MY BOOKS
All of my books are available in both print and e-versions at Amazon.
Poetry: Solace for the Soul!
RVN: Poems and Photographs of the American War in Vietnam
ISBN: 979-8344012131 (hardcover), 979-8340471994 (paperback)
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“One of the finer collections of Vietnam War poetry."
— Bill McCloud, Professor of Military History and author of
What Should We Tell Our Children About Vietnam?
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RVN contains poems about Fletcher's time as an infantryman in Vietnam, and about the war within after the war was over, with photographs taken by the author.
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IN-COUNTRY: poems about Fletcher's time as an infantryman.
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​SCRAPBOOK: photographs taken by the author during his tour of duty.​
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COLLATERAL DAMAGE: poems about life after the war, about the war within after the war is over.
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Family: New and Selected Poems
ISBN-13: 979-8858446903 (hardcover), 979-8859185009 (paperback)
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The meaning of what is family differs for each of us. Most of us know both love and rejection. The experiences of and interactions between family members may vary dramatically both between individuals and over time. My poems reflect my memories, my experiences, and the stories repeated when I asked questions about my forebears and kin. No one within is up on a pedestal; no one is above reproach. Good folks do bad things, and bad folks may still love. People justify acts that seem baffling to others.
This collection began as simply poems related to the theme of family gathered from my previous books. Then, I began adding photos of the people within the poems and it developed, to some extent, into a family scrapbook. A nod to my interest in family lore and genealogy, and making this my most intimate book. Nevertheless, with most of the people within dead, these are, as they must be, my stories, my poems.
In Stranger in a Strange Land, Robert Heinlein’s character Jubal asks Anne the color of a house he points toward. “It’s white on this side, boss,” she replies. Like that house, every story has many sides yet we only see the side which is presented to us. This is family as I recall it.
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Amazing piece of writing.
Both big and expansive but also tight and personal.
Beautiful, meaningful, with a special quality that is unforgettable.
Witty and perceptive.
[Fletcher is] an engine of poetic industry!
I am just blown away!
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The Color of Gods
ISBN-13: 979-8879837032 (hardcover), 979-8878915847 (paperback)
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Poems about poems, narrative poems, poems filled with whimsy. A little politics, a bit of science, and a touch of philosophy. Fletcher's mind sails the gamut of possibilities in this remarkable collection.
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Wildly imagined. Virtuoso poetry.
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Fabulous. Perfect blending of narrative, language, and rhythm that is hard to achieve. [Fletcher] pulls it off brilliantly.
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Amazing poetry, full of surprises.
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Fine writing, acutely observed and conveyed.
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A tour de force
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Both funny and profound
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There's much to think about within Fletcher's poetry, and a few chuckles along the way. Enjoy the ride.​
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Borrowed Stardust
ISBN-13: 979-8387832598 (paperback) & 979-8387921179 (hard cover)
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​The poet takes us past midnight fireballs from Mt. Etna, ponders the god of fish with D.H. Lawrence, redefines stars, and even turns off gravity. Poems about possibilities; exploring connections of love, humanity, history, nature and more. Beautifully and concisely written.
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Absolutely dances on the page!
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Fletcher ... writes about things most of the world never notices.
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How could anyone else write this beautiful?
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Trip the light fantastic with these words.
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Bibliophile
ISBN-13: 979-84203879623
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Family, Art, & Humor!
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Poetry for every reader. Bibliophile has three sections. "The Tie that Binds" includes poems about Family. "A Thousand Words" contains poetry about art, especially painting. And "Flights of Fancy" is lighter verse, humorous poems.
What does Fletcher have to say to his dead grandfather? Who was the homeless man at his father's funeral? Look at God and the Lava Man on a Rainy Night Uptown. Journey to Easter Island, take a spin in the Mars rover. Learn about time crystals and shooting stars.
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Made me catch my breath. I haven’t let it go.
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Beautifully written!
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Poet-Laureate-caliber work.
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Masterfully woven.
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Absolute joy to read … rich and expansive.
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Imaginative, witty, and honest. Fletcher makes me want to read poetry again.
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The Speed of Sweat
ISBN-13: 979-8469151173
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Fletcher's work is often about nature but here he speaks out on politics, history, religion, and ecology in a collection of eclectic musings.
