Some poets celebrate April as National Poetry Month, claiming that it brings much needed attention to a marginalized art, while others deride the designation, arguing that it is patronizing and trivializing of an ancient (some might say arcane) way of sentience. Be that as it may, designating a day, week or month for the celebration of poetry has the intent of focusing attention on a timeless art that many see as underappreciated in the greater world of commercial consumerist media. Any search of ‘poetry’ online will turn up over 300 million hits, many duplicated of course, but all the same a number that is quite close to astronomical. Some literary elitists might argue that such a large number amounts to a lot of bad poetry. They may have a point. However, the intent of poetry is always pure; it is often for a lack of skillful execution that it fails. That doesn’t mean that poetry should be the sole purview of academic busybodies whose only function is to taxonomically classify poetry according to a moldy moth-eaten esthetic. Poetry lives because language is alive, mutable, and like a stream, treacherous or calm, torrential or stagnant, is a source of consciousness available to all. Perhaps the idea behind designating a Poetry Month serves the purpose of reminding everyone that poetry belongs to them, that poetry is free for the speaking, good, bad or indifferent.
FREE POETRY FREE POETRY FREE POETRY FREE
From its inception the Nualláin House, Publishers site has offered free access to the full texts of select out-of-print limited edition poetry titles as downloadable pdf files. Most of these poetry books were handmade using Japanese papers and bindings in editions of twenty-six to thirty-six signed by the author or authors. The free titles include Gail King’s Boxes & Chairs, Pat Nolan’s travel journal, Ah Bolinas!, and Random Rocks, a haikai collaboration with Keith Kumasen Abbott, Pat Nolan, Maureen Owen, and Michael Sowl. By scrolling down the sidebar, poetry enthusiasts can find any number of limited edition posts featuring full text access to that particular out-of-print title.
Also available for free is a signed limited edition broadside of Advice To A Young Poet by Pat Nolan accompanied by a linoleum block print from his Smoking Poets series. Send $3 for shipping and handling with return address to Nualláin House, PublishersPO Box 798 Monte Rio, CA 95462
And for all orders placed in the month of April, Nualláin House retail titles, in particular Gail King’s Hello Life and Pat Nolan’s Your Name Here, shipping is free. See How To Order.
More interested in reading about poetry? Try Parole, blog of The New Black Bart Poetry Society. Parole features essays on poetry, poets, and the poetry scene with articles on William Carlos Williams, Andrei Codrescu, Alice Notley, Philip Whalen, Frank O’Hara, and Bob Dylan to name just a few. Access is free.
Click here to read Steven Lavoie’s essay on Darrell Grey and the Actualists on the West Coast.
Essays not your thing? How about a fictional poetry soap opera?
Ode To Sunset, A Year In The Life Of American Genius is a serial fiction about a poet who is not quite Charles Baudelaire, not quite Charles Bukowski, who looks like a well worn Alex Trebeck but with the demeanor of a Mickey Rourke. It mostly takes place in a city not always quite Frisco. It is satirical, playful, and inevitably deadly serious.
Ode To Sunset has posted installments for six months to word-of-mouth acclaim. The first section, DAY, is available as individual episodes or as The Complete DAY, a pdf file. WEEK is now in progress. For free access go to Ode To Sunset.
Coming in 2015
Nualláin House, Publishersis pleased to announce it’s 2015 title,
Poetry For Sale,
Haikai no Renga (linked verse) Introduction by Pat Nolan Haikai no Renga with Keith Kumasen Abbott, Sandy Berrigan, Gloria Frym, Steven Lavoie, Joen Moore, Maureen Owen, Michael Sowl & John Veglia
Haikai no Renga is collaborative verse of Japanese provenance written by two or more poets trading stanza of 17 and 14 syllables according to specific rules governing the relationship between stanzas, and with stanzas numbering as many as one hundred. A haikai collaboration is as complex as chess, as multi-dimensional as go, and as fast-paced and entertaining as dominoes. It is as much about the interaction of the poets as it is about what gets written, the forward progress of its improvisation akin to that of a really tight jazz combo.
