reader a clear idea of what each soldier is like as a human being." Martin's work has appeared in CONSEQUENCE Magazine, Mid-American Review, Nashville Review, and is forthcoming in Gargoyle, Third Coast, and the American Poetry Review. His chapbook, So, How Was the War? (Kent State UP, 2010) was published by the Wick Poetry Center, and was selected as part of the 7th Avenue Streetscape Series in downtown Phoenix, Arizona. In the summer of 2011 he taught introductory creative writing classes at the National University of Singapore. He will be a Stegner Fellow at Stanford University in the fall of 2012.

"The Stick Soldiers reveal[s] Iraq in all its real and imagined dangers in a language that is somber, angry, deeply reflective, but also intensely, if not darkly humorous." The collection is an "approachable, necessary volume of poems about what it was like to prepare for war, serve in Iraq, and return to Ohio 'a body / much less / without the plated-vest, the ammo.'" -M.K. Sukach, War Literature & the Arts "The Stick Soldiers is a journey you don't want to miss. Especially if you care about the soldiers our country sent to war and if you want to help them come home." -Bookscover2cover "The Stick Soldiers deserves a wide audience. It has much to tell us about the cost of war on our veterans." - Rain Taxi "As America's withdrawal from Iraq fades amidst more recent events, it becomes even more important to read books like The Stick Soldiers to give voice and image to just what contemporary war constitutes for soldiers like Martin." --Mark Allen Jenkins, American Microreviews and Interviews "Martin's book, The Stick Soldiers, released in 2013, is filled with this kind of comedie noire, a knowing authority which seems deeply suspicious not only of its own attempts to reduce the war to language but also of the capacity of its civilian audience to comprehend this language."-Los Angeles Review of Books

• Table of ContentsM-16A2 Assault Rifle5I.Spring in Jalula7The Stick Soldiers9The Global War on Terrorism10The Jalula Market 11Responding to an Explosion in Qarah Tappah13First Engagement14II.Nights in the Quadrilateral Pool of Sawdust and Sweat17The Summer of Crawling19The Range20Basic Training21Full Moon, M2 Machine Gun22Tomorrow, We Go Up North23Four-Letter Word24III.Observation Post29Raid31Nocturne, Traffic Control Point32Friday Night, FOB Cobra33Pictures of the War36After Curfew37The Rocket38Causeway Overwatch39Desert Nocturne40IV.The War Was Good, Thank You42Demobilization44Home From Iraq, Larry’s Tavern45Barracks Dream46 Firework Elegy47First Snow48V.Doc’s Kill50Ways of Looking at an IED51Green Dreams53Site 947: A Situation Report54The Burn Pit at FOB Cobra55This Morning, We Carry Body Bags57Nocturne with Sandstorm58VI.Nostos: Quinn’s Bar, Cleveland Heights60