Drunk on Salt – by James Nolan

These are poems of such compassionate energy and social power that they would make both Whitman and Neruda proud.  James Nolan is the prodigy of both, at home in their company.  A New Orleanian with a well-stamped passport, he knows the word’s suffering and is a brilliant cartographer of our age.  After the last century’s horrors and orgies, his voice herals with clarity the twenty-first century.  ‘Night School: A Lesson in the Columbus Continuous’ is a masterpiece that needs to be in every textbook.  It has the beat of a loving heart, the bite of truth’s irony, and prophesizes America’s future.  Nolan is one of this country’s treasures.  -Andrei Codrescu, author of So Recently Rent a World: New and Selected Poems

James Nolan is that rare poet – a natural surrealist with two feet on the ground.  Beneath the bright colors of their landscapes, sorrow floats through his lines like the moan of a late-night saxophone.  Ranging from satire to elegy, these poems have enough anger, wit and love to move and please any reader.  -Peter Meinke, author of The Contracted World and Liquid Paper