The Grief Muscles

"There is a beautiful disparity in Brandon Courtney's poems. The hard is represented by the blade of a field knife, bullets, sickles, the scorched earth of Baghdad, and the hardscrabble farming of Iowa. Soft is the mouth's soft palate, flower petals, fruit, the flesh of the beloved, wet soil, and the body. The Fallujah/Ramadi poems are harrowing, feverish, stunning, piercing as Sky Spear and Jericho missiles. The poems offer a counterweight to the amputations of blast injuries in war. His language is his grief. His is a distinguished first book."—Bruce Smith