Tag Archives: travel journal

Limited Edition: Jacks Or Better

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Jacks Or Better

by Pat Nolan

Jacks Or Better is a travel journal (kikobun) in the tradition of Basho’s Narrow Roads To Far Off Places.  The narrow road followed in this journal is the iron road, from San Francisco to rural Florida with stops in New Orleans and Baton Rouge.  It is a poet’s journey expressed as haibun in which descriptive or expressionistic prose is capped by a haiku-like poem that continues the thread, elucidates it, or offers a disparate juxtaposition.  Published by Egret Moon Press in 2011 in a limited edition of 36 copies. 38 pages hand-bound with Japanese stitching between grey repurposed paper covers, 7×7.25 inches (18x19cm).

 

jobfcvrfrom Jacks Or Better 

Although this is my first trip to New Orleans, I’ve taken trains across country before and have always found that if you’re on a schedule they are the last place to be.  But if you’re not in a hurry, they enforce a leisurely pace that is fast becoming antique. My final destination is Florida where I will visit with my parents.  The first leg will take most of three days. This trip is ostensibly about the anatomy of a friendship and the relationship between generations.  I will visit with Andrei Codrescu in New Orleans and lecture to his MA classes at Louisiana State University. 

Baton Rouge
“only place in America named
         after a dog’s dick”

 

 To view a pdf facsimile click JACKS OR BETTER 2011

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Limited Edition: Ah Bolinas!

Limited Editions, Modern Poetry, Non-fiction, Poetry, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Ah Bolinas!
A Travel Journal

by Pat Nolan
    

In the late fall of 1984, Pat Nolan was invited by Joanne Kyger to read his poetry as part of a reading series held at the Bolinas Library.  Nolan later memorialized the event in a Japanese style travel diary(nikki) similar to those written by Basho on his various journeys to visit other poets and collaborate on linked verse (haikai no renga). It was originally published in Andrei Codrescu’s Exquisite Corpse in 2000 as To Bolinas And Back.  As published in  limited edition, the prose and poems in Ah Bolinas! are organized in a manner similar to those found in the Japanese form, haibun.  

In 2010 Not My Hat Press issued the travel journal now titled Ah Bolinas! in a limited edition of 26 signed copies, lettered A through Z and accompanied by four original linoleum block prints.  The covers are printed on a heavy weight mulberry washi with Japanese silk screen end papers and bound in the Japanese four hole style.  The blocks were carved by the author and printed with the generous assistance of master printer Les Ferriss of Healdsburg, CA.   4×5.63 (10.2×14.1 cm) 

To view a pdf facsimile, please click AH BOLINAS 2010