James B. Nicola

James B. Nicola

CURTAILED SONNET

He closed his eyes when I asked him to

but I couldn’t then, we were so young. So

we didn’t kiss. And he never knew

it had crossed my mind. Now he’ll never know.

Nor thought I fifty years ago

that I’d be giving his eulogy.

How odd and sweet our friendship grew

to be: bittersweet, for me.

—from Rattle #53, Fall 2016
Tribute to Adjuncts

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James B. Nicola: “Intermittent stints as adjunct at colleges and universities have provided periods of pause and reflection from my professional freelance career in the theater and eventually gave rise to my becoming a poet. Here’s how. I was flabbergasted and flattered when a few University of Montana seniors pointed out to me that some of the choice things I had said to them as freshmen in 1987 had been posted by students on the departmental call board—and were still there in 1991 (when I was full-time sabbatical replacement)! The notion of teaching through axioms gave shape to my book, Playing the Audience: The Practical Actor’s Guide to Live Performance. With all its revisions, the book turned me into something of a writer. In 2000 I directed at my alma mater, Yale. There I had been a music major and tickled the ivories every morning before breakfast to plunk out some new tune; the habit was not unlike an addiction. But with no access to a piano this time around, the songwriting compulsion morphed into poetry.” (web)

James B. Nicola

HAVE YOU EVER WOKEN

Have you ever woken up, after a loss,

and gone outside, and found there such a mist

of morning—of mourning—that you thought you

were somewhere else, that the loss wasn’t lost,

and then you heard a voice from far away

whisper your name, then, vocative, pierce through

the mist and guide you back to what you knew

once, where you were, how things had been? You toss

left, toss right, and wake up again, only

to find there is no mist, no voice, no day,

there is no Is, because there is no We

anymore? You have? I have too, and say

I’m your friend, even if we’ve never met,

here to help you forget, and not forget.

—from Rattle #51, Spring 2016

[download audio]

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James B. Nicola: “I majored in music at Yale, concentrating on songwriting, but after graduation developed a career as a stage director. Twenty years later, I directed at Yale—but since I was not a student, I didn’t have a key to all the practice rooms or common rooms where pianos were beckoning. It was unbearable to be in New Haven, where I had written music and lyrics daily for years, without access to a piano—and out came lyric poetry. I remember my first verse, a sonnet, in October 2000. And I’ve been writing (or rewriting) poetry every day since. What started as a wonderful discipline for a stage director, though, has turned into a way of living and looking at the world; the time spent undisturbed, focusing inward while expanding outward, has become a spiritual ritual I don’t believe I could do without.”

Rattle: Poetry

… without pretension since 1995.

November 18, 2016

June 27, 2016