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The Blurbs of 2018

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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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Why Gift Edition?

Non-fiction, Poetry, , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

the thousand marvels of every moment
a tanka collection
by pat nolan

Fall 2018, ISBN 9780984031078, 7×5 inches, 124 pages, $16

~The Gift Edition~

Order Now * Get Free Shipping
(offer good through December 31, 2018)

 

Facing the thousand marvels

of every moment

nothing comes to mind

I pick up the broom

to collect my thoughts

 

Why “Gift” Edition?

As a gift the thousand marvels of every moment is ephemeral and accessible, as undemanding as a tweet yet profound and universal as a meme, not only clever and entertaining but thought provoking as well. At a sleek 7×5 inches, a little larger than a smart phone, it fits easily in the hand like an oversize postcard, but as a book it is ultimately “flippable,” meaning that it is as easy to browse as scrolling through social media.  Its resonant design with trompe l’oeil stitching and decorative endpapers bestows on the book-as-gift a complimentary esthetic that is painless, instant, and memorable—as gifts should be.  An extra incentive for earth conscious gift purchasing is that the text of the thousand marvels of every moment is printed on 100% PCW (post consumer waste) at a printing plant in Minnesota operating on wind power.  Get one for yourself, buy one for a friend.

 

On the phone

outside a butterfly settles

on a leaf

her voice light

shimmering on thin wings

 

Tanka is the modern name for a short 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.  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.

 

The part of myself

I tend to deny leaks out

the tip of this pen

please say “I love you”

with a neon sign

 

Pat Nolan has long been an avid student of Asian culture, particularly Japanese and Chinese poetry. He published Poetry For Sale (2015), a selection of haikai no renga (Japanese linked verse) written with a number of poets including Maureen Owen, Keith Kumasen Abbott, Gloria Frym, Steven Lavoie, and Sandy Berrigan.  His Chinese themed poems were published as Exile In Paradise in 2017. The poems of the thousand marvels of every moment have appeared in a variety of poetry magazines as well as in collections of privately issued handmade limited editions of tanka that include Thin Wings (2004), Untouched By Rain (2005), and Carved In Stone (2013).  One notable exception is the beautifully realized Cloud Scatter (1994) in an exquisite letterpress edition of 160 copies from Jerry Reddan’s Tangram Press.  Nolan is also the author of two novels, an online serial fiction, and numerous poetry books.  So Much—Handwritten Typewriter—Selected Poems Volume I, 1969-1989, was published in the spring of 2018.

 

Seconds whiled away

or willed away all the same

original instance

desire’s rhetorical question

“how do I get more?”

 

 

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The Thousand Marvels. . . . Free Shipping

Poetry, , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

the thousand marvels of every moment
a tanka collection
by pat nolan

Fall 2018, 124 pages, $16

Order Now * Get Free Shipping
(offer good through December 31, 2018)

One In A Thousand

Tanka is the modern name for a short poem known throughout the history of Japanese literature as a waka. The pre-modern word, waka, finds its source in ancient oral tradition of call and response agricultural chants as well as those accompanying communal efforts in indigenous Japanese villages.  In its lineated form, the tanka consists of five lines.  In its non-lineated form, the tanka has the syllabic rhythm or pattern of 5-7-5-7-7. 

The courtly love culture of medieval Japan adapted the folk tradition as the exchange of verse between courtiers requiring a cap or response to bring the poem to a subtle esoteric often erotic resolution. Eventually the practice transformed into a unified singular verse, the waka, a poem of two minds as the literary affectation of one mind.

The short poems of the thousand marvels of every moment are composed of five lines.  They also take into consideration the 5-7-5-7-7 patterns as a phonetic rhythm although they do not necessarily conform to the syllabic count.  The succinct directness required of the form lends itself to this rhythm. The first stanza balances on the second, sometimes precariously, to pose a distinguishing match. The break between stanzas acts as a kind of caesura, 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.  Sometimes they function as a pedestal for the preceding stanza, the bass line for its melodic pretext, sometimes as a bowl or receptacle to contain the original intent, or as a decorative garnish to the entrée (think California cuisine), and sometimes at its most basic, the response to the call.

I hesitate to name the poems in this collection tanka as that would presume the mastery of a complicated set of rules and conditions.  They do not observe many of the accepted tanka conventions although they do seek a synthesis and accommodation brought about by translation into a radically different language and culture.  The poems actually owe their method more to the intricate multi-voiced play of a related Japanese verse form, haikai no renga, also known as renku or linked verse.  That similarity is especially true in the relationship between stanzas or the rhythms of 5-7-5 -7-7.  There is, in fact, a term for a linked poem composed of only two stanzas, tanrenga.  As accurate as that may be I am uncomfortable with the label. Tanku, a word of my own devising, would seem to accommodate the Japanese nomenclature (haiku, hokku, renku) but still doesn’t fit my sense of the poems.  Ultimately I find myself preferring tanka as the logical and sentimental favorite of what this type of poem might be called. I do so well aware that the designation is a borrowed one.

(from the introduction to the thousand marvels of every moment)

 

from the thousand marvels of every moment

Fall, 2018, the thousand marvels of every moment

Non-fiction, Poetry, , , , , , , , , ,

the thousand marvels of every moment
a tanka collection
by pat nolan

Fall 2018, approx 100 pages, $16

Pre-orders now being accepted

 

Tanka is the modern name for a short poem known throughout the history of Japanese literature as a “waka.” The pre-modern word, “waka”, finds it source in the ancient oral tradition of call and response planting and harvesting songs as well as those accompanying communal efforts in indigenous Japanese villages.  In its lineated form, the tanka consists of five lines.  In its non-lineated form, the tanka has the syllabic rhythm or pattern of 5-7-5-7-7.  The short poems of the thousand marvels of every moment are composed of five lines.  They also take into consideration the rhythmic patterns of 5-7-5-7-7 although they do not necessarily conform to the syllabic count.  The poems in this collection also do not observe many of the accepted tanka conventions but seek a synthesis and accommodation brought about by translation into a radically different language and culture. 

from One In A Thousand