Fugitive/Refuge - by Philip Metres (Paperback)

About the Book

"A collection of poems by Philip Metres"--

Book 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.

Review Quotes

Praise for Fugitive/Refuge

"In a fascinating variety of forms, sometimes laced with Arabic, his poems present a searching and plaintive reflection on the plight of refugees."--Ron Charles, Washington Post

"The powerful sixth book from Metres (Shrapnel Maps), who is of Lebanese descent, confronts the trials of the present moment--including forced migration, climate change, and nationalism--through his family's migration story. . . . Metres reflects on those 'who live their last years/ where they've always lived--/ in another country' in poems that transcend time and place, language and silence, honoring the enduring spirit of those who journey in search of refuge."--Publishers Weekly, STARRED REVIEW

"A unity, a conceptual work that traces the journey of Metres' ancestors from Lebanon to Mexico to the U.S."--Michael Autrey, Booklist, STARRED REVIEW

"Metres knows that language--cultural, political, and legal--can, and does, do great harm. He also knows that language allows us to bear witness to this fact, to call it and us to account. 'I'll set my nation's / whole body on fire, ' he writes in 'Curriculum Vitae, ' 'simplify the fractions // of political rhyme. / I'll skein this skin / to the highest of high wires, // refuse to become / a man of my time.' This is the language of the prophets, and Metres is a master of the prophetic mode. But in Fugitive/Refuge he also shows how language might not only demand justice but become 'a generous hinge / opening us.' It creates a space in which previously ignored pasts can reveal themselves, where the suffering might find solace, where the weary might feel welcomed."--Anthony Domestico, Commonweal

"These poems reflect on what it means to be a refugee--to leave and not return, to experience nostalgia and longing, and to pass traumas on, as an inheritance, for generations. . . . Though it bears witness to so much sorrow, this collection also offers glimmers of hope."--Leonora Simonovis, Harriet Books, Poetry Foundation

"Taking on the themes of immigration and exile, the uprooted and homeless--the refugee, the 'stranger in a strange land'-in sometimes painfully personal terms, Philip Metres' new collection is vital and relevant . . . a fascinating tapestry of personal experience, seemingly insurmountable human obstacles, and universal truths."--Charles Rammelkamp, The Lake

"A refuge, for those who lived these journeys in the past and for those traveling now . . . holds stubbornly onto the human in its most minute details."--Susanna Lang, Rhino Poetry

"A brilliantly nuanced collection that confronts migration and diaspora, moving from Lebanon to Mexico to America with aching grace. Metres uses the collection to comment on the larger question of immigration and asylum from the lens of the individual, deftly balancing the universal with the personal. The result is an indispensable addition to the poetics of diaspora, a must read for anyone working to understand what it means to live in the liminal space between the home you flee and the home that harbors."--Ronnie K. Stephens, The Poetry Question

"Invites close attention to those things that are, by definition, hard to nail down: missed connections, dream-time, the longing for home. The sense of being lost on a street you thought you knew."--Multi-Verse

"Speaks as eloquently as ever against empire and for peace."--Zach Czaia, Commonweal

Praise for Philip Metres

"This is a breathtaking collection, unrivaled in scope or execution, fit to dwell among the great collections of our time. . . . [W]hat sets Shrapnel Maps apart from many of its contemporaries is its insistence on reaching for the light, in reaching for unity, in reaching for new definitions of peace and new definitions of a sustainable joy."--Cleveland Review of Books

"Metres has emerged as one of the leading Catholic poet-activists. A riveting, ambitious book."--Millions

"Drawing language and insight from across [various religious, cultural, and political] archives, the poems in this collection imagine forms of radical listening that seek to uncover that utterance of relational possibility which the official archive buries and renders silent. Brave and challenging, Shrapnel Maps asks hard questions but creates a courageous space in which to have these conversations."--Adroit Journal

"The substance behind Shrapnel Maps is substantial and groundbreaking, and poet Philip Metres has created a compelling work within its covers that will bring a new view to everyone who delves into its space."--New York Journal of Books

"Shrapnel Maps is so beautiful. Half dream, half nightmare, all real. Filled with the remnants of what people hope for and what they are willing to do, and everything that remains afterwards. It's a confrontation to identity and it dares to conjugate love as a defiance to the capacity of violence. Extraordinary. . . . elegant and devastating and compelling and complex."--Pádraig Ó Tuama

"Philip Metres explores a number of different orientations of the poet--poet as alternative historian, detective, philosopher, documentarian, shaman. . . . Metres accomplishes that most difficult task: a book about poetry that actually captures its rich multiplicity, opening outward into a more rigorously, compassionately imagined poetic future."--Kaveh Akbar

"Philip Metres has created a miracle--a tender book so transporting it carries us deeply into the soul of Palestine as well as the love of a family--mysteries and blessings of language and haunted details--each tiny turn as huge as history and the next precious page of days."--Naomi Shihab Nye

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.