Recently recovered from the storage locker of a prominent Bay Area bookseller, The Chinese Quartet, this very rare limited edition chapbook was published in 1973 by Cranium Press. Handset in Goudy types and printed on an Albion hand press by master printer Clifford Burke in an edition of three hundred, they are an exquisite example of Burke’s conception of how a poem should appear on the page. The sixteen poems by Pat Nolan, printed on the rag paper ends from a larger Book Club of California job, represent Nolan’s early experimentation with ideas adapted from Chinese and Japanese prosody. The austere brown paper wrapper is offset by the red centered label depicting a group of Renaissance musicians. The book measures 7.5×6.75 inches (19×17.1 cm). Signed copies of The Chinese Quartet are available for purchase at $50 each and include free shipping in North America (otherwise international rates apply). Cash, checks, or money orders accepted. See How to Order for more information.
“The poems are wonderful as a grouping, and the printing is freaking beautiful. One of the best examples I’ve seen of the type and spacing and paper enhancing the sensibility in the writing.”
— Eric Johnson, Iota Press
Still available for FREE from Nualláin House, Publishers is a limited edition letterpress broadside of Pat Nolan’s poem Advice To A Young Poet and his original linoleum cut of Dylan Thomas from the Smoking Poets series, printed by Eric Johnson of Iota Press on a Vandercook proof press. Send your request, along with $2 for shipping and handling, for this limited edition broadside printed on the occasion of Nolan’s reading at the Iota printery upon the publication of his latest collection of poems, Your Name Here. Broadside measures 10×8.5 inches (25.4×21.6 cm).
2015 marks the fifth year of operation here at Nualláin House, Publishers, and while there were a few surprises and learning experiences, there is also no doubt the education opportunities will keep presenting themselves. Of the four books Nualláin House has published to date, two have been genre fiction and two have been poetry. This should not be surprising as among the principals of the publishing concern are two poets. Genre fiction will still be a focus but because of the abundance of readily available material, poetry will always be a consideration. Now with four books complete and available, a fifth is in the planning stages. More on that in the near future.
The Nualláin House mission has not changed. As a publishing venture committed to introducing diverse literary entertainment to the reading public, Nualláin House, Publishers, will continue to offer a range of quirky and engaging titles to enhance the modern “reading life.” What has changed is the variety of options available in presenting and producing written entertainment, and one that Nualláin House, Publishers, is encouraged to attempt.
Access and availability seem to be the buzz words. The reading public now totes their devices the way some folks used to carry paperbacks around (some folks still do). In fact, one of the early paperback publishers was Pocket Books, the name emphasizing their product’s portability. What has changed is that information, in this case literature, no longer needs to be tied to a single use artifact. Access to the virtual information cloud seems unlimited as is its round the clock availability. Technology always changes the way business is done whether it is developing a new type of spearhead or the latest application for digital devices. How it applies to independent publishing requires a reevaluation of what is being made available, in this case reading material. Business, independent publishing included, carries with it the assumption that there will be compensation for the effort expended in offering a product, and that money needs to change hands. Although that aspect of business will not go away if it expects to remain business, it is quite possible that virtual content will represent merely the ephemeral inducement to acquire the printed artifact as an item of cultural capital.
Perhaps the access to intellectual product should not be predicated on a monetary return. The factor that will determine such a product’s financial viability is demand. If there is no significant demand should the property be withheld or should unconditional access be open to all cyber grazers in the marketplace? Granted, such a free site becomes a special niche, boutique, if you will, visited by a unique readership brought there through interest generated on social media.
Although eBooks seem to occupy the virtual niche, their basis is not all that different from their printed versions in that they are, at the get-go, a product that must be purchased to access, albeit at a reduced cost. Also, their virtual life lasts only as long as it takes to complete reading the text which can be anywhere from 12 hours to several months, depending on the product. An alternate paradigm would be one that takes its cues from entertainment programming in that it offers episodic installments available at a predictable time and date and a compelling story arc that carries over an extended period the interest and attention of the reader. That it is offered without cost removes a further obstacle in its availability. What is being described is the online serial.
