Description
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 gen
