Poems from Terra James Thomas Fletcher 9781537711133 Books
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"It may be profligate, but is it not life?" asks Lord Byron. This is poetry with an edge.
Poems from Terra James Thomas Fletcher 9781537711133 Books
Here we have a collection of poems that emerge from ‘Below the Earth,’ ‘Upon the Earth,’ and ‘Beyond the Earth,’ all oriented to ‘The Earth,’ while issuing from the fevered, fanciful and often fun pen of a modern-day Byron-esque ‘child of clay.’ As Mr. Fletcher slouches toward his personal ‘clankless chain,’ death itself, he refers to our very human condition as inhabitants of the Terra we cannot escape. In his opening salvo at our human predilection toward self-importance, ‘Suicide Note,’ Fletcher chides a would be self-destructee to give it a rest, and instead, ‘write what you feel when your mother died.’ Note the seeming confusion in tenses: not ‘write what you felt...’ but write what you feel. The present is all we have; don’t piss it away.In ‘My Room,’ we read of the skewering of a pet giraffe, the poor animal hoist on the petard of a ‘Spanish letter opener’ becoming, in the process a sort of logo for the work. This reader saw the killing as a warning to refrain from sticking our necks out. Perhaps that’s a stretch. In ‘In the whorl of voices,’ we read what’s apparently a snatch of the poet’s childhood history, a dead dog, seeing his mother naked, destroying a stolen toy and then facing his father’s wrath. The poet then ‘bends curiously to see what it is he has written.’
The only poems exhibiting a rhyme scheme are ‘To solitude’ with ABBA, and perhaps ‘Rue Git Le Coeur,’ ABAB (mostly) otherwise free verse reigns. This reviewer noted no missteps, unless ‘Celibation’ is a word, and I’m sure it’s what the author meant to use. Also, in ‘Storm,’ I’m quite sure he intended ‘by lasers of lightening.’ Call it poetic license.
Not uplifting, unless the reader seeks truth instead of simple uplift, these poems are beholden to Byron and his half dust/ half deity construct of humanity, Lord Gordon’s ‘low wants/ lofty will’ conundrum. Fletcher even has a certain Marnie, apparently his very own Astarte character who haunts his days and his poetry with her ‘optimistic fatalism, or fatalistic optimism,’ until such time as she might reappear to piss on the Eiffel Tower, thus giving the poet new material. Personal favorite? ‘Don Quixote’ for its lament of past ‘quixotic’ ventures, and another Byronic reference to old men who ‘peer listless into the future and the light.’ In Manfred, Byron writes: ‘The night hath been to me a more familiar face than that of man.’ If we’re all seeking the ‘quiet grave’ that can only be found in the dark. Fletcher’s verses in Poems from Terra shed a bit of dark on that pursuit.
Byron Edgington, author of A Vietnam Anthem. A Vietnam Anthem: What The War Gave Me
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Tags : Poems from Terra [James Thomas Fletcher] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. <div><b>"It may be profligate, but is it not life?" asks Lord Byron. This is poetry with an edge. <br /> </b></div><div><b>Poems from Terra</b> is a collection divided into three sections:<br /><br /></div><div><b>Below the Earth</b></div><div><span> * </span>Id Unbound <br /> * Dreams and Other Delusions</div><div></div><div><b>Upon the Earth</b></div><div> * Urban Depravity </div><div> * Snapshots </div><div> * Women Who Carry My Heart </div><div></div><div><b>Beyond the Earth </b></div><div> * Celestial and Spiritual </div><div> * Scientific and Surreal </div><div> </div><div>Combining grit and grandeur while mingling religion and sex,James Thomas Fletcher,Poems from Terra,CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform,153771113X,American - General,POETRY American General,Poetry
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Poems from Terra James Thomas Fletcher 9781537711133 Books Reviews
James Thomas Fletcher’s Poems from Terra is a collection about the struggle of arbitrating the “Manichaean-ness” of value and bullshit (in one poem, he’s an “amateur scatologist”) in life. But Fletcher’s struggle isn’t simply about “good” versus “evil” his conflicts are more nuanced and compelling. Poems from Terra is an often visceral but always engrossing snapshot of the human condition.
I read Fletcher’s Cairn and loved it for many reasons, but perhaps most because of its sincerity of emotional expression. The collection has so many touching insights into friendship, memories, love and life, and I found Cairn to be intensely intimate.
However, in Poems from Terra, Fletcher has folded in more teleological concerns. I interpret Poems from Terra (which I interpret to be Fletcher’s life) as poems that document Fletcher’s finding “truth” insight, sincerity, self-awareness and agape/unconditional love (is there a difference?). Yet the poems also capture the despair and waves of self-doubt when Fletcher finds himself taking up arms against a sea of troubles but drowning in a universe that feels no sense of obligation about his existence.
I found Poems from Terra to be an interior monologue, where the poems give us a glimpse of Fletcher’s alternately focused and racing thoughts as he searches, like Don Quixote, for what I think is his greatest expectation of life authenticity (and some quality time with Marnie, or an intrusive memory of her).
