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Joe Nolan
Joe Nolan is a retired attorney who began
publishing his work in the Fall of 2017. He has self-published three
books of poems, Human Grace, Cats Can’t Use Straws and Sky
Gardens, which are available on Amazon. Joseph works mostly in form,
writing mostly short poems. His readings emphasize musicality deriving
from rhyme and meter.
Since 2017, he has published over 800 poems
in local poetry journals, including Medusa’s Kitchen, the Sacramento
Voices Poetry Anthology, now, Voices Poetry Anthology, Poetry Now,
Collisions 5 in Modesto, Song of the San Joaquin, Better Than Starbucks
and Brevities Mini-Mag of Minimalist Poetry. He has been a featured
reader in Sacramento, Turlock, Sonora and Manteca.
This collection of poems, Water Dreams,
is Joe’s fourth full-length collection of poems.
Interests include hiking in forests and on beaches, time in nature,
meditation, yoga, Jin Shin Jyutsu acupressure, chi-gong and spicy dishes
at Thai and Indian restaurants.
JOE NOLAN
106 pages,
plus cover
6 x 9, Perfect Bound
$18.95
FREE shipping within the Continental United States
Joseph Nolan has posted in Medusa’s
Kitchen many times; his writing is accessible and based on all the
crazy things he sees around him. He plays with rhythm and rhyme, rocking
us from line to line. You’ll enjoy these poems, I’m sure—they’re
colorful and reflect the nonsensical times we live in.
Kathy Kieth,
Medusa’s Kitchen and
Rattlesnake Press
Joe Nolan’s Water Dreams is loaded
with jaunty rhymes, irregular rhythms, and forms bent to the familiar
and the unfamiliar. Like Ogden Nash, he playfully subverts the reader’s
expectations, but then goes for the jugular. However, these aren’t mere
entertainments (even as entertaining as they are). Nature is revered and
parsed for its many messages to humans (though Nolan is a Zen master
poet who is actually having a good time). There is no shortage of social
commentary either, which makes these poems ill-suited for the
inexperienced and beginners. Often the human will is on trial as Nolan
prods it to reveal its foibles and convert it to mirth. Throughout there
is a reckoning with a pre-20th Century past: the traditional first
letter of each line is capitalized, subject-verb inversions, archaic
contractions. These all remind the reader that poems have long been
containers for ideas and truths about human nature. Joe Nolan can
scavenge the past for absurdity in our current moment.
Tim Kahl,
Author of OMNISHAMBLES
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