While the concept of an online serial is not new, Nualláin House is encouraged to adapt the concept to an ongoing pulp series of online genre fiction and is currently testing the waters with an original online serial fiction, Ode To Sunset. Judging from the initial and ongoing response to posted episodes, there is no doubt that it is a viable enterprise with exciting potential. Many of the details are still in flux as to the format and presentation of serial online fictions, but one thing is certain: companion print editions will inevitably be available for purchase. More will be forthcoming as further developments take shape.
Ode To Sunset, A Year in the Life of American Genius, is the title of the ongoing online serial fiction. As of this post, eight installments have been published, with two more episodes to complete the current section. Ode To Sunset is the story of American genius told over the course of a year. It is about a poet who is not quite Charles Baudelaire not quite Charles Bukowski, who looks like a well worn Alex Trebeck but with the demeanor of a Mickey Rourke. It mostly takes place in a city not always quite Frisco. It is satirical, playful, and inevitably deadly serious. Now available for your oculation. Ode To Sunset.
Nualláin House Publishers is also the sponsor of a sister site, Parole, blog of The New Black Bart Poetry Society. Parole features essays and critiques on the art of poetry, poets, and the poetry world in general. Previous posts have included essays on Philip Whalen, William Carlos Williams, Andrei Codrescu, and Bob Dylan. Membership in The New Black Bart Poetry Society is open to anyone who follows Parole.
Just A Reminder
current titles are still available,
free shipping with the purchase of
more than one copy or title
see How To Order
Your Name Here, New Poems by Pat Nolan Never one to settle into a style, Pat Nolan has made of his poetry an exploration of other poetries and of the numerous ways a poem can be. As an adherent of the Philip Whalen Buddhist-inspired “mind moving” school, he holds to the idea that the poem is framed sentience. Just as the observed world is an occasion of subjectivity, it also mirrors the self in a way that reflects objectively. The poems in Your Name Here revolve around that quantum axis with seemingly random discontinuities that do not pin down meaning but are left to mean themselves. Written to be heard by the mind’s ear, Nolan’s poetry enacts a sub-vocal monologue that is like the murmur of cosmic background radiation, noticeable only in its cessation or as pauses when the mind registers the sum of discrete moments in an instant.
November 2014 ~ 80 pages ~ $16 ~ paper ~ ISBN 978-0-9840310-0-9
Hello Life by Gail KingPoetry; The poems of Hello Life achieve their freshness in the particularity of experience. The poet surrenders herself to the moment and tenders that subtle cognition as a delighted welcome to life. The ease of her expression in dealing with the everyday communicates an uncommon wisdom. The poems present, through playful understatement and sly humor, the immediacy of spontaneous impressions. Maureen Owen, former artistic director for The Poetry Project in NYC and author of Edges of Water and Erosion’s Pull, says “In Gail King’s poems the events of the day become transformative, the images of the temporary become immediate, and the mystery of being alive in the Now unfolds. “…time like a lake breeze” says the poet, and the wind rises.” Gail King’s poems have also won the praise of Andrei Codrescu, poet, novelist, essayist and NPR commentator, author of So Recent Rent A World, who said “Reading Gail King has always been one of my great poetry pleasures. Her inimitable voice narrates the world with humor and tenderness, a world of beauty and occasional sorrow. Her work has healing effects.”
December 2013 ~ $16.00 ~ 64 pages ~ Paper ~ ISBN 978-0-9840310-3-0
The Last Resort, A Lee Malone Adventure by Pat Nolan Pat Nolan has written a fast paced, tongue-in-cheek, pun filled comedy of errors, misunderstandings, and faux intuition in the mode of a 1930’s pulp thriller to talk about the pulp fiction of that era. In doing so, The Last Resort presents an unlikely set of circumstances in which a worldly-wise female reporter must untangle herself from her past in order to deal with the puzzling events of her present. Rather than the typical splinter-jawed, broken nosed, tobacco breathed tough guy hero, Nolan upends the stereotype by introducing a gorgeous internationally famous former fashion model whose super power is her beauty. The Last Resort, A Lee Malone Adventure, is a quirky, entertaining recreation of the lurid screed that once peopled pulp pages on newsstands everywhere.
