War

by James Thomas Fletcher

James Thomas Fletcher enlisted in the United States Army on Saint Patrick’s Day, 1969. He was an M-60 machine gunner in the Central Highlands of Vietnam.

Fletcher's previous books of poetry all contain poems that touch on war to some degree, from the Trojan War through the World Wars to Vietnam and beyond. Those poems hint at psychic wounds, at displaced lives, at Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, and at the helplessness of survivors.

Those previous poems have been collected and combined here with new poems which deal more directly with the author's military service.

98 pages, Paperback

Published November 13, 2018

About the author

James 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

Reviews

[Eva · Rating 5 out of 5]

People have written a lot of good memoirs about the Vietnam War but here is a most excellent memoir set to meter. You know how they say, what poetry after Auschwitz, "they" being Adorno who really said, "To write poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric." Arguably, writing poetry after any genocide or war is a charged mission, but it gets done and when it is done well, it a moment to give us all pause.

Jim Fletcher's poems, compiled from his previous collections, with some new ones, capture the tread and trauma of war and its warriors with empathetic wryness. In reading these poems, you traverse the seemingly routine terrain of a landscape and then you step on a word, a turn of phrase that detonates with illumination.

These are poems written without affectation, perceptive, plainspoken and profound and not just about Vietnam but saluting soldiers mired in fields of battle everywhere. A moving volume proving poetry’s worth to mourning the toils of any war. And you will understand EVERY word.

[Ron Wallace · Rating 5 out of 5]

These poems cut to the core with simple solid language. They should move the reader to some understanding of Vietnam or least what can be understood. My brothers shed blood there Jim Fletcher trod that ground and the poetry her makes one aware of the world at the time. Very glad to have found this work.

[James · Rating 5 out of 5]

Scattered through my other books, I have written about war and its aftermath, including some of my experiences in Vietnam. But for the most part, I wasn't certain how I wanted to approach writing about my involvement in the war. When I finally found a way to approach that period, I wrote a dozen poems within a few days. I've combined my previous war-related poems with these new poems to create this book.

"War" become the first in my tetralogy of themed poetry books, which is now complete with: "Nature," "Love," and "Death."