Description: Collection of poem by James Nolan about and inspired by the city of New Orleans.
Brief description: James Nolan, a fifth-generation New Orleans native, is a widely published fiction writer, poet, essayist, and translator. His eleventh book, Flight Risk: Memoirs of a New Orleans Bad Boy, won the 2018 Next-Generation Indie Book Award for Best Memoir. His fiction includes You Don't Know Me: New and Selected Stories (winner of the 2015 Independent Publishers Gold Medal in Southern Fiction), the novel Higher Ground (awarded a Faulkner/Wisdom Gold Medal), and Perpetual Care: Stories. He has been the recipient of an N.E.A. grant and two Fulbright fellowships, and has taught at universities in San Francisco, Florida, Barcelona, Madrid, and Beijing, as well as in New Orleans.
Review Quotes:
"The phrasing, the line, the music, the narrative thread--the jump & drag & soul of them--the body in them: these poems are what's in Armstrong's horn, in Holiday's throat when they sing 'Do You Know What It Means to Miss New Orleans?'"
- Darrell Bourque, Louisiana Poet Laureate 2007-2011
"Wow, what a collection. No other poet gets and sings the 'shimmering mirage' of New Orleans like James Nolan. Nasty Water places him in a league with our best-loved musicians."
- Julie Kane, Louisiana Poet Laureate 2011-2013
"Nasty Water is home brew, moonshine-magical, and leaves all your senses tingling. Drink it to dance with James Nolan through the rich tragicomedy of New Orleans."
- Peter Cooley, Louisiana Poet Laureate 2015-2017
"Out of the nasty water of memory, James Nolan pulls a lifetime of stunning images, each shining with its own story. This is also the history of New Orleans, with its music and destruction. No other poet has captured the contradictory essence of this city--and of today's America--as vividly as he does."
- Peter Meinke, Florida Poet Laureate
"This serpent-in-the-mud-and-flowers of a book is the twin autobiography of a place and of a poet. Call it a chalice of nasty water: what you find here is soul, the streaking light of an embrace only poetry delivers."
- Andrei Codrescu, author of New Orleans, Mon Amour