August 2012 ~ $19.99 ~ 212 pages ~ Paper~ ISBN 978-0-9840310-2-3
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 On The Road To Las Cruces, a work of fiction tethered loosely to historical fact, is the story of the relationship between two men, one garrulous, the other taciturn, the Mutt and Jeff of the old Southwest. What is related on the road to Las Cruces is as much a retelling of some history as it is how such a retelling might come about, and is represented in the manner of a tall tale, the deadpan details of a crime story, melodrama, and a conspiracy to murder. The road to Las Cruces is full of twists and turns. The sound of a door slamming like a gunshot brings us into the world of the old Southwest and the gun violence of that historical era. More than just the tale of a legendary lawman who remains nameless to the end, it is a lesson in storytelling and an allegory for how lives were lived and how death was dealt. As much a dusty tale of buffalo hunts and shoot-outs as a politically driven “whodunit,” On The Road To Las Cruces is the story of youthful bravado and an old man’s regret.
November, 2011 ~ $16.99 ~ 154 pages ~ paper ~ ISBN 978-0-9840310-1-6
Nualláin House, Publishers, in partnership with Bamboo Leaf Studio, will continue to offer its series of linoleum block print portraits entitled Smoking Poets featuring such literary luminaries as Dylan Thomas, Roberto Bolano, and Charles Bukowski.
Andre Breton 4×6 $20
Roberto Bolano 5×7 $40
Charles Bukowski 5×7 $40
Pierre Reverdy 4×6 $20
Also available from Bamboo Leaf Studio are selection of Buddhist-inspired prints featuring faux homilies for the 21st Century. All linoleum block prints are hand printed on unbleached mulberry washi and signed by the artist with his seal.Order through Nualláin House, Publishers Box 798, Monte Rio, CA 95462
Free shipping (US only) and a deep discount on the Nualláin House, Publishers back list.
Order Now!
(offer ends December 31, 2014)
Now only $13.60
Order all four titles and save even more!
Get all four Nualláin House titles for just $50!! Save almost $20!!!
Bonus !!
with every purchase get a limited edition signed broadside featuring the poem Advice To A Young Poet from Pat Nolan’s Your Name Here and an original linoleum print of Dylan Thomas from Pat Nolan’s Smoking Poets series
How To Order send cash, check or money order (made out to ‘Pat Nolan’) to Nualláin House, Publishers Box 798 Monte Rio, CA 95462 and indicate the title(s) you are purchasing
Nualláin House, Publishers in partnership with Bamboo Leaf Studio is offering two new prints from Pat Nolan’s Smoking Poets series
Andre Breton 4×6 $20
W.H. Auden 5×7 $40
Also available from Bamboo Leaf Studio are a selection of Pat Nolan’s Buddhist-inspired prints
“Every time I catch one the other two get away” 6×9″ (15.2×22.8 cm) edition of 50 $40 each
“The more you know the more you know you know” 6×9″ (15.2×22.8 cm) edition of 50 $40 each
All linoleum block prints are hand printed on unbleached mulberry washi
and signed by the artist with his seal.
Order through Nualláin House, Publishers Box 798, Monte Rio, CA 95462
Make check or money order payable to Pat Nolan.
Add $5 for shipping and handling for each order.
Here are a few pictures from the publication party for Pat Nolan’s Your Name Here held on Sunday, November 9th, 2014 at the Iota Press Printery in Sebastopol, California. Many thanks to Eric, judi and the rest of the Iota Cooperative of Fine Printers for hosting this splendid event. A few remaining copies of the broadside featuring an original linoleum print of Dylan Thomas from Pat Nolan’s Smoking Poets series and the poem Advice To A Young Poet from Your Name Here signed with the author’s seal are still available for those who did not have the opportunity to attend the publication party due to previous engagements or geographic constraints. For a free copy send $2 USD (check, or money order made out to ‘Pat Nolan’ or cash) to cover shipping and handling to Nualláin House, Publishers Box 798 Monte Rio, CA 95462
Iota Press Printery
Invitation
Iota Press Printery
drying rack
Pat Nolan promises to keep the reading short
Pat Nolan proudly displays the commemorative broadside
“They’re free”
The crowd roared for more (or less)
“I’m just going to read a few poems.”
“I wrote this one standing on my head.”
“Ok, just so you’ll know. . .
