olene Nolte currently lives in Vancouver, British Columbia where she revels in the innumerable shades of green and the fact that she does not have to choose between mountains and the ocean. She works as a freelance writer and editor while also nourishing her poetry habit.
The Curator's monthly series of editor playlists. This month: Songs for the Road, a playlist by Jolene Nolte.
[Listen to our May 2021 playlist on Spotify.] Songs for the Road Road trips are a great time for music, and I tend to love music that suggests a journey or a story. In fact, the first music I can recall hearing with any specificity is an album by Dana Key called The Journey. I […]
Why Celebrate National Poetry Month in 2021?
What good is poetry in such a world? Why celebrate poetry in April 2021?
Christian Wiman’s question reverberates in my mind: “What is poetry’s role when the world is burning?” If 2020 and 2021 have taught us anything, it’s brought us face-to-face with the ways in which the world is indeed on fire: Death, systemic injustice, unrest, political upheaval, the banal uncertainties, privations, and isolation of pandemic life. What […]
A poem by Jolene Nolte
Smell of resin and my musty clarinet case, my reed’s wood taste on my tongue as I assemble my inherited instrument: mouthpiece, barrel, body joints, bell. Behind me, brass section’s spittle bubbles, spills in staccato pffts! A cacophony of phrases, scales, arpeggios swirl in C major, F sharp, B flat minor— until the white baton’s […]
Easing Into Loneliness with Aoife O'Donovan's EP Bull Frogs Croon
I’d just done a courageous thing. So what if the response was not what I had hoped?
Aoife O’Donovan’s Bull Frogs Croon sets three of Peter Sears’ poems to music. I didn’t know this when I heard the album (I eventually learned from this review), but the first two lines alone arrested me as undeniably poetic: “The water is a glaze / like loneliness at ease with itself.” I was not surprised […]
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