Worshipful Company Of Fletchers

by James Tate

Masterfully drawing on a variety of voices and characters, James Tate joyfully offers his first book since winning the Pulitzer Prize in 1992 for his "Selected Poems."

Genres: Poetry, Fiction, 20th Century, American

82 pages, Hardcover

First published December 1, 1995

About the author

James Vincent Tate was born in Kansas City, Missouri. He taught creative writing at the University of California, Berkeley and Columbia University, and at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, where he worked since 1971. He was a member of the poetry faculty at the MFA Program for Poets & Writers, along with Dara Wier and Peter Gizzi.

Dudley Fitts selected Tate's first book of poems, The Lost Pilot (1967) for the Yale Series of Younger Poets while Tate was still a student at the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop; Fitts praised Tate's writing for its "natural grace." Despite the early praise he received Tate alienated some of his fans in the seventies with a series of poetry collections that grew more and more strange.

He published two books of prose, Dreams of a Robot Dancing Bee (2001) and The Route as Briefed (1999). His awards include a National Institute of Arts and Letters Award, the Wallace Stevens Award, a Pulitzer Prize in poetry, a National Book Award, and fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts. He was also a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets.

Tate's writing style is difficult to describe, but has been identified with the postmodernist and neo-surrealist movements. He has been known to play with phrases culled from news items, history, anecdotes, or common speech; later cutting, pasting, and assembling such divergent material into tightly woven compositions that reveal bizarre and surreal insights into the absurdity of human nature.

Reviews

[Bud Smith · Rating 5 out of 5]

bought this used. The dipshit before me underlined some nice parts and put marginalia in, some examples of: during the poem "An Eland, In Retirement" in response to the underlined couplet - beating drums, and women with/dinner plates in their lips - they wrote in curly cue blue pen, "it's like the poem gets bored partway through and switches to something else".

In other poems there was just a green post-it note that said 'Funny'

or in the case of the last poem, a post-it note that said 'this is a nice way to end the book' as if the post it was written by Lenny from Of Mice and Men, just let me pet the rabbits, George.

Other highlights: during the poem Abandoned Conceptions, there was a post-it that said, "My mother went to heaven and came back disappointed ... Hilarious!"

I also enjoyed the post it that said, "Far away a bell rang and then a shot was fired ... I'm not sure what this signifies"

And: about the poem "From an Island" the post-it read, "Profound, like a wise man's tale."

[Gabriel Congdon · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fuck yeah!

I read a lot of contemporary poetry, (read? Make time!) and I found this Tate guy one of the strangest and uniquest bards I’ve glanced thus far. (Sure, this book won a National Book Award, but don’t let that dissuade you) To sum with brevity: (And close your eyes if you find author-similes a crutch like I do ((I just can’t help myself))) they’re like Barthelme holograms.

They’re just strings of words too. The things good poets do: remarkable.

[Wayne · Rating 4 out of 5]

James Tate is one of my favorite modern poets. His poems are sometimes obscure and bizarre, and his wordplay and sense of humor make every volume an entertaining read. The best of his poems, images, and ideas remind me of some of my favorite Dylan lyrics. My favorite in this volume is 'How the Pope is Chosen', very funny and wins a bonus 1/2 point for timeliness. 4.5

[Timothy · Rating 5 out of 5]

After a poodle dies
all the cardinals flock to the nearest 7-Eleven.
They drink Slurpies until one of them throws up
and the he's the new Pope.
-"How The Pope Is Chosen"

"Head Of a White Woman Winking" is the poem I've always wanted to write, damnit.

[Colin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Luminous creature.

[Christine · Rating 5 out of 5]

WHAT A BOOK

[Abby · Rating 3 out of 5]

I can’t say I understood anything that was going on, but it was a fun romp.

Favorites
“How the Pope Is Chosen” (of popes and poodles)
“Porch Theory”
“Worshipful Company of Fletchers”
“Happy as the Day Is Long”

“Porch Theory”

Lots of wicker and baskets, a Victorian
birdcage, on rainy nights children sleeping
but not really sleeping under quilts
telling ghost stories. The porch sags.
The children grow into surprising adults.
There’s a dinner party, an uncle falls asleep.
The cushions on the wicker couch need mending.
The willow itself is finally dying, having
strangled everything within its great reach
for half-a-century. “Look at those clouds,”
someone says. “The face of God is in there,
somewhere.” A cat watches a cricket caught
in a cobweb. Drinks are served. More children
climb on the wicker couch, and grandmother
stares at the croquet set
in the corner, remembering the parrot
her grandfather brought back from the Pacific.

