Contemporary Poetry

: a web symposium  |  Spring 2006

Letters to a Stranger by Thomas James
Houghton Mifflin Company, 1973

“My fingers wave / Goodbye, remember me” (lines 13-14 from “Dragging the Lake”). The sentiments expressed in Thomas James’ book Letters to a Stranger seem to have fallen on deaf ears. Published in 1973, just one year after the deaths of both of the poet’s parents and one year before the death of the poet himself, this book has been out of print since its initial printing. His only book, James’ Letters takes the reader on a journey into a world whose settings range from deserted fields and meadows to nightmarish hospital wards. Lakes and rivers are more likely to be characterized by the bodies below the surface than for the fish that may also populate them. These are poems charged with intense feelings of loneliness and isolation; the speaker is often in the company of the blind or the mute if he is with anyone at all.

While biographical information can often give the reader insight and may help to gain an understanding of a poet’s project, this information alone can at most be an aid and is not the key to total understanding. In the case of Thomas James, this is lucky as there is little information to be found about him. The aforementioned facts regarding the deaths of his parents are taken from the dedication of the book itself and any other questions one may ask about this poet’s life are met with silence.

The conversational style adopted by the poet draws the reader in and gives the feeling that you have stumbled upon a portion of a letter or a conversation already in progress. These letters aren’t necessarily addressed to you and you may be missing critical information, but you are reading them nonetheless and must make sense of what is being said. “Snakebite” serves as an excellent example of a poem in which the initial action has already taken place. The poem begins after the speaker has been bitten by the snake. Going into the poem, we have no idea what “Now I am getting light as cotton candy” refers to or why “It was pleasant to watch my leg begin to swell.” It is only by pressing on do we realize that the poem begins with the lightheaded feeling of the snake’s venom working its way into the victim. The same tactic can be used when approaching poems such as “Head of Duck” or “Dragging the Lake”.

James also seems to have some favorite settings for his poems that reappear often. Of the poems in Letters to a Stranger with discernable settings, fifteen of them take place either in a hospital-like setting or somewhere outside in a natural setting. The book opens with “Waking Up,” a poem in which the speaker describes the surrounding world upon awakening in a predawn meadow. The point of view is that of a person lying on their back, looking up at the sky as if they were “At the bottom of an ancient well.” Other than the speaker, there are no people to be found. This meadow, while described in rich and beautiful terms, is a very dark and lonely place. There are ants and toward the end, a horse; but the speaker is essentially alone. In addition, the feeling of awakening is likened to “Waves of flesh” washing over him which furthers the sense of loneliness as it imparts a feeling of separation from the speaker’s own body. These profound feelings of loneliness will carry throughout the book and so it is fitting that they are introduced in such a way in the first poem.

The second poem of the book, “Room 101” takes place in the other favored setting: the hospital ward. This hospital is unlike those that we are familiar with. Instead of coming to be helped or healed, it is there the speaker is remade. “I come to trade my flesh for stone.” Although the poem spans a number of days, there is no telling how long the speaker has been in this strange place but while he is there, aspects of physical vulnerability or weakness inherent in being a human being are removed and replaced. His heart is removed; his muscles are replaced with stone, his eyes with quartz. Here, the speaker sheds his flaws in an attempt to become more permanent. “I am made / To last forever, girded bone.” He is becoming a statue of a man; something that will last longer than any person, if not forever. Unlike “Waking Up,” there are other people present in this strange place. The speaker hears someone who “Drags his cast-iron leg” and there is a girl who walks on new toes without the aid of a crutch. Are these people there for the same reason as the speaker, or for something else? Although there are others in this poem, the speaker is still isolated in his hospital bed. He only hears the sound of the leg dragging and spends time listening to a watch tick. The only other character not yet mentioned, the frazzled nurse, is there just long enough to bring medical implements and to drop the pills meant for her patient. No matter the setting, the isolation the speaker (and maybe also the poet) feels is carried throughout many of the poems in the book.

Amidst the imagery of the otherworldly fields, disturbing hospital wards, and the isolation that runs through it all, the reader is often caught off guard by poems that appear with deeply spiritual themes. This is not merely the spirituality of a believer, but the spirituality of someone who is searching for a God that either isn’t listening or isn’t even there. There are poems where nurses are referred to as “white-winged ladies” or “the essential seraphim,” intravenous needles are likened to God, and a freshly killed duck’s head is reminiscent of that of John the Baptist. In “Saint Francis Among the Hawks,” the speaker enters the body of a hawk and sees the world from its point of view. The speaker feels the sheer joy of flying under one’s own power. Later, the speaker sees a hawk but is more or less blinded by the sunlight in which it is silhouetted. He does, however, manage to catch a glimpse of it dropping a mouse it had caught. He finds it alive but writhing in pain in a thorn bush that is still coated with the morning frost. This juxtaposition of joy and cruelty in a poem titled after the patron saint of animals may be an illustration of the poet’s feelings regarding faith. Similarly, poems such as “Letters to a Stranger” or “Wine” leave the reader with these feelings. “Letters to a Stranger” is broken into six parts; it references the crucifixion and hints at preparations for mass, possibly the Easter mass if one takes the first two lines “In April we will pierce his body. / It is March” to suggest that. It deviates from the religious themes slightly in some of the other sections but none more than in section five where it begins with dragging a canal for the body of an old man. Concepts such as an old man drowning on a cold winter night or a mouse impaled and dying being associated with spirituality leave the reader feeling as if the poet is perhaps suffering from a crisis of faith.

Letters to a Stranger is a book full of solitude and isolation in places where one would not like to be left alone. The speaker is often reaching out to someone, God or otherwise, who is not there. These letters were not necessarily written for us and we do not know who they were truly for. In addition, we do not always get the full story. Perhaps it is fitting that we also do not really know who these letters are from. The letter writer is as much a mystery as the intended recipient. It is up to us to find meaning, without any hints from the sender.

Further Reading

Hirsch, Edward. “Poet’s Choice.” The Washington Post 5 Dec. 2004, Final ed.: T16.