“And futhermore. . . .”
“Now that wasn’t so bad, was it?”
For those living in the North Bay latitudes of Northern California, Iota Press wishes to invite you to their 5th Annual Open House on Sunday, Dec. 7th, from 2:00-6:00. Please come and help celebrate their first year in the new and bigger shop space at the printery behind the BeeKind Honey Store, 925D Gravenstein Hwy. South in Sebastopol.
The occasion will also be the launch party for their third annual collaborative work, eRrAtiCa 3. This year it is in the form of a portfolio of broadsides, representative of the kind of work each of the members are working on right now. There will also be a demonstration of printing, and impromptu poetry might be read. Maybe some promptu as well. As usual wine and food will be provided, and there will be a table of things for sale.
“The book itself takes no prisoners.” —Lucille Friesen, poet, printer
“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. What was once “irony,” which is that generous distance of youth regarding itself in the odd act of “seeing” and “scratching” words became an essential tool to survive as poet. Pat Nolan’s poetry has indeed survived, with the help of not just the luxury of irony, but also the blending of his secretly bilingual (French-Canadian and American) language, his intensely questioned, but never renounced, faith in poetry. Add to this work, the joyous and extensive reading of a profound autodidact with an active and sometimes polemical involvement in the “literary scenes” of the West and East coasts for better than half a century, and you have, standing suddenly in front of you, a poetry giant.” — Andrei Codrescu, author of Bibliodeath: My Archives (with Life in Footnotes), and So Recently Rent a World: New and Selected Poems, 1968-2012.
“Nolan’s painterly sensitivity unfolds a delicate beauty that breathtakingly fuses nature with a Surrealistic philosophic questioning and meditative soul searching. 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 Abbott, poet, professor emeritus, and author of Downstream From Trout Fishing In America, A Memoir.
“The poems glow with insight and wit as they simply monitor the flow of a mind steeped in Chinese poetry, bebop, the Russian River, the beats, the birds, Heraclitus. . . . [Nolan] in his own words, is an alphabet male. And despite the breadth of his learning and thought, is always just talking from right here. It’s a hell of a book.” —Eric Johnson, poet and print master at Iota Press.
Never one to settle into a style, Pat Nolan has made of his poetry an exploration of other poetries and of the numerous ways a poem can be. As an adherent of the Philip Whalen Buddhist-inspired “mind moving” school, he holds to the idea that the poem is framed sentience. Just as the observed world is an occasion of subjectivity, it also mirrors the self in a way that reflects objectively. The poems in Your Name Here revolve around that quantum axis with seemingly random discontinuities that do not pin down meaning but are left to mean themselves. Written to be heard by the mind’s ear, Nolan’s poetry enacts a sub-vocal monologue that is like the murmur of cosmic background radiation, noticeable only in its cessation or as pauses when the mind registers the sum of discrete moments in an instant.
November 2014 ~ 80 pages ~ $16 ~ paper ~ ISBN 978-0-9840310-0-9
Now available, click on How To Order on the menu bar to learn how.
Poet, translator, editor, publisher Pat Nolan is the author of over a dozen poetry selections and two novels. He is the founder of Nualláin House, Publishers, and maintains The New Black Bart Poetry Society’s blog, Parole (thenewblackbartpoetrysociety.wordpress.com). His work has been published in numerous national and international literary magazines and included in late 20th Century poetry anthologies and collections. He has recently begun posting his online serial novel, Ode To Sunset (odetosunset.com), about poets and poetry, death and dying. He lives along the lower Russian River in Northern California.
For readers in the North Bay latitudes of Northern California, join Pat Nolan for a publication party on November 9th.
