FARMINGTON – War is terrible, yet heartbreakingly real. And, sometimes, lucrative, too, in the most unexpected of ways.

That the decision of a California poetry school graduate to enlist in the Army, to go to Iraq, to write poems in secret by flashlight in the night, would transform a small Maine publishing house – who would think it?

Certainly not Sgt. Brian Turner, filling notebook after notebook with observations of Iraq, diagrams of the days’ engagements, to learn from, and lines of poetry here and there, as they came to him.

Certainly not Alice James Books director April Ossmann – at least until the night she first opened his manuscript, to be undone by his words.

“I was sitting in my living room with 30 finalists’ (manuscripts) spread all around. Poem after poem – it was just incredibly moving,” she said.

“I still get goose bumps when I hear him read,” she said.

Turner had submitted his work for the Farmington-based poetry cooperative’s annual Beatrice Hawley Award, which gives winners $2,000 and publishes the winning manuscript.

The co-op’s editorial board members decide on winners by consensus, Ossmann said, picking one from between 750 and 850 submissions. Right from the start, Turner’s work stood out, she said. “It was clear to everyone that we were going to take this man.”

It was a good decision. The Hawley award was just the beginning. Featured in The New York Times, the New Yorker, and on “News Hour” (with Jim Lehrer), NPR’s “Morning Edition,” and the BBC, among others, Turner’s book has become famous, fast.

It’s won five awards so far, and Ossmann said she expects it to win more before it’s done.

It’s been embraced by West Point and the Air Force Academy, by anti-war groups, and by poets for its delicately crafted treatment of life and death in Iraq.

And it’s transformed Alice James Books. Even before the book’s release, Ossmann said, the co-op’s drive to grow the press had been successful, doubling sales in a few years prior to Turner’s submission.

“This took us over the hump,” Ossmann said, doubling sales again as well as adding visibility to the small but well-respected publishing house.

Life has changed a lot for the 39-year-old Turner, since “Here, Bullet” became a sensation.

Talking on the phone early Friday morning before another reading in California, his voice was hoarse, tired.

But the fact people are enthralled with the poetry never entirely surprised him either, because of its subject matter. “Another book I might write probably would not receive this kind of attention,” he said.

Though that’s not exactly what he set out to do. He described deliberately hiding the fact he was a poet from the men he commanded as a team leader in the 3rd Stryker Brigade Combat Team, 2nd Infantry Division. He didn’t want to undermine his leadership position, he said. “Most people, when they hear the word poetry, wouldn’t take the time to sit down and read the poems,” he said. “I knew if they read them they would see something similar to what they were experiencing – poetry has a wider compass than what’s sometimes allowed.”

That said, it means the world to Turner when fellow soldiers stateside tell him his words ring true, bring them back, he said.

Many of the poems are peppered with Arabic words and allusions to Islam, ancient Mesopotamia, the Garden of Eden, the natural beauty of the land, as well as war, destruction, and death. But as much as they tried to learn Arabic, Turner said, it was hard to get to know Iraqis. You never knew if the person offering you hospitality or a smile was also trying to kill you, he said.

Maybe that was part of the inspiration for the title poem, “Here, Bullet.” The fastest poem he wrote in Iraq, Turner said it both taunts and expresses fear of death, which is everywhere in Iraq.

“Sometimes you can feel kind of hunted,” he said. “You never know if the reticule of the sniper’s scope is trained on you.”

Still, writing about such things wasn’t cathartic. He’s just lucky, he said, not to have come back with the post traumatic stress disorder that one in six Iraq veterans comes back with. Lucky not to have been killed or maimed.

It’s still there, he said. “Each of us has things that we carry with us when we come home. It seems like if you care about what’s happening there, it’s got to make a mark on your soul.”