the thousand marvels of every moment,
a tanka collection
by pat nolan
Fall 2018, 124 pages, $16
Tanka is the modern name for a short five line poem known throughout the history of Japanese literature as a waka. The short poems of the thousand marvels of every moment are composed of five lines in two stanzas. The first stanza balances on the second, sometimes precariously, to pose a distinguishing match. The break between stanzas acts as a gap for synaptic sparks to jump. It also emphasizes its call and response origins serving as a binary exchange of verbal energy. The two last lines in these poems tend to resolve them either as parallel breaths or as a single run-on semantic declaration.
Praise for the thousand marvels of every moment
“Pointing at the moon, the finger of the poet directs the reader to the object at hand, whether it be battered wisteria, her long neck, the black cat, or the poet ‘right in the middle of scribble.’ Every day life heightened in the moment ‘not forever now/the cool green leaves’” —Lucille Friesen, poet
“Pat Nolan’s new collection of short poems the thousand marvels of every moment is a late harvest wonder. Distilled in the key of tanka, these poems make sparks out of crumpled paper & ‘fine white rain.’ No better description of the book than from within:
through the particle haze dance
joy and marvel of the mind”
—Eric Johnson, poet, master printer
“Pat Nolan explains, in introducing the thousand marvels of every moment that tanka historically originated in call and response agricultural chants in long ago Japan. In Nolan’s modern tanka-like poems, the echoing is within the self, or between the self and the immediate world: the yard, the kitchen, the coffee cup, the coastal hills. Words are precise and vivid. Dream transitions suggest feelings and insights. Points of view shift. In ‘TV on too loud again’ the opening stanza seems to be listening to the neighborhood from within Nolan’s house, but in the final lines reverse:
I am a portrait in a window
the garden looks on into
Processes of life are very subtle reverberations in this finely wrought collection of modern tanka.”
—Ann Erickson, poet, painter
“When I was a little kid, we had a summer cabin on an inlet of south Puget Sound. By a dirt path near our place was a salmonberry bush. It must have been the end of June when I found it because it was full of ripe yellow-orange berries. I harvested the bush in a frenzy, filling up a big bowl, and ate its sweet fruit on a sunny beach. It was my first wild berry feast. Pat Nolan’s new book of tanka, the thousand marvels of every moment, brought back this tasty memory. Reading his beautifully crafted little poems is like picking berries from a bush.”
—Norman Schaefer, poet, author of Fool’s Gold and Lower Putah Song
SO MUCH Selected Poems Volume I
Handwritten Typewriter 1969-1989
by Pat Nolan
Spring 2018, 176 pages, $16
The title of this volume of Pat Nolan’s selected poems, So Much, references the seminal (and most divisive) poem of modern American poetry by William Carlos Williams about a red wheelbarrow, chickens, and rain. The poems in this selection were actualized and finalized beyond their handwritten originals on a typewriter hence the designation of this twenty year span from 1969 to 1989 as Handwritten Typewriter. In memory of Ted Berrigan, adherent to Whitman’s maverick impulse and O’Hara’s Personism, under the guidance of Schuyler and Whalen, with a nod to early 20th Century French poets and the sages of the East, and esteem for Anselm Hollo and Alice Notley, Pat Nolan’s poems hit all the right post-Beat, California School of New York Poets, Pacific Rim demotic notational ephemerist notes.
Praise for Pat Nolan’s poetry:
“Pat Nolan is one of the poets, Ted Berrigan once said, that you have to always keep an eye on because he can do unexpected startling things that leave you eating his dust.”
— Andrei Codrescu, author of So Recently Rent A World: New and Selected Poems, 1968-2012.
“Descriptions of nature so translucent we can only marvel how he weaves us into them, onward, around that eternal share of misfortune, bitter realization, and expectations gone wrong. This is Nolan’s secret power. He engages us in magical transformation and will not let us look away.”
— Maureen Owen, author of Erosion’s Pull and Edges of Water
“. . .reminded me of James Joyce in that brief moments can become long & engrossing & turn the page for you despite any wishes thoughts & warnings you may have about more . . . .”
—Keith Kumasen Abbott, author of Downstream From Tour Fishing In America, A Memoir.
“Reading a book of Pat Nolan poems, I tell myself to breathe, to be mindful, because everything is here, from the Zen moment that never ends to the surreal architecture we live within.”
—Bart Schneider, author of Nameless Dame
More titles available from Nualláin House, Publishers
On The Road To Las Cruces
Being A Novel Account of the Last Day In the Life of
A Legendary Western Lawman by Pat Nolan
November 2011 —$16—154 pages —paper—ISBN 9780984031016
The Last Resort, A Lee Malone Adventure by Pat Nolan
August 2012—$20—212 pages —Paper—ISBN 9780984031023
Hello Life, Poems by Gail King
December 2013—$16—64 pages—Paper —ISBN 9780984031030
Your Name Here, New Poems by Pat Nolan
November 2014 —$16 — 80 pages—paper—ISBN 9780984031009
Poetry For Sale Haikai no Renga (linked verse)
Keith Kumasen Abbott, Sandy Berrigan, Gloria Frym, Steven Lavoie,
Pat Nolan, Maureen Owen, Michael Sowl, John Veglia
October 2015—$16—152 pages —paper—ISBN 9780984031047
Exile In Paradise by Pat Nolan
November 2017—$16—100 pages—paper—ISBN 9780984031054
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