Fugitive/Refuge - Softcover

Metres, Philip

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1556596693 ISBN 13: 9781556596698

Publisher: Copper Canyon Press, 2024

Synopsis

Dynamically pairing traditional and experimental forms, Philip Metres traces ancient and modern migrations in an investigation of the ever-shifting idea of home.

In Fugitive/Refuge, Philip Metres follows the journey of his refugee ancestors—from Lebanon to Mexico to the United States—in a vivid exploration of what it means to long for home. A book-length qasida, the collection draws on both ancient traditions and innovative forms—odes and arabics, sonnets and cut-ups, prayers and documentary voicings, heroic couplets and homophonic translations—in order to confront the perils of our age: forced migration, climate change, and toxic nationalism. 

Fugitive/Refuge pronounces the urge both to remember the past and to forge new poetic forms and ways of being in language. In one section, Metres meditates on the Arabic greeting—ahlan wa sahlan—and asks how older forms of welcome might offer generous and embodied ways of responding to the challenges of mass migration and digital alienation in postmodern societies. In another, he dialogues with Dante to inform new ways of understanding ancestral and modern migrations and the injustices that have burdened them. Ultimately, Metres uses movement to create a new place—one to home and dream in—for all those who seek shelter.

About this title

About the Author

A Lebanese-American poet, translator, scholar, and activist, Philip Metres (he/him) is the author and translator of eleven books and chapbooks, including Shrapnel Maps, The Sound of Listening: Poetry as Refuge and Resistance (University of Michigan 2018), finalist for Poetry Foundation’s Pegasus Award for Poetry Criticism; Pictures at an Exhibition (University of Akron 2016), winner of the Akron Poetry Prize; and Sand Opera (Alice James 2015). His work has appeared in Best American Poetry, numerous journals and anthologies, and has garnered a Guggenheim Fellowship, two NEA fellowships, a Lannan Fellowship, the Thomas J. Watson Fellowship, six Ohio Arts Council Grants, three Arab American Book Awards among many other fellowships and awards. A professor of English, he is the director of the Peace, Justice, and Human Rights Program at John Carroll University in Cleveland.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

The Other Side

In the First World Peace, Uncle Charlie found his mind 

outside a country asylum, wound home to meet the sister

who always knew he’d survived. Uncle Dom always spoke 

of the Second World Peace, how he once gave away

a Purple Heart, which never reminded him of anything. 

And the marchers marched backward, never showing

their backs, unlocked and unloaded every rifle they carried, 

breaking ranks in every direction. And the smoke and ash

turned back into bone-clothed skin. In Saigon, my father saw 

fireworks, wondered when peace would end. If only we trimmed

our peace budget, the President says, we might have something 

to spend on the latest bionic technology, to erase the scars

of peace, since men keep sprouting limbs, and their shrapnel-

free faces have a symmetry you only see in times like these.

A Map of Migration Routes

Each line is arrowed red. 

Inside, they tumble

across muscled continents

like erythrocytes, millions

of flesh-tucked skulls hauling 

dreams. Red for departure,

blue for return. Their lives 

shrunk to a single cell 

they palm to their chest

in bus depots and windowless tents 

at night, seeking a signal,

a recognizable voice, someone

home, lithium ions draining. 

When given paper and crayons, 

their children draw weapons.

Red for departure, blue

for return. Like veins, the lines 

draw back to the heart, the heart

where the rivers flooded, 

the fields baked in drought, 

where the guns came out—

and guns made love to guns, 

making more guns,

and the blood began to run.

Edition details

• Publisher: Copper Canyon Press
• Publication date: 2024
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1556596693
• ISBN 13: 9781556596698
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 144