One of the goals of my book was to consider the reach of American power, the role that it plays throughout the world, the way that it reshapes societies far beyond our borders through the use of violent force. And I wanted to do that fairly but with an awareness about what assertion of America’s power entails. The use of the word slaughter, in the poem, jars. So I thought that those lines had all the right resonances for the beginning of my book.
The book, according to the author