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The Last Nostalgia: Poems 1982-1990
Joe Bolton studied universal connections―the tension between the transitory beauty of the physical world and a yearning for the eternal. He turned his eye to the world, to the cultures and the people around him, and saw reflections of himself. In this collection, he works in both free verse and traditional forms, rendering scenes of exquisite detail that pry into the hearts of his characters and reveal the contradictions that bind father to son, lover to lover, and person to person. From the broken hills and drowsy river valleys around Paducah, Kentucky, to Houston diners and Gulf Coast shrimp boats, to the tropical cityscape of Miami, Bolton creates vivid scenes in which his characters confront the loneliness and the "little music" of their lives. With a richly musical voice and an ear for the cadences of everyday speech, Bolton gives his readers not the trappings of love and grief, but the very things themselves, rendered in lines that reverberate with the authority of sincerity and truth.
- GenresPoetry
224 pages, Paperback
First published May 1, 1999
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Displaying 1 - 21 of 21 reviews
March 29, 2008
This book breaks my heart. Joe Bolton was a classmate in a writers' workshop with David Wohjan, and Joe and I became friends. I miss him and his wonderful poetry deeply.
I can give this book only 5 stars, but The Last Nostalgia deserves its own constellation.
I can give this book only 5 stars, but The Last Nostalgia deserves its own constellation.
October 5, 2007
this is the most heartbreaking and haunting collection of poems you will ever read.
October 3, 2020
When I discovered Joe Bolton and read his last collection of poetry published in his life time - Days of Summer Gone I became obsessed. I needed to read everything that he ever wrote. I actually tried to buy a copy of the limited edition of his first small chapbook Breckinridge County Suite but unfortunately it was beyond my pocket book. Luckily when my copy of The Last Nostalgia arrived it contained, the first collection, Days of Summer Gone and The Last Nostalgia Poems 1982-1990.
In the introduction Donald Justice explains:
“Toward the end of March (1990) he (Joe Bolton) turned in his master’s thesis, a collection he called The Last Nostalgia. The following day, March 30, in the early morning hours, he took his own life. There was no note.”
The poems actually speak for themselves to the point that his suicide comes as no surprise. A lot of the poems in Days of Summer Gone are nostalgic and sad but those in The Last Nostalgia are beyond hope. In these poems Bolton reminds me of Kerouac, constantly wishing to be somewhere else, moving on only to find that he has not escaped himself.
But I’ll start with Breckinridge County Suite. This collection is dedicated to a young Kentucky woman and Breckinridge County was evidently a very poor part of Kentucky when Bolton grew up there. The lack of prospects and ennui of the young living there in in the Eighties is poignantly evoked. The suite is comprised of 14 poems, the last lyrical and sensuous. The suite itself dances around a relationship between two young people or supposed relationship. There is a suggestion that the young woman slept with a lot of young men.
“They took their time, and when they
Came, you came.
And it was as if your own body betrayed you then-
As if only their body above yours kept you
From falling into the blue of sky.”
Here is what she is trying to escape from:
“It could be any Southern town you care to name:
Bank, diner, hardware store, lone traffic light.
Saturdays, you come to buy everything
That can’t be grown, contrived, or done without.
Old men sit spitting on the courthouse steps.
A boy in a Camaro squeals, once, his wide new tires.
Women test their reflections in the windows of the shops
They pass, hoping to find some lost beauty restored.”
I have already reviewed Days of Summer Gone so that brings us to The Last Nostalgia. The collection is made up of three parts: The New Cities of the Tropics, Adult Situations and Uncollected Poems.
In the first section the majority of the poems are set away from Kentucky. In Mississippi, Texas, Florida and finally Arizona. “But he always kept coming back to the Western Kentucky of his childhood, the home for him of memory.”
Sometimes the inherent helplessness/hopelessness of Bolton’s latter poems is hard to bear but mesmerising all the same. Luckily these darker poems are interposed with gentle meditations, like this one:
“Tall Palms
Their loveliness
Is that they seem to need
So little; and their loneliness
That they have only themselves to give back:
Staying out in the dark all night
Where they turn black,
Ordering the blue morning sky,
And looking as if they wished to take flight
On the wind as they thrash and sigh
Standing still at great speed.”
There is also a meditation on Sherwood Anderson, 1912 and an Elegy for Roland Barthes. Yet there is no escaping himself:
“And stationed by this window,
I know I won’t sleep again tonight.
I’ve done this long enough now to believe
That if I turn away, all will be lost.”
As it surely was in March 1990.
“There is a certain distance
At which the image of someone
You once loved
Takes form and grows beautiful
And a certain distance at which
It disappears.”
An unforgettable poet who wrote some of the most haunting poems I have ever read. Highly recommended.
In the introduction Donald Justice explains:
“Toward the end of March (1990) he (Joe Bolton) turned in his master’s thesis, a collection he called The Last Nostalgia. The following day, March 30, in the early morning hours, he took his own life. There was no note.”