[Bojan Tunguz · Rating 5 out of 5]

I first came across James Tate's poems in an anthology of American prose poetry. I was struck by his whimsical down-to-earth style and content. It struck a chord with me, and I've been fascinated by his works ever since. Until I came across "Fletchers", though, most of his works I've read have been quite true to the prose-poem format. In many ways "Fletchers" seems to be much closer to the "true" poetry, albeit of the very modern late-20th century kind. This is not a bad thing - in fact, it is a very exciting "new" facet of his style, and makes me feel almost like discovering a new poet. The poems are exploratory and pensive, and open up new vistas to Tate's imagination. They give us a new taste of the world that we live in, and an entirely different perspective on our daily lives.

[Ariadne · Rating 5 out of 5]

In these poems, Tate wrestles with what it means to be human, the physical vs the metaphysical, what is our purpose in this life, nature vs society, contentment, to live vs to consume, etc. Beautiful poems that often tend towards absurdism while always maintaining deep meaning and asking philosophical questions.

[Jason Fickett · Rating 3 out of 5]

The weakest of his books I've read, though I liked some at the end. "Color in the Garden" was a stand out. The last poem ended the book well, a vibe of appreciation for getting to lead a life of writing these crazy poems.

[D'Anne · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is the first Tate book I have ever read. I had some passing familiarity with him via anthologies and such. I came across a used copy of this book while Laurie Capps and I were perusing the poetry section at a used book store in Charlotte. She recommended it highly and since I think highly of her I didn't hesitate to buy it.

Judging from this one book alone, when Tate is on he's really on. Poems like "Happy As the Day is Long" and "50 Views of Tokyo" are wonderful conglomerations of seemingly random associations that fit together beautifully as a whole. He also has an amazing poem that compares the pope to a poodle ("How the Pope Is Chosen") that manages to be both hilarious and yet still maintain an astute critique of religion.

In the majority of the poems in this book, however, I felt as if Tate was trying too hard to be clever or, at the very least, letting the cleverness that comes so easily carry his work. Things happen in his poems that couldn't happen in real life. This is not, by itself, a problem, but instead of establishing a world in which such things are believable, it feels more like he said to himself, "Hey, wouldn't it be weird if"... a woman walked a bumble bee the size of a Saint Bernard on a leash? An island turned out to be the Dowager Empress of China? A glowworm drove a car? And yeah, it would be weird. It could also be really cool. But something about these situations rings false. Lines like "A cockroach was talking to a hula-goddess / and nibbling on her lace bodice" and "A spy joins / a circus--a clown leaps from / a bridge" feel like shenanigans. Like how a movie worth seeing is never promoted as "a wild romp" or "zany."

But hey, it won the National Book Award in 1994, so clearly plenty of people disagree with me. I'm certainly not sorry I read it and have marked poems worth revisiting with blue Post-It tabs. Eight, to be exact, which is more good poems than many poets ever write.

[Michelle · Rating 3 out of 5]

So, I'm going through poets that studied at Iowa. My first experience with Tate. And I like it. I like the surprises, the whimsy and implausibility Tate blends with concrete images to link together the themes in this book: the usual stuff about life, religion, etc., and the never ending discussion about what the hell we're all doing here.

Particularly compelling are "In my Own Backyard," "The Parade and After the Parade," "An Eland, in Retirement" "a New Beginning," and "The Documentary We Were Making."

From How the Pope is Chosen:

When a Pope is ready to come into the world,
we try to sing a song, but the words do not fit the music too well.
Some of the full-bodied popes are a million times bigger than us.
They open their mouths at regular intervals.
They are continually grinding up pieces of the cross
and spitting them out. black flies cling to their lips.
Once they are elected they are given a bowl of cream
and a puppy clip. Eyebrows are a protection
when the Pope must plunge through dense underbrush

in search of a sheep.

[Chris McCracken · Rating 3 out of 5]

Follow the tinkle of the lead llama's bell.

[Sara · Rating 3 out of 5]

I should come back to this after I'm a little bit more used to reading poetry. A lot of little things I liked, but nothing really grabbed me off the bat.