He writes of discovering an arrowhead and of discovering patience. Of stretched friendships and lost loves. Of unity and division, JFK and FDR, of November 3 and January 6, and about reading and writing poetry.
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Wild Seeds
ISBN-13: 979-8523051791
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Wonderfully filmic!
The poet expertly compresses language and imagery within a narrative structure, yet ... has a timeless, unhurried feel.
— Sarah Carleton, author of Notes from the Girl Cave
Wild Seeds is a sensorium of landscapes both vast and intimate. An immersive journey through singular moments of perception rendered in plain but sweepingly precise poetry. A reminder of the grandeur latent in observing sun, rain, or soil.
A collection of wonder and inspiration.
— Eva Bednar, Professor of English, Humber College, Canada
The Visible Spectrum of Desire:
An Interstellar Love Story
ISBN-13: 979-86908398645
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Poems as letters from across infinity in an intergalactic game of lover's
hopscotch. From our moon and beyond the solar system to another star,
a search within and out for love and meaning within the boundlessness
of space..
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Does your hue, your skin color turn a soft golden
as the travel agents whisper, does an aura visibate silvery
around you and tinkle when the spheres begin their chime?
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[from "Griffins & Hydras']
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The Covid Chronicles: Poetry from the Pandemic
ISBN-13: 979-8686082885
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Poems that illuminate our subliminal fear in the face of unseeable peril as pandemic statistics become people we knew.
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Self-confined in his neighborhood, Fletcher watches life continue and alter.
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Outside my window everything
looks so normal until the package arrives
carried between surgical gloves.
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He brings us vignettes that we have all witnessed, and does so with a touch of humor—both lite and dark—with writing that is warm and evocative.
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This poet clearly finds solace in nature and his words provide us with comfort.
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Together blue sky and green grass, sun and shadow
frolic in the slow waltz of day. Above, a zephyr
dispenses and disperses vats of buttery cloud
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Poets observe and reflect. Fletcher’s poetry reflects his observations in writing that appeals to a wide audience and speaks to the heart of our humanness.
Roses for the Canyon
ISBN-13: 978-1695709331
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"Beautiful and haunting images"
David Roby, author of Unseen Character
“If you love poetry, read Fletcher’s work;
if you hate poetry read Fletcher’s work”
Stephen Sanders, author of Songs for a Mechanical Age
“Profound simplicity”
Barbara Blanks, author of Traveling Sideways
“His poems mirror our world .... Kindly. And whimsically.”
Cathy Earnest, author of Another Bone
“A much-needed clarity“
D.A. Gray, author of Contested Terrain
“Rhymes to flutter the heart”
Byron Edgington, author of A Vietnam Anthem
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Death: New and Selected Poems
ISBN-13: 978-1797063805
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"Long ago I began to collect a funeral pyre of corpses to follow in my wake."
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Here are poems "Dressed in garments of farewell, bon voyage for a ticket purchased long ago." Stroll through this private cemetery with shadows beside the path. To "graves where sorrow eats its own body and joy is ever tarnished with guilt." Where unfinished hangs in the air. Read these tombstones of tribute, the poet's "sad things to grace their coffins."
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Death I never noticed thee
though you have always been here
as shadows on my path.
Love: New and Selected Poems
ISBN-13: 978-1793899453
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“Love is the molecule that binds [poetry] / The DNA, the nucleus of the poetic atom.”
-- James Thomas Fletcher, "Mercury & Moonlight"
Within this volume are poems about love, some with a touch of sex or lust, some of place or friendship. Gathered into this bouquet from my previous books with additional new poems.
Nature
ISBN-13: 978-1729620472
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James Thomas Fletcher has lived in a tenth-century Cistercian Monastery in Belgium, the Piedmont of the Carolinas, a protected heron rookery in the northern wetlands, the Acadian bayous of Louisiana, the shortgrass prairie of the Great Plains, and on the side of a volcano in the Republic of Panamá. He also trekked the jungles of Vietnam while in the United States Army. He steamed down the Amazon River and up the Nile, sailed the Atlantic in a storm, scuba dived in the Pacific, skydived in Oklahoma, and snowshoed in Canada. These poems reflect those experiences and his impressions of the flora, fauna, and weather—the true sense of place—of the many locations that he has called home.