The poems actually speak for themselves to the point that his suicide comes as no surprise. A lot of the poems in Days of Summer Gone are nostalgic and sad but those in The Last Nostalgia are beyond hope. In these poems Bolton reminds me of Kerouac, constantly wishing to be somewhere else, moving on only to find that he has not escaped himself.
But I’ll start with Breckinridge County Suite. This collection is dedicated to a young Kentucky woman and Breckinridge County was evidently a very poor part of Kentucky when Bolton grew up there. The lack of prospects and ennui of the young living there in in the Eighties is poignantly evoked. The suite is comprised of 14 poems, the last lyrical and sensuous. The suite itself dances around a relationship between two young people or supposed relationship. There is a suggestion that the young woman slept with a lot of young men.
“They took their time, and when they
Came, you came.
And it was as if your own body betrayed you then-
As if only their body above yours kept you
From falling into the blue of sky.”
Here is what she is trying to escape from:
“It could be any Southern town you care to name:
Bank, diner, hardware store, lone traffic light.
Saturdays, you come to buy everything
That can’t be grown, contrived, or done without.
Old men sit spitting on the courthouse steps.
A boy in a Camaro squeals, once, his wide new tires.
Women test their reflections in the windows of the shops
They pass, hoping to find some lost beauty restored.”
I have already reviewed Days of Summer Gone so that brings us to The Last Nostalgia. The collection is made up of three parts: The New Cities of the Tropics, Adult Situations and Uncollected Poems.
In the first section the majority of the poems are set away from Kentucky. In Mississippi, Texas, Florida and finally Arizona. “But he always kept coming back to the Western Kentucky of his childhood, the home for him of memory.”
Sometimes the inherent helplessness/hopelessness of Bolton’s latter poems is hard to bear but mesmerising all the same. Luckily these darker poems are interposed with gentle meditations, like this one:
“Tall Palms
Their loveliness
Is that they seem to need
So little; and their loneliness
That they have only themselves to give back:
Staying out in the dark all night
Where they turn black,
Ordering the blue morning sky,
And looking as if they wished to take flight
On the wind as they thrash and sigh
Standing still at great speed.”
There is also a meditation on Sherwood Anderson, 1912 and an Elegy for Roland Barthes. Yet there is no escaping himself:
“And stationed by this window,
I know I won’t sleep again tonight.
I’ve done this long enough now to believe
That if I turn away, all will be lost.”
As it surely was in March 1990.
“There is a certain distance
At which the image of someone
You once loved
Takes form and grows beautiful
And a certain distance at which
It disappears.”
An unforgettable poet who wrote some of the most haunting poems I have ever read. Highly recommended.
February 16, 2012
This book is my bible! If I ever have to pick only one book to keep / take to a desert island / save from a fire, it would be - without doubt - this one. The fact that answer comes so easily to me is only a testament to its power. Life cannot contain such pathos.. What a loss!
January 6, 2018
I was amazed by the beauty of this book from the start. It took me so long to read because I took my sweet time with it-sometimes only reading one poem a night. Stunning.
Read
November 14, 2013A favorite of both Eleanor Ross Taylor and Donald Justice, the latter of whom edited this volume, Joe Bolton sets many of the memorable poems in *The Last Nostalgia* in his native Kentucky, where his lost happiness haunts the air like midsummer humidity. A suicide at the age of 28, Bolton sought his escape from doomed love, innocence, and a sense of belonging through travel; his sepia-and-neon itinerary included Houston, Tucson, Newport Beach, Gainesville, Atlanta, and Nashville.
At the Nashville Holiday Inn, the poet stands with a lover 'on a balcony / Above the city of losses" and defines desire as "That sweet song the body sings to itself, / Or under the best of circumstances / The song two bodies sing to each other." Another Nashville-based poem, one of several notable sonnets that take their cue from American popular culture, places Hank Williams and Minnie Pearl in a Cadillac "driving through the dark of night"; Williams breaks off an impromptu version of "I Saw the Light" to confess, his voice dimming: "There ain't no light, Minnie. There ain't no light."
Poetry readers owe a debt of gratitude to Justice for assembling *The Last Nostalgia.* Locating, reading, and selecting the 500+ poems Bolton wrote between 1982 and 1990, the year of his death by suicide, must have been a formidable task.
While Justice's name evokes due reverence from the many poets who consider him a true master of the art, he has also acted as a practical, hands-on champion of those such as Bolton, Weldon Kees, and Henri Coulette, writers whose work might well have been forgotten shortly after their deaths. His introductory essay to *The Last Nostalgia* should be read in tandem with his title piece in *Oblivion* (Story Line Press), a collection of prose devoted to writers and writing.
"For the artist," he unfashionably asserts, "some sense of disappointment and frustration, some rage for the absolute, seems inevitable, [yet] persistence in the face of such certitude of oblivion is in its small way heroic."