As with Cairn, Fletcher graces the pages with voluminous knowledge of art and thought. Section I is preceded by a quote from Byron’s Manfred “[t]he Night has been to me a more familiar face than that of man,” foreshadowing the section’s poems that scorn Fletcher’s search for truth/authenticity (is there a difference?). In the poem “Suicide Note,” a failed life might be saved only by poetry. “On the Other Side” is a poignant litany of broken promises which leads to the other side of an asylum/insanity. Fletcher/Fletcher’s persona confesses, “I promised I would not fly out. . . I promised I would stay . . . I promised I would take my medication.” The poem indicts Fletcher/his persona as a man too weak or cowardly to face the search for truth. Next, “Inside” is a brutal poem in which Fletcher admits, “because the week was unkind/I/laughed at your wound/slept too late/drank the gin/and ate the donuts/ . . . I flew from the little murders I created/I/cried in the shower/and became what I am on the inside.” If Poems from Terra recounts Fletcher’s search for truth, the poem “Inside” reveals that Fletcher has found the bullshit again – I don’t think the poem lauds an awareness of mistakes – it implies that Fletcher can be and should be more than a creator of “little murders.” Laughing at wounds and perpetrating little murders lacks authenticity – it is not what Fletcher expects of himself.
This interpretation is bolstered by Fletcher’s poem “Don Quixote,” where a now bootless soldier rues trading safety for danger, and remembers that, “Once I jousted windmills/and won.” The soldier had a choice but failed to realize what was authentic and what wasn’t. The affect and words of the poem “Personal History” reflect Fletcher’s failure to find any truth. What I love about Poems from Terra is that Fletcher’s goal in life is to be authentic, but recognizing authenticity and being authentic is a battle which Fletcher sometimes loses by retreating into alcohol, cruelty, and even insanity.
But Poems from Terra affirms, affirming Fletcher’s search for authenticity. Though sometimes ensnared by an ignis fatuus, Fletcher is also above it. In “Buzz,” Fletcher calls bullshit on a brother in arms when Buzz commits suicide, Fletcher cries at the sealed coffin and rails at the departed Buzz “you deny me a last look.” Left only guilt, Fletcher asserts that their friendship deserved more.
In the poems “Weather and You,” “Desert Night” and “Explanation of the Universe,” Fletcher aligns himself with the natural and cosmic – he declares his standing. If life is a Manichaean struggle, Fletcher has taken the high ground. While on his quest for truth, Fletcher admits that, “all I am after is the elimination of the obvious.” Poems from Terra is a great read because eliminating the obvious is a key to insightful poetry. Poems from Terra chronicles the self-awareness Fletcher develops as he strives for authenticity. In “To Solitude,” Fletcher realizes that “I’ve been aloof, alone – a misanthrope/The choice was mine for years ‘til now I find/Toward such shallowness I’m not inclined/But how from private praxis to elope?” In the powerful “Tender against your Will,” Fletcher addresses a lover “we hurt in a circle/your lies my tears her grief/ her tears my lies your grief/they are all the same and avoidable.” I enjoyed Poems from Terra because the poems so often ride the crest of knowledge/self-knowledge, and it’s compelling when a poem captures the poets struggle “to know.”
“Letter to Jane” captures Fletcher’s emotional sincerity as he recounts the past and comforts a friend. Poignantly, Fletcher seems attuned to when friends and lovers need solace and provides it with all of his heart, but he is often less kind to himself. His agape arises from having wounds that he seeks to save others from. I don’t know if Fletcher would agree with me, but I think his poetry reveals that the most authentic expression of love is, “I remember.” In a number of his poems, the way Fletcher renders a memory in a synesthesia of exacting detail is the truest form of, “I love you.” The complexity and intensity of his remembrances assert that he was “present” – recounting a conversation from thirty years ago in such completeness indicates that 30 years ago Fletcher was hyper-aware of everything that was going on – he was giving all of himself at that time. His memories assert what his friends or lovers may not have known – love is being there, and noticing (and remembering).
In Poems from Terra, Fletcher’s unconditional love is for Marnie. I think readers will find Fletcher’s soul in the “Marnie poems,” which are the most authentic of the collection. I don’t want to intrude on the sanctity of the poems by analyzing or describing them – I’ll say only that Poems from Terra rewards the reader with Fletcher’s verses on happiness, hope, desire, need, loss, pain and the feeling of one true thing in the universe.
Poems from Terra includes poems about poetry. It sometimes seems that poetry is the way Fletcher mediates the interstices of authenticity and bullshit. Fletcher’s poems “document” (in “The Exhibit,” Fletcher asserts, “this is the manuscript”) his Manichaean struggle with love and despair, ignorance and knowledge, and sincerity and banality. In many of his poems, Fletcher suggests that creating a poem blinds him as he writes, as if he has to read what he has written to know if it is good. In “The Whorl of Voices,” we discover Fletcher’s process “he winces at the thought/recovers/and bends curiously to see what it is/he has written.” In “Film Noir Dream,” the last sentence highlights Fletcher’s role as scribe “You clutch at this memory but it turns/into vapor/between your fingers. You hurry/try to write this all down/as your pencil disappears.” Whether reality or a dream, it is poetry that arrests the meaning of Fletcher’s struggles to be authentic. In “I am a Bricklayer,” Fletcher explains that “tonight I do not commit suicide/by hangover, tonight/my mind is free/to glow like the orange halo/of a kiln/where bricks are born.” Though his bio in the book details that Fletcher was a bricklayer in Oklahoma, I’m guessing the “orange halo” of his mind produces bricks of poems. Check out “The Surgeon and the Psychologist” – no one said writing poetry was easy.
