Ode To Sunset

Ode To Sunset
A Year In The Life Of American Genius

Excerpts from Pat Nolan’s fiction, Ode To Sunset, A Year In The Life Of American Genius, about Carl Wendt, poet and art critic, who is not quite Charles Baudelaire and not quite Charles Bukowski with the haggard look of a well worn Alex Trebek and the pit bull demeanor of Mickey Roarke in a city not quite Frisco. An eight second Mamet pitch would be “A Confederacy Of Dunces meets The Savage Detectives with voice over by George Steiner.”
Caveat Lector: Excerpts may not appear in the order they follow in the novel.

The Poetry Reading   Carl Wendt, autodidact, professional cynic, flaneur, conman,  outlier outlaw, and last of the hardboiled poets actually attends a memorial poetry reading at which he is one of the scheduled readers.

Poetry Is A Crowded Room  Attending the Cirque De Penumbroi, a poetry happening in the partially demolished Reed Hotel south of Market, is Carl Wendt, last of the hardboiled vigilante poets.

Poetry Is A Crowded Room, Part II  “Poetry is a crowded room. Someone’s toes are bound to get stepped on.”

How To Write A Preface  Excerpts from Pat Nolan’s Ode To Sunset, a serial fiction about poets and poetry in not quite Frisco in the early years of the new century.

Schools of Poetry, Part I  A thorough delineation on the current schools of poetry (at least in the minds of the two acquaintances),

Schools of Poetry, Part II  The conversation continues to include the secret schools of poetry that no one ever hears of.

The Poet In Love  Carl Wendt wowed the audience at the Ian Blake Memorial Benefit by reading excerpts from his book length epic, Procreation. Afterwards, he was joined by SFPD Inspector G. Grace Niklia for a post reading tête-à-tête at Crepe Del Sol, a 24hr pancake house on Masonic, where he fell hopelessly in love with the police detective. 

A Taxonomy of Poets  Carl Wendt, poetry polymath and flaneur, has a genius, whether American or not, for finding patrons who will regularly invite him for dinner.

On The Use of Euphemism   Euphemism (n) a mild or indirect word or expression substituted for one considered to be too harsh or blunt when referring to something unpleasant or embarrassing.

The Poet As Cynic   Carl Wendt, poet and literary factotum, still adjusting to being awarded the megabucks Dorian Pillsbury Prize in Poetry, finds himself hitchhiking along a deserted Northern California backroad highway.

Fogged In Frisco   Carl Wendt, hardboiled poet and flaneur, aka the Bay Area’s Baudelaire, now homeless and down on his luck, muses on another aspect of his life where luck has failed him: women—they can be delightful, and they can be dangerous.

The Poet Learns To Surf In this excerpt from Pat Nolan’s poet-centric fiction, Ode To Sunset, A Year in the Life of American Genius, Carl Wendt, poet, flaneur, and walking anachronism, dips his gnarled toes into the waters of the cyberverse to find it not as cold as he’d anticipated.

The Poet Encounters The Future of Poetry another excerpt from Ode To Sunset, a fiction by Pat Nolan inn which Carl Wendt, not quite Charles Baudelaire, not quite Charles Bukowski, with the look of a well-worn Alex Trebek but the pit bull demeanor of a Mickey Rourke, flaneur, art critic, jazzbo, and last of the two fisted hard drinking hard boiled poets in a city not quite Frisco, hustles some much needed operating funds by delivering a lecture to a creative writing class at City College, and encounters the future of poetry.

The Poet As Private Eye  Another episode from Pat Nolan’s fiction, Ode To Sunset, A Year In The Life Of American Genius in which the hardboiled poet tracks down the leads to a serial killer of poets.

How To Rehearse A Strophe Carl Wendt, one of the last of  the hard boiled, streetwise, post-Beat Neo-Romantics (in other words, a dinosaur) finds himself washed up like a wounded lovesick sealion on a sandy stretch of Pacific Ocean beach north of Frisco, and later a cliff overlooking the crashing surf, rehearsing the rhythms of his thoughts as strophes for an ode to sunset.

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Ode To Sunset is available for perusing in its entirety at odetosunset.com