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Émigré: Poems from Another Land
James Thomas Fletcher lives in the Republic of Panamá. This book reflects his life in that Central American country, and also ponders love, death, and sex, in poems both poignant and whimsical.
Explore these short samples for a glimpse into Émigré.
ALL HALLOWS' EVE
Haunted and orbed
the moon scoffs at passersby
painted with blood
to purchase candy
SUDDENLY
You weren't supposed to die
Not like this, without a word
With no goodbye, without a kiss
DUST TO DUST
This earth is not of man
Man is of the earth
— dust to dust —
In the Amazon man is earth
Mud and man are one
River, canoe, bank, and man
Share the color of a lump of clay
Only differing in tone
Explore these short samples for a glimpse into Émigré.
ALL HALLOWS' EVE
Haunted and orbed
the moon scoffs at passersby
painted with blood
to purchase candy
SUDDENLY
You weren't supposed to die
Not like this, without a word
With no goodbye, without a kiss
DUST TO DUST
This earth is not of man
Man is of the earth
— dust to dust —
In the Amazon man is earth
Mud and man are one
River, canoe, bank, and man
Share the color of a lump of clay
Only differing in tone
- GenresPoetry
106 pages, Paperback
Published July 3, 2017
About the author
James Thomas Fletcher
26 books10 followersJames Thomas Fletcher is native to Oklahoma. After a brief stint in college, he left the state to see if the rest of the world existed. Along the way, he picked cotton, made fiberglass and, in hazmat suit, cleaned filters inside a nuclear laundry. He was an M-60 machine gunner in the Central Highlands of Vietnam, company clerk at Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe, (NATO\SHAPE) in Belgium, bartender in South Carolina, bricklayer in Oklahoma, oil field chainhand in Louisiana, roustabout in the Gulf of Mexico, English instructor in North Carolina, and Director of Computer-Aided Instruction at the University of Illinois in Chicago.
Academically, he holds Master’s of Arts in English degrees in Creative Writing and Composition & Rhetoric, has been honored for outstanding teaching, and presented at national and international conferences on the subject of computer pedagogy. In addition, he has earned Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer and Advanced Certified Novell Administrator computer certifications.
Now retired, his motorcycle and hang glider long since sold. His pilot's license expired. He no longer restores pinball machines, skydives, scubas, sails, or paints. He has forgotten how to play the bagpipe. His didgeridoo sits idle. He was once removed by the director from a part in his own stage play, but that has not discouraged him from continuing to write. He has written short stories, plays, and screenplays, but favors poetry.
He lives on the side of a volcano in the Republic of Panamá
Academically, he holds Master’s of Arts in English degrees in Creative Writing and Composition & Rhetoric, has been honored for outstanding teaching, and presented at national and international conferences on the subject of computer pedagogy. In addition, he has earned Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer and Advanced Certified Novell Administrator computer certifications.
Now retired, his motorcycle and hang glider long since sold. His pilot's license expired. He no longer restores pinball machines, skydives, scubas, sails, or paints. He has forgotten how to play the bagpipe. His didgeridoo sits idle. He was once removed by the director from a part in his own stage play, but that has not discouraged him from continuing to write. He has written short stories, plays, and screenplays, but favors poetry.
He lives on the side of a volcano in the Republic of Panamá
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
June 3, 2018
The poems of Émigré – From Panama to Pigalle to Pluto – compelling poems about nature, love and interstices
After I read poems or fiction, I sometimes guess the author’s influences, or I’ll connect what I just read to what I’ve read before. In this collection of poems, James Fletcher often announces his influences, but there are some he may not name but that permeate his work. The section Destinations and Termini revived my joy of reading Wordsworth, Blake, Byron and Keats. Some people have wondered if Wordsworth would have written so lovingly about Nature if he lived on the Mosquito Coast, where every living thing is trying to eat you or suck you blood. I think the answer is “yes,” and I think the poems of Destinations and Termini are what those poems might look like. “Another Planet,” “Bajaraque,” and “Myth of the Amazon” reveal how Fletcher has situated himself as an émigré in Panama. I especially enjoyed the thoughtful twist in “Dust to Dust.” I’d argue there’s some William Cullen Bryant misting about in the poem in Destinations and Termini, and “Fog in the Mountains,” “Over There,” “Black Water Night” and “Sailing Mount Ararat” are skillful work portraying Fletcher’s relationship with nature. Having loved “Lines written a few miles above Tintern Abbey” and “The Songs of Innocence” when I read them 37 years ago, I thoroughly enjoyed what Fletcher offers in the first section of Émigré: the insights of a heart that loves the Terra on which he lives. Any lover of English Romantic poetry will be rewarded by Destinations and Termini.