[D. Ennis · Rating 5 out of 5]

Probably my favorite volume of poetry. Changed the way I look at poetry and writing. and its wicked funny.

[chris · Rating 5 out of 5]

Some
mysteries are better left alone. Others are dreary, distasteful,
and can disarrange a shadow into a thing of unspeakable beauty.
-- "Go, Youth"

My own humanity has overwhelmed me,
it has nearly defeated me, the me who was
trying to rise up. It -- that is, my own
humanity -- seethed up when I least wanted it.
Following the magnetic forces of other worlds,
the birds fly in all directions,
less bird-like than myself.
-- "The Great Root System"

"After all, it's still America," we said in unison
before blowing out the stars and drifting off
into a deep and unsettling sleep.
-- "A New Beginning"

I grab my throat and wrestle me to the ground.
"There, there," I say, "lighten up ol' boy."
"It's a free country, it's your own backyard."
I listen intently: sky and daisies burlesque each other,
bivouacked between worlds.
-- "In My Own Backyard"

[James · Rating 3 out of 5]

My first James Tate. Much to like but not my cup of tea. Nonsense can be fun and whimsy always is, "Jabberwocky" for instance, but sustaining through the length of a book seems quite a challenge and, here, didn't work for me. Perhaps this is all that Tate writes. I don't know. The book has clever lines, amazing, bizarre images but I only really liked three poems all the way through.

I'll give you that Tate is clever. That his seeming continuity works in ways that, for me, John Ashbery's work does not. But I am in the minority for both poets it seems. I have sworn off Ashbery but I have more Tate's to read on my shelf.

[Jordan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Quite different from his debut, his surreal, hop-skipping, almost psychedelic prose-poem style now fully developed. There are plenty of poems here where it doesn't particularly land all that well, but even they are fun and odd in the right ways. And when he really hits it right, it's out of the park. I have little patience for poetry that forces the surreal, the open-ended symbolism, the quirky opaque, but it all feels so incredibly natural in Tate.

[Sean · Rating 1 out of 5]

These poems made me think of plates with odd pairings of buffet food on them. I couldn't make any sense of how it all got there, or what the chef was doing.

There were about four poems here that I enjoyed: "Eland..", and "Pope..." among them.

[Josh · Rating 4 out of 5]

Tate’s poems are dense, strange, absurd, and often delightful— I can’t always explain their logic but nearly every one of them has at least one image or turn of phrase that makes me laugh. A fun and bewildering read.

[George Jensen · Rating 5 out of 5]

tate is a funny guy. I liked the poem about the governmental prairie dog cull

[Harris · Rating 2 out of 5]

Hard to rate poetry books. I don't expect to like all of them. Relaxing read.

[edmondegreen · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good book.

[Corey · Rating 4 out of 5]

There's no one like him for the poetry of surrealism and enigma. The title poem here is a masterpiece.

[Bill Comfortable · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of my favorites. Every time I read it, I’m reminded of why I love poetry.

[Al · Rating 4 out of 5]

annotated this with post-its and it was very enriching for my brain
James Tate,, what a lovely way you have about yourself!!!! sweet poems
nothing suuuper stuck with me but I'll be coming back

[Scott Woolgar · Rating 5 out of 5]

I admit I’m late to the James Tate party. That said, he’s now my spirit guide, and I find myself preaching his genius: Have you read this guy? He’ll change your life! Understandably, my fervor doesn’t win many converts.

So I’m choosing The Worshipful Company of Fletchers to review and recommend because I think it best represents Tate’s mind-bending surrealism, humor, and gut-punching lyricism. (Oh, and it won the National Book Award, too.)

There’s nothing obvious or sentimental in this collection, and it’s easy to get lost in the random images and mood shifts. For example, “The Nitrogen Cycle” opens with this bizarre line:

Before the break-up of my country was content to lie under the kitchen sink and gnaw on busted pipes.

Not much to go on, right? And a first readthrough doesn’t help much: Nests of mice, military planes, Tabasco sauce, a search for a lost brother, and a Snake person coming out of the forest.

But if you take a step back and scan the poem for a single line that stands out from the rest — I call it a diamond line — you may find the poem suddenly coming into focus. Here’s my diamond line for “The Nitrogen Cycle:”

You are a wily apparition, no doubt, conjured by my crumbling defenses.