Nualláin House, Publishers & Iota Press invite you to
a publication party
Sunday Nov 9th 1:30 to 3:30 PM for Pat Nolan’s new book of poems
Your Name Here
at the Iota Press printery 925-D Gravenstein Hwy. South Sebastopol CA (behind BeeKind) Meet the author, book signing and sales, refreshments in a convivial literary atmosphere Caution: some poetry will be read
“The chief characteristic of the mind is to be consistently describing itself.” − Henri Focillon (1881−1943)
Never one to settle into a style, Pat Nolan has made of his poetry an exploration of other poetries and of the numerous ways a poem can be. As an adherent of the Philip Whalen Buddhist-inspired “mind moving” school, he holds to the idea that the poem is framed sentience. Just as the observed world is an occasion of subjectivity, it also mirrors the self in a way that reflects objectively. The poems in Your Name Here revolve around that quantum axis with seemingly random discontinuities that do not pin down meaning but are left to mean themselves. Written to be heard by the mind’s ear, Nolan’s poetry enacts a sub-vocal monologue that is like the murmur of cosmic background radiation, noticeable only in its cessation or as pauses when the mind registers the sum of discrete moments in an instant.
November 2014 ~ 80 pages ~ $16 ~ paper ~ ISBN 978-0-9840310-0-9
Advance praise forYour Name Here
“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 Bibliodeath: My Archives (with Life in Footnotes), and So Recently Rent a World: New and Selected Poems, 1968-2012.
“. . .Nolan’s secret power. . .engages us in magical transformation and will not let us look away.” — Maureen Owen, author of Erosion’s Pull and Edges of Water
Poet, translator, editor, publisher Pat Nolan is the author of over a dozen poetry selections and two novels. He is the founder of Nualláin House, Publishers, and maintains The New Black Bart Poetry Society’s blog, Parole (thenewblackbartpoetrysociety.wordpress.com). His work has been published in numerous national and international literary magazines and included in late 20th Century poetry anthologies and collections. He lives along the lower Russian River in Northern California.
“The chief characteristic of the mind is to be consistently describing itself.” − Henri Focillon (1881−1943)
Never one to settle into a style, Pat Nolan has made of his poetry an exploration of other poetries and of the numerous ways a poem can be. As an adherent of the Philip Whalen Buddhist-inspired “mind moving” school, he holds to the idea that the poem is framed sentience. Just as the observed world is an occasion of subjectivity, it also mirrors the self in a way that reflects objectively. The poems in Your Name Here revolve around that quantum axis with seemingly random discontinuities that do not pin down meaning but are left to mean themselves. Written to be heard by the mind’s ear, Nolan’s poetry enacts a sub-vocal monologue that is like the murmur of cosmic background radiation, noticeable only in its cessation or as pauses when the mind registers the sum of discrete moments in an instant.
November 2014 ~ 80 pages ~ $16 ~ paper ~ ISBN 978-0-9840310-0-9
Pat Nolan is one of the poets, Ted Berrigan once said, that you have to always keep an eye on. That’s not because he might suddenly win all the prizes the world owes you, but because he can do unexpected startling things that leave you eating his dust. Some poets are like that: they start slow and lazy as if life was enough, and then rev it up to some speed you thought only angels can get up to. Pat Nolan didn’t start slow, he started accurately, determined to be in the world without missing anything, not the wind in the trees, not the work of his contemporaries, not the changes of seasons or times. Like the Chinese poets Kenneth Rexroth translated, Nolan was always spare and articulate, attentive to beauty and impatient with sloppiness. Through the decades, his attention to nature, people, and his own observance of them, never wavered, but the onset of time, layer after imperceptible layer, kept adding meaning and sobriety to the clarity of his born-wise voice. What was once “irony,” which is that generous distance of youth regarding itself in the odd act of “seeing” and “scratching” words became an essential tool to survive as poet. Pat Nolan’s poetry has indeed survived, with the help of not just the luxury of irony, but also the blending of his secretly bilingual (French-Canadian and American) language, his intensely questioned, but never renounced, faith in poetry. His sense of wonder, sometimes wary and wise, often surprised, is always in and of the world around him, even when it flees playfully with the early heroes of French comic superheroes like Fantomas. Add to this work, the joyous and extensive reading of a profound autodidact with an active and sometimes polemical involvement in the “literary scenes” of the West and East coasts for better than half a century, and you have, standing suddenly in front of you, a poetry giant. I hope you’ve kept an eye on him, like I did, because with Your Name Here, he is indeed compelling all poets to put their name there. And when they do, amazing things happen. Go on, try it.
— Andrei Codrescu, author of Bibliodeath: My Archives (with Life in Footnotes), and So Recently Rent a World: New and Selected Poems, 1968-2012.