At the Nashville Holiday Inn, the poet stands with a lover 'on a balcony / Above the city of losses" and defines desire as "That sweet song the body sings to itself, / Or under the best of circumstances / The song two bodies sing to each other." Another Nashville-based poem, one of several notable sonnets that take their cue from American popular culture, places Hank Williams and Minnie Pearl in a Cadillac "driving through the dark of night"; Williams breaks off an impromptu version of "I Saw the Light" to confess, his voice dimming: "There ain't no light, Minnie. There ain't no light."
Poetry readers owe a debt of gratitude to Justice for assembling *The Last Nostalgia.* Locating, reading, and selecting the 500+ poems Bolton wrote between 1982 and 1990, the year of his death by suicide, must have been a formidable task.
While Justice's name evokes due reverence from the many poets who consider him a true master of the art, he has also acted as a practical, hands-on champion of those such as Bolton, Weldon Kees, and Henri Coulette, writers whose work might well have been forgotten shortly after their deaths. His introductory essay to *The Last Nostalgia* should be read in tandem with his title piece in *Oblivion* (Story Line Press), a collection of prose devoted to writers and writing.
"For the artist," he unfashionably asserts, "some sense of disappointment and frustration, some rage for the absolute, seems inevitable, [yet] persistence in the face of such certitude of oblivion is in its small way heroic."
September 25, 2007
I read this book in high school and have re-read it every couple years since then. It has never not deeply moved me. Love it.
March 26, 2019
This is the book that got me into poetry. A true modern masterpiece.
July 28, 2008
The swansong of the great Southern poet Joe Bolton. He killed himself a day after handing in his final manuscript, which makes the poems in this collection all the more haunting. These poems are real and his voice is honest- even to the point of discomfort. He is not afraid to show the underbelly of America and, then, somehow, make it beautiful.
Read
July 16, 2022Reading Bolton is often overwhelming, and not necessarily because of the content of his poetry, but because the fact of his suicide hangs over every verse, calling me to wonder whether it was all worth it. The question of art's role in the artist's life circulates in me, and I begin to feel that art is sometimes only a means to push us further into despair rather than a means to rescue us from it.
I was incredibly excited when I began reading, more so than I usually find myself with poetry. I wrote the following to a friend: "Started reading a book today that I’m actually really fucking thrilled about so I am excited to be in ATL even if alone," but by the middle I was getting worn out by his melancholy, perhaps because it matches my own a bit too closely; or maybe in reading his work I am pulled into his world and feel just as he does.
But I wouldn't stop, I never even considered it. Tonight I finished reading it on my patio under a slightly overcast summer sky, left hollow, filled with very little but the sense that those who are most beautiful seem to burn out the quickest, and that none of those for whom this is the case ever seem to have much of an answer for us, leading us to wonder whether perhaps the routes they decided upon were most optimal.
I was incredibly excited when I began reading, more so than I usually find myself with poetry. I wrote the following to a friend: "Started reading a book today that I’m actually really fucking thrilled about so I am excited to be in ATL even if alone," but by the middle I was getting worn out by his melancholy, perhaps because it matches my own a bit too closely; or maybe in reading his work I am pulled into his world and feel just as he does.
But I wouldn't stop, I never even considered it. Tonight I finished reading it on my patio under a slightly overcast summer sky, left hollow, filled with very little but the sense that those who are most beautiful seem to burn out the quickest, and that none of those for whom this is the case ever seem to have much of an answer for us, leading us to wonder whether perhaps the routes they decided upon were most optimal.
April 20, 2018
A collected poems or one long poem? Full of elapsed summers, cold stars, the alienation peculiar to the New South and a Gothic sensibility that's more Nick Drake than William Faulkner, Bolton's aesthetic appears to have been full formed from the start. And an impressive edifice it does erect. But as much as the poems swell and inundate the imagination with their luscious gloom -- Bolton wasn't afarid to be erotic -- its the achingly clear air of occasional lines that endure most. Think of them as the last breath the poems take before they go utterly under; that is, drown.
Read
August 8, 2019"A hard country to live in, yes,
But not a hard country in which to find
A place to drown oneself.
You think of water, of the names
Of water: Sinking River, Rough, River Lake,
South Fork of the Panther.
And all of it flowing Ohioward, Gulfward.
For water everywhere rages to be with other water;
Or, held isolate in ponds, in the hoofprint
Of the thousand-pound heifer after rain,
Reflects the utter emptiness of sky.
And water is as empty as sky, only
Easier to fall into,
Heavier to breathe."
But not a hard country in which to find
A place to drown oneself.
You think of water, of the names
Of water: Sinking River, Rough, River Lake,
South Fork of the Panther.
And all of it flowing Ohioward, Gulfward.
For water everywhere rages to be with other water;
Or, held isolate in ponds, in the hoofprint
Of the thousand-pound heifer after rain,
Reflects the utter