A second reading seen through the lens of the diamond line and the poem takes on new meaning and a sense of intentionality that was missing from the first time through.

Here’s one from “Desire:”

Only a thin wall of corrupt manners stands between us and a delightful innocence.

Or from “How the Pope Is Chosen,” which conflates the words Pope and poodle:

It looks as if they are taking it easy, but they are learning something else. What, we don’t know, because we are not like them.

For me, it works. By my accounting, every poem in The Worshipful Company of Fletchers has at least one diamond line that illuminates and unlocks the crazy-legged lines before and after. I recommend trying this technique on this volume, and in the rest of your world. It’s striking how often a line cuts through.

In case you want to follow along at home, I include my favorite poem from the collection, and one I think has more diamond lines than any other.

The Wrong Way Home

All night a door floated down the river.

It tried to remember little incidents of pleasure from its former life, like the time the lovers leaned against it kissing for hours and whispering those famous words.

Later, there were harsh words, and a shoe was thrown and the door was slammed.

Comings and goings by the thousands, the early mornings and late nights, years, years.

O they’ve got big plans, they’ll make a bundle.

The door was an island that swayed in its sleep, the moon turned the doorknob just slightly, burned its fingers and ran, and still the door said nothing and slept.

At least that’s what they like to say, the little fishes and so on.

Far away, a bell rang, and then a shot was fired.

[Jeff · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this probably ten years ago, ten after it was published, shortly on the heels of a Selected for which he'd won the Pulitzer. I just read it, to keep up, perhaps without concentration, considering the reading of some other Tate volume I didn't end up opening and didn't get around to until let's say, The Ghost Soldiers (which I appear to have started reading in 2012 or so). So I missed the news, which was that this was his best late book (still have a couple to catch up on), disclosing the late style, Thoreauvian and increasingly about scale, measure, temporality, solitude; the orders of the poem. "Go Youth," "A Missed Opportunity," "Little Poem With Argyle Socks," "50 Views of Tokyo," "The Great Root System," "More Later, Less the Same," "How the Pope is Chosen," "The Early Years," "I Got Blindsided" (about the Malibu Dylan), "Porch Theory" (a pastoral otium), "From an Island," and "In My Own Backyard" ("I've seen fox, deer, wild turkey, pheasant, skunk, | snakes, moles, guinea hens. I've thrown a boomerang | that never came back": that, reader, is parataxis) -- all terrific. "An Eland, In Retirement" parodies the autobiographical peregrinations of certain phlegmatic personages resembling for all that the titular monologuist, "once . . . very common, [who] travelled in large herds | over the plains of Africa."

At some point after the follow-up to this gorgeous short collection, it seems, Tate's output accelerated to such a pace that his publisher would not continue to put out short books. The Thoreauvian dailiness that is so part of the texture of this volume puts further pressure on Tate's thinking about the orders of poetry. You begin to see this thematically in "More Later, Less the Same," and "Where Were You?" At any rate, I returned to this volume today because it was the only one the New York Times obit of Tate bothered to quote from. Very happy I did return. Will frequently from here on out.

[Steven · Rating 1 out of 5]

There is a lot to be said about the power of association in poetry. Some of the most poignant moments in contemporary poetry happen when the poet is skilled and brave enough to disconnect from narrative logic and leap to another plane, opening a new level of understanding in readers. James Tate is obviously aware of this phenomena and in this National Book Award winning volume attempts to create a speaker and persona who freely associates images from his environment with observations about consciousness and mental illness. In fact, there are many hints that the speaker in most of these poems has suffered some sort of breakdown and is trying to reconnect with society, at varying levels of success. Unfortunately, these poems fail for me because they don’t seem to successfully employ any other poetic devices. There are sparse themes discernible in a few poems (mostly social commentary that is humorously told from the outsider perspective), but the rest lack the music or technique to make them interesting outside of their random content. Since Mr. Tate is such a lauded poet, I’m interested to sample some of his earlier volumes, to see if it is just this newer work that is uninteresting to me. However, as an introduction, this volume doesn’t inspire the respect in me that he has garnered from the broader literary community.

[Melting Uncle · Rating 3 out of 5]

Occasionally funny but feels like he's just practicing and randomly stumbling upon something golden