We hear in these works a kinship to that most glorious free spirit of the Tang Dynasty, Tu Fu. One can almost imagine Pat Nolan building himself a thatched hut and living the life of a farmer. Matching the light brush of that Master, Nolan’s painterly sensitivity unfolds a delicate beauty that breathtakingly fuses nature with a Surrealistic philosophic questioning and the meditative soul searching of a Sumi wash. 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
Poet, translator, editor, publisher Pat Nolan is the author of over a dozen poetry selections and two novels. He is the founder of Nualláin House, Publishers, and maintains The New Black Bart Poetry Society’s blog, Parole (thenewblackbartpoetrysociety.wordpress.com). His work has been published in numerous national and international literary magazines and included in late 20th Century poetry anthologies and collections. He lives along the lower Russian River in Northern California.
So Remote The Mountains is a limited edition fanfold featuring twelve meditations on Saigyo’s tanka, yama fukami (So remote the mountains). A Buddhist monk-poet, Saigyo (1118 – 1190) is one of the most well known and influential of the traditional Japanese poets writing in waka, or tanka, the court poetry style of the late Heian, early Kamakura era. Saigyo had written ten tanka that began with the phrase yama fukami describing the austere and remote circumstances of his hermitage near Mount Koya and sent them to a fellow monk who lived some distance away, north of Kyoto. With a few exceptions, all of Saigyo’s poems are written in the 31 syllable form of tanka or waka favored by the Japanese court of his day. The tanka is a precursor to renga and hiakai no renga (linked verse) and today’s popular haiku. Its 31 syllables are generally broken into sets of 5-7-5-7-7 syllables from which traditional haiku derives its 17 syllable format.
The twelve meditations on Saigyo’s So Remote The Mountain by Pat Nolan are not tanka, nor are they technically haiku as they do not adhere to the syllabic count for either of these forms. They are probably closer to haiku than tanka because of their succinctness. However it is best to think of them as call and response. The call is Saigyo’s line yama fukami, and the response is the meditation on the line, sometimes sober, sometimes humorous, all of which emphasize a sense of isolation and distance.
This limited edition of So Remote The Mountain is a fanfold printed on rough unbleached mulberry paper set in a cover of 100% recycled Bogus art paper with Japanese silk screened endpapers imported from Kyoto. The cover is an original stencil print by the author. Each is numbered, signed, with the author’s seal. The fanfold measures 3-11/16th x 8-7/8th inches (9.5×22.5 cm) closed, 7-3/8th x8-7/8th inches (19.3×22.5 cm) open. Japanese silk screened endpapers can vary from what is shown. However all endpapers are genuine Japanese silk screened paper.
So Remote the Mountain is available from Nualláin House, Publishers Box 798, Monte Rio, CA 95462, for $10 (postage included) cash, check or money order (make check or MO payable to ‘Pat Nolan’).
Nualláin House, Publishers, in partnership with Bamboo Leaf Studio, is offering limited edition linoleum prints of Smoking Poets, an ongoing series of author prints by Pat Nolan. The smoking poets in this in series include Blaise Cendrars, Pierre Reverdy, Dylan Thomas, Samuel Beckett, Ted Berrigan, Charles Bukowski, Roberto Bolaño, and the muse of amusement, Marcel Duchamp.
The Smoking Poets
Blaise Cendrars, edition of 50, 5×7” (12.7×17.78 cm) printed on unbleached mulberry paper, $30 US each
Samuel Beckett, edition of 50, 5×7” (12.7×17.78 cm) printed on unbleached mulberry paper, $30 US each
Pierre Reverdy, edition of 50, 4×5” (10.16×12.7 cm) printed on unbleached mulberry paper, $25 US each
Dylan Thomas, edition of 50, 4×5” (10.16×12.7 cm) printed on unbleached mulberry paper, $25 US each
Ted Berrigan, edition of 50, 5×7” (12.7×17.78 cm) printed on unbleached mulberry paper, $30 US each
Charles Bukowski, edition of 50, 5×7” (12.7×17.78 cm) printed on unbleached mulberry paper, $30 US each
Roberto Bolaño, edition of 50, 5×7” (12.7×17.78 cm) printed on unbleached mulberry paper, $30 US each
Marcel Duchamp, edition of 50, 8×10 (20.32×25.4 cm) printed on unbleached mulberry paper, $40 US each
How To Order: Send check, money order, or cash to Nualláin House, Publishers Box 798 Monte Rio, CA 95462. Include $5 shipping for single prints. Purchase more than one print and receive free shipping. Make checks and money orders payable to ‘Pat Nolan.’ Special offer: purchase all the Smoking Poets and receive the Marcel Duchamp print free, compliments of Bamboo Leaf Studio.
