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 ancient poetic traditions and invents new forms—odes and arabics, sonnets and close-ups, prayers and documentary voicings, heroic couplets and homophonic translations—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 ways of being in language. In one section, Metres meditates on the Arabic greeting “ahlan wa sahlan,” framing these older forms of welcome as generous, embodied ways to respond to the digital alienation and mass migration of postmodern societies. In another section, 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.
ISBN: 9781556596698
Format: Paperback
Reviews
“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
“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
“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
“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
“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