Page 64 - Sonoma County Gazette - January 2018

EXILE IN MONTE RIO
By Robert Feuer
Pat Nolan, who rst saw the light of day
in Montreal in 1943, is the perpetrator of three novels and over a dozen poetry books. He’s lived in Monte Rio, in “silent cunning exile,” he says in his new collection, Exile
in Paradise, for over 40 years. His home is only a poetry book’s throw from the banks of the Russian River. There, the environment parallels that of Chinese landscape painting - “misty hills, coniferous forests, picturesque river vistas, wildlife, and relative isolation.”
Nolan’s writing, including translations,
has appeared in literary magazines and
anthologies in Europe and Asia, and many
North American publications, notably
Rolling Stone, The Paris Review, Poetry
Flash, Thus Spake the Corpse, and Saints of
Hysteria. He began Nuallain Press in 2011,
and is the founder of The Black Bart Poetry Society and co-editor and publisher of its newsletter, Life Of Crime.
By his own admission, Nolan has also worked as a bartender, rock band manager, trail crew grunt, radio DJ, emergency dispatcher, janitor, and to the amazement of some, preschool teacher.
Many these days want to live in the moment – no looking back, no looking ahead. This new work is alive with details that coax our attention, urge our sensitivity to the present. Little happens while everything happens – the world unfurls, with only our eyes to devour it. We can be at peace or choose not to be. Poems arise from the mists of west county and congeal on these pages. There are no people, though shadow gures exist on the edges of his reality. Only nature and the moment exist.
Nolan has read Chinese poetry extensively. He describes it by using terms such as “immediacy, plain spoken imagism, spare, understated, open-ended.” His gradual awakening to Chinese poetry became “the slow steady light of dawn erasing little by little the shadows until it is bright noon overhead.”
For “Exile in Paradise,” he used a list of his favorite lines which became “the launch pad for poetic improvisation.” Each of these poems starts with a line in quotes, taken from those ancient masters.
Of the themes in Chinese poetry he favors, says Nolan, are “those of the footloose exiled poet, and the Taoist recluse/Buddhist hermit.”
Nolan goes on - . “The poems in exile in paradise are ephemeral, literary ghost masks, in substantial whispering clouds, echoes of an echo. Chinese poetry is image rich and largely dependent for its overall e ect on the juxtaposition of these images in a discontinuous thread that is not unlike the successive frames of a lm.”
The sensual cover art is Nolan’s design, from a landscape sketch by an obscure artist of the 15th Century. The calligraphy is from his collection of late 19th century woodblock reproductions of ancient Chinese painter signatures and seals.
Author Maureen Owen says of this work, “Nolan has given Solitude, itself, a voice in this rich lyric of nature...his lines race the air.”
Available at Sebastopol’s Many Rivers Books & Tea or https://nuallainhousepublishers.com/exile-in-paradise/
64 - www.sonomacountygazette.com - 1/18
Discoveries:
The Write Spot Anthology
By Diane McCurdy
Book groups proliferate so why not
writing groups? That old beatnik, pre- hippie poet Kenneth Rexroth said, “Against the ruin of the world, there is only one defense: the creative act.” And with so much unease in our society, with threats of war, polarization of political ideologies, hurricanes and fires why
not diffuse some of that negativity by creating? Let us write stories, and poems, and essays, perhaps to stave off some ruin and stay semi-sane at least.
Marlene Cullen is the creator of Jumpstart Writing Workshop. In a comfortable, non-threatening atmosphere, participants write and write and write. Their products turned out out be so compelling that she wanted to
share them with all of us. She has assembled a charming anthology entitled Discoveries. Discoveries is a compendium of all different kinds of creative acts and for each selection the creative process is described in detail. Writers are given a “prompt.” At the end of each piece we are told exactly what the inspiration was. For example, one writer recounts a comic interlude with a recalcitrant Weber BBQ. The impetus for this was, “write about a leap you have taken.” At the end of each author’s section there is a mini-biography and some words of encouragement that describes their process.
Part of the delight elicited by this collection is the disparate range of topics. This little book includes something for everyones preferences. Subjects include old-fashioned laundry rituals, the great hot lunch, cold lunch school dilemma, hormones, romance, gloves and soap.
The ending segment reads like a lesson plan to start a writing group of ones own. There are hints on what to do if your creative juices are stuck, a list of prompts and a generous bibliography. Entries are short and in our busy, very busy lives it is easy to pick up the book and read a few inclusive selections and then put it down for another day to discover a different author’s work. Available on Amazon.com.
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