Artist’s Statement:
I first came to print making through an avid interest in Ukiyo-e prints, in the process amassing a large number of monographs, museum catalogs, and anthology representations of floating world artists who were popular in Japan in the 18th to the late 19th century. The subdued palette of basic colors reminded me of the color funny papers and comic books that were a consuming interest when I was a youngster. The more I learned about the art of Japanese print making, the more I came to appreciate 20th Century artists and the powerful simplicity of black and white prints in the hands of masters like Munakata, Unichi, and Okuyama. My by-now obsession with Japanese prints was kicked up a notch when I began collecting affordable reproductions of the Edo masters as well as original work by contemporary artists. The next level was to try my hand at making prints of my own. I had better luck carving linoleum blocks than I did wood and took the path of least resistance. I knew I wanted to work with and/or adapt the Japanese motifs I was familiar with. I had the idea of making Buddhist inspired prints featuring original homilies (“Kicked a clump of dirt – my return address”) since some of the earliest Japanese prints were devotional prints sold to pilgrims traveling to various shrines and temples. I also wanted to attempt portraits of literary personages, poets primarily, in the manner of Kabuki actor prints. My emphasis is black and white, printing with water soluble ink on mulberry paper, and, in most instances, letting the uncarved portions of the block define the picture plane. The blocks are printed by hand using a variety of barens and multiple inkings.
The Smoking Poets idea came to me after I had completed the Samuel Beckett print. As the idea took shape and I searched for images of poets smoking, I visualized it as an on-going series with the muse of amusement, Marcel Duchamp, as the centerpiece of this modern literary conclave.
Some poets celebrate April as National Poetry Month, claiming that it brings much needed attention to a marginalized art, while others deride the designation, arguing that it is patronizing and trivializing of an ancient (some might say arcane) way of sentience. Be that as it may, designating a day, week or month for the celebration of poetry has the intent of focusing attention on a timeless art that many see as underappreciated in the greater world of commercial consumerist media. Any search of ‘poetry’ online will turn up over 300 million hits, many duplicated of course, but all the same a number that is quite close to astronomical. Some literary elitists might argue that such a large number amounts to a lot of bad poetry. They may have a point. However, the intent of poetry is always pure; it is often for a lack of skillful execution that it fails. That doesn’t mean that poetry should be the sole purview of academic busybodies whose only function is to taxonomically classify poetry according to a moldy moth-eaten esthetic. Poetry lives because language is alive, mutable, and like a stream, treacherous or calm, torrential or stagnant, is a source of consciousness available to all. Perhaps the idea behind designating a Poetry Month serves the purpose of reminding everyone that poetry belongs to them, that poetry is free for the speaking, good, bad or indifferent.
From its inception the Nualláin House, Publishers site has offered free access to the full texts of select out-of-print limited edition poetry titles as downloadable pdf files. Most of these poetry books were handmade using Japanese papers and bindings in editions of twenty-six to thirty-six signed by the author or authors. The free titles include Gail 
King’s Boxes & Chairs, Pat Nolan’s travel journal, Ah Bolinas!, and Random Rocks, a haikai collaboration with Keith Kumasen Abbott, Pat Nolan, Maureen Owen, and Michael 
Sowl. By scrolling down the sidebar, poetry enthusiasts can find any number of limited edition posts featuring full text access to that particular out-of-print title.
And for all orders placed in the month of April, Nualláin House retail titles, in particular Gail King’s Hello Life and Pat Nolan’s Your Name Here, shipping is free. See How To Order.
Poetry For Sale,
nuallainhousepublishers.com 