War (Revised Second Edition)
ISBN-13: 979-8556715363
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James Thomas Fletcher enlisted in the United States Army on Saint Patrick’s Day, 1969. He was an M-60 machine gunner in the Central Highlands of Vietnam.
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Revised and greatly expanded from the first edition.
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My previous books of poetry all contain poems that touch on war to some degree, from the Trojan War through the World Wars to Vietnam and beyond. Those poems hint at psychic wounds, at displaced lives, at Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, and at the helplessness of survivors. Most of these poems deal more directly with my military service in Vietnam.
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The pale battalions of the mouthless dead forever march behind every combat soldier. Yet only the living may reflect on war and its psychological aftermath. Many have stories to tell. Here are fragments of mine.
Rue Gît-le-Cœur
ISBN-13: 978-1979477017
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"Words invited as lovers under one roof on the twilight Rue Gît-le-Cœur."
"Fletcher holds past loves in his memory 'as if they were cups of tea.'
Have a sip from this delicate philter."
In this revised edition of my 1981 chapbook, I allow the youth and innocence to show through. My craft has gotten better over the years and yet some magic still remains in a young man’s dreams. These poems are from a time when pain was fresh, love new. The wounds show without the polish of sophistication.
Mercury & Moonlight
ISBN-13: 978-1978147638
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In this collection, James Thomas Fletcher writes about lost letters and lost love, the hazards of living in a foreign land, the nature of silence, and the poetic movement of Tai Chi.
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"Mercury & Moonlight is filled with emotional candor and lyrical beauty."
Émigré: Poems from Another Land
ISBN-13: 978-1547171804
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Until recently, James Thomas Fletcher lived in the Republic of Panamá. This book reflects his life in that Central American country, and also ponders love, death, and sex, in poems both poignant and whimsical.
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(The author's personal favorite!)
In a Burst of Recycled Electrons
ISBN-13: 978-1545425749
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Poems, Short Stories, and Plays!
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• Your sense of poetry completely changed MY sense of poetry.
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• Poetry is not something I am attracted to, but one recognizes immediately
that [Fletcher's] poetry, or sense of writing, is beyond the normal.
• All the qualities of genius.
Cairn
ISBN-13: 978-1541042537
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Landmarks, monuments, and tombstones along the road of life. Meditations on nature, love, longing, war, death, and being.
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Praise For James Thomas Fletcher:
• A penetrating and provocative smorgasbord. His poems sing and inform in thoughtful, non-conforming, wonderful ways. Life's harmonies coupled with a realistic sprinkling of irony and brilliant dissonance. An existential celebration of life.
• From intimacies of love to an explanation of the universe ... Fletcher spotlights the quirks of human longing and the enigmas of memory.
• The slow sipping of a refreshing libation mixed with a perfect blend of romance and magic ... adorned with the lemon-lime twist of macabre fantasy.
• The breadth of topics is impressive. [Fletcher's] depth of thought, humor, love for words, and poetic skill made the book a joy and a challenge to read.
• Humor, passion, reverence, irreverence; a connection to people, a reflection on life and self, an exploration of ideas. The tantalizing hints and allusions made me want to have the poet in the same room so that I could plumb for more.
• Highly personal, experiential.... free flowing exuberance of the visual. The intensity of feeling is superior.... Their complexity is almost painful.... I was moved, confused, astounded, curious, excited.
• James Thomas Fletcher's poems ... fly straight to a reader's heart. Fun, intelligent, trenchant.
Poems from Terra
ISBN-13: 978-1537711133
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"The intensity of feeling is superior.... Their complexity is almost painful.... I was moved, confused, astounded, curious, excited."
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Combining grit and grandeur while mingling religion and sex, science and spirituality, this intense examination of life reveals the author's struggles with the nature of reality and existence, in language both simple and complex, erudite and approachable.
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Showing influences of Bukowski, Poe, Cohen, and a tinge of Greek mythology, the author examines wonder, pain, love, and fantasy. A strong and diverse volume that addresses themes with which we all grapple.