About Kevin Powers: Kevin Powers is an American fiction writer, poet, and Iraq War veteran.
I think a lot of the guys I know and a lot of people I've talked to, what they want is very often what most people want, a kind of simple life, a livelihood, a family, people who care about them, people they can care about. I think vets on the whole ...
It's not just: you get off the plane, you're back home, everything's fine. Maybe the physical danger ends, but soldiers are still deeply at risk of being injured in a different way.
I wasn't a good student in high school. I wanted to go to college, but they weren't exactly beating down my door to offer me admission, and it's so expensive in the U.S. If you join up for a period, the army will pay your school and provide a stipend...
I guess I find the boundaries between poetry and prose to be somewhat permeable.
Poetry and prose are of equal importance to me as a reader, and there doesn't seem to be much difference in my own writing.
I can't envision an honest war novel that left war in a positive light.
I know that the writers I read and admire all have an influence on my work, but trying to determine to what degree any particular piece of input changes the way I think about writing seems counterproductive.
My personal opinion is that if someone writes honestly about war, it will inherently be anti-war.