I enjoy poems about the process of writing poems – the occasional glances into the poet’s mind. When done well, as Fletcher does Section 2, Literatus, meta-poems often give insights to what you read next. In one poem, Fletcher recalls a mantra from his poetry teacher: strangle your little darlings. These “little darlings” are lines a poet writes and loves at first blush, but then must have the insight and courage to delete when the saccharine little darlings “befoul” the poem. As I continued to read, I looked for little darlings but found none – I imagined Fletcher sitting on his verandah in Panama, ever vigilant to remove anything that clouds the rhythm and music of his work. In other poems, Fletcher praises Rexwroth, channels Alexander Pope’s “Dunciad” in a scornful poem about Ashbery, and writes poems (epistles?) to Richard Hugo and Irving Layton. With Hugo and Layton, I was impressed with Fletcher’s ruminations on whether liking the work of each poet meant that he would have like liked either poet as a person. My favorite poem of the section Literatus is “The Crystal Dictionary": a powerful account of how thought/language moves from the Platonic to the poet to the poem. Really, the poem is a gem.
In the final section, Between Stars, Fletcher writes about love, lust, triangles, and the requirements of life, all against a cosmic panorama. I enjoyed the way Fletcher finds that the purest feelings of the human heart (and other organs) can be projected across the universe, and an epistle between lovers separated by galaxies is closed with “vastly and closely.” Fletcher includes a poem on the death of Leonard Cohen – both artists excel at committing love to words. While in the post-work “References & Inspirations,” Fletcher attributes the influence of Cohen to the creation of the “heated” poem “In the back of the Church,” I kept thinking of Donne’s early work. Fletcher’s poems on love, lust and longing are intimate and engrossing. As a worthy corollary of “The Crystal Dictionary,” “Lights and Triangles” is elemental and thought provoking.
Émigré graces the reader with beauty and insight. Fletcher’s best work is simultaneously atomic and cosmic, and Emigre is filled with such work – an excellent read.
After I read poems or fiction, I sometimes guess the author’s influences, or I’ll connect what I just read to what I’ve read before. In this collection of poems, James Fletcher often announces his influences, but there are some he may not name but that permeate his work. The section Destinations and Termini revived my joy of reading Wordsworth, Blake, Byron and Keats. Some people have wondered if Wordsworth would have written so lovingly about Nature if he lived on the Mosquito Coast, where every living thing is trying to eat you or suck you blood. I think the answer is “yes,” and I think the poems of Destinations and Termini are what those poems might look like. “Another Planet,” “Bajaraque,” and “Myth of the Amazon” reveal how Fletcher has situated himself as an émigré in Panama. I especially enjoyed the thoughtful twist in “Dust to Dust.” I’d argue there’s some William Cullen Bryant misting about in the poem in Destinations and Termini, and “Fog in the Mountains,” “Over There,” “Black Water Night” and “Sailing Mount Ararat” are skillful work portraying Fletcher’s relationship with nature. Having loved “Lines written a few miles above Tintern Abbey” and “The Songs of Innocence” when I read them 37 years ago, I thoroughly enjoyed what Fletcher offers in the first section of Émigré: the insights of a heart that loves the Terra on which he lives. Any lover of English Romantic poetry will be rewarded by Destinations and Termini.
I enjoy poems about the process of writing poems – the occasional glances into the poet’s mind. When done well, as Fletcher does Section 2, Literatus, meta-poems often give insights to what you read next. In one poem, Fletcher recalls a mantra from his poetry teacher: strangle your little darlings. These “little darlings” are lines a poet writes and loves at first blush, but then must have the insight and courage to delete when the saccharine little darlings “befoul” the poem. As I continued to read, I looked for little darlings but found none – I imagined Fletcher sitting on his verandah in Panama, ever vigilant to remove anything that clouds the rhythm and music of his work. In other poems, Fletcher praises Rexwroth, channels Alexander Pope’s “Dunciad” in a scornful poem about Ashbery, and writes poems (epistles?) to Richard Hugo and Irving Layton. With Hugo and Layton, I was impressed with Fletcher’s ruminations on whether liking the work of each poet meant that he would have like liked either poet as a person. My favorite poem of the section Literatus is “The Crystal Dictionary": a powerful account of how thought/language moves from the Platonic to the poet to the poem. Really, the poem is a gem.
In the final section, Between Stars, Fletcher writes about love, lust, triangles, and the requirements of life, all against a cosmic panorama. I enjoyed the way Fletcher finds that the purest feelings of the human heart (and other organs) can be projected across the universe, and an epistle between lovers separated by galaxies is closed with “vastly and closely.” Fletcher includes a poem on the death of Leonard Cohen – both artists excel at committing love to words. While in the post-work “References & Inspirations,” Fletcher attributes the influence of Cohen to the creation of the “heated” poem “In the back of the Church,” I kept thinking of Donne’s early work. Fletcher’s poems on love, lust and longing are intimate and engrossing. As a worthy corollary of “The Crystal Dictionary,” “Lights and Triangles” is elemental and thought provoking.
Émigré graces the reader with beauty and insight. Fletcher’s best work is simultaneously atomic and cosmic, and Emigre is filled with such work – an excellent read.
Displaying 1 of 1 review