“Tones far under the porch and hall
Open their pitch and start to call
As the lightning strikes each chapter made
Until the memory forgets to fade.”
– an excerpt from the book
ARPress is honored to publish Forceful Fliegers Minus Folly by Fletcher Dewolf. This book is now available on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and the ARPress website.
We’re living in a time where everything feels louder than ever, politics shouting from every screen, social media buzzing nonstop, news cycles spinning like a hamster wheel on overdrive. It’s chaotic, messy, and sometimes exhausting. In the middle of all that noise, Fletcher DeWolf’s Forceful Fliegers Minus Folly doesn’t exactly quiet things down, it meets the moment head-on. But instead of empty noise, DeWolf offers something different: poetry that cuts, provokes, and actually makes you pause.
There are books that arrive like whispers, soft and steady, and then there are books that show up like a storm, loud, layered, and impossible to ignore. Fletcher DeWolf’s Forceful Fliegers Minus Folly falls firmly into the second camp. It’s not a book you casually leaf through on a lazy Sunday afternoon. No, this one demands your attention. It rattles the shelves a bit.
Born in Great Falls, Montana, Fletcher DeWolf was raised mostly in Alexandria, New Hampshire. DeWolf appreciates the wonders of nature and the wooded beauty of New England. Employed as a social worker, the author finds time to compose music, play the guitar, do woodworking, and write a great deal of good poetry.
DeWolf writes poetry the way some people play jazz: improvisational, daring, occasionally dissonant, but always alive. His lines don’t just sit politely on the page. They twist, they dart, sometimes they even argue with themselves. There’s a rawness to his work that feels both old and new, like echoes of ancient bards tangled up with the restless energy of modern thought.
And the title? Forceful Fliegers Minus Folly, it sounds almost like a riddle, doesn’t it? That’s the point. DeWolf isn’t interested in spelling things out neatly. Instead, he hands readers a lantern and points them toward a maze of words, trusting that they’ll find their own path (and maybe get a little lost along the way).
But here’s the thing about DeWolf: behind the labyrinth of language, there’s a genuine belief in poetry’s ability to shake people awake. He invents words, bends meanings, and toys with rhythm not just for show, but because he sees poetry as a living, breathing force. His work often circles around big ideas, truth, war, politics, spirituality, yet he delivers them with a kind of mischievous wink. It’s heavy, yes, but never lifeless.
As for the man himself, Fletcher DeWolf seems less like an author trying to carve out a brand and more like a restless craftsman chasing after elusive sparks. He doesn’t shy away from experimentation. He coins strange new terms (whole glossaries of them, in fact), pulling readers into a private language of sorts. It’s almost as if he’s saying: “Don’t just read, participate. Stretch your mind a little.”
In today’s world, where attention spans shrink and everything gets boiled down into quick takes, DeWolf’s book feels like a rebellion. It asks for more from its readers. More patience. More imagination. More willingness to be surprised. And honestly, that might be exactly what we need right now.
So, if you’re someone who enjoys poetry that doesn’t play it safe, who likes to be challenged and occasionally knocked off balance, Forceful Fliegers Minus Folly may be your next adventure. Fletcher DeWolf doesn’t just write poems; he builds a whole terrain of thought and then dares you to fly through it.
Forceful Fliegers Minus Folly by Fletcher Dewolf is now available for purchase via the ARPress Bookstore.