Having read Cairn and Poems from Terra, I couldn’t help thinking that Fletcher is a 21st Century William Cullen Bryant. I don’t know how most people think of Bryant, but when I read some of his poems when I was in high school, I thought, if nothing else, this poet is really sincere about what he writes. Fletcher’s connection (as sincere as Bryant’s) to the Earth and nature is elemental – in “Click,” he melds with Earth “as perception disappears into sentience” and atoms explode and expand and implode. As mentioned above, the poems “Weather and You,” “Desert Night” and “Transubstantiation” explore Fletcher’s relationship with nature and the universe. If you enjoy poetry in a naturalistic/romantic vein, Poems from Terra delivers.
Poems from Terra is engrossing because we see both Fletcher’s bullshit and connection to truth.
Poems from Terra has over 80 poems, and I’ve mentioned only a few – the collection exceeds my description, and I think a reader will be rewarded by discovering Terra.
This unique collection of poems reveals "a baring of soul" allowing the reader to see the rawness of life from the author's perspective - below, upon and beyond it all. But, even a Sunday can find a waltz in an Iggy Pop existence. I have always favored the slow sipping of a refreshing libation mixed with a perfect blend of romance and magic stirred quickly into a crush of ice - adorned with the lemon-lime twist of a macabre fantasy (be it found in Poe, Shelley, Stoker, Hawthorne, Carroll, Irving or even Alvin Schwartz), If you look for soothing pleasantries - searching for a connective, collective memory or two, they also may surprisingly be found in this book. My favorites are R.E.M. or Bite of the Bed Bug, Without Judgement, Encounter, Couple Sleeping, Storm, Dawn as End, Halley's Comet, Theorem, Weather and You, Walls, Carving Snowflakes, A Question of Answers, Explanation of the Universe, Translucence, and A Place to Fish. Are poems written for the writer or the reader - or to satisfy the haunting need in all of us to recognize that we have experienced life - together?
Here we have a collection of poems that emerge from ‘Below the Earth,’ ‘Upon the Earth,’ and ‘Beyond the Earth,’ all oriented to ‘The Earth,’ while issuing from the fevered, fanciful and often fun pen of a modern-day Byron-esque ‘child of clay.’ As Mr. Fletcher slouches toward his personal ‘clankless chain,’ death itself, he refers to our very human condition as inhabitants of the Terra we cannot escape. In his opening salvo at our human predilection toward self-importance, ‘Suicide Note,’ Fletcher chides a would be self-destructee to give it a rest, and instead, ‘write what you feel when your mother died.’ Note the seeming confusion in tenses not ‘write what you felt...’ but write what you feel. The present is all we have; don’t piss it away.
In ‘My Room,’ we read of the skewering of a pet giraffe, the poor animal hoist on the petard of a ‘Spanish letter opener’ becoming, in the process a sort of logo for the work. This reader saw the killing as a warning to refrain from sticking our necks out. Perhaps that’s a stretch. In ‘In the whorl of voices,’ we read what’s apparently a snatch of the poet’s childhood history, a dead dog, seeing his mother naked, destroying a stolen toy and then facing his father’s wrath. The poet then ‘bends curiously to see what it is he has written.’
The only poems exhibiting a rhyme scheme are ‘To solitude’ with ABBA, and perhaps ‘Rue Git Le Coeur,’ ABAB (mostly) otherwise free verse reigns. This reviewer noted no missteps, unless ‘Celibation’ is a word, and I’m sure it’s what the author meant to use. Also, in ‘Storm,’ I’m quite sure he intended ‘by lasers of lightening.’ Call it poetic license.
Not uplifting, unless the reader seeks truth instead of simple uplift, these poems are beholden to Byron and his half dust/ half deity construct of humanity, Lord Gordon’s ‘low wants/ lofty will’ conundrum. Fletcher even has a certain Marnie, apparently his very own Astarte character who haunts his days and his poetry with her ‘optimistic fatalism, or fatalistic optimism,’ until such time as she might reappear to piss on the Eiffel Tower, thus giving the poet new material. Personal favorite? ‘Don Quixote’ for its lament of past ‘quixotic’ ventures, and another Byronic reference to old men who ‘peer listless into the future and the light.’ In Manfred, Byron writes ‘The night hath been to me a more familiar face than that of man.’ If we’re all seeking the ‘quiet grave’ that can only be found in the dark. Fletcher’s verses in Poems from Terra shed a bit of dark on that pursuit.
Byron Edgington, author of A Vietnam Anthem. A Vietnam Anthem What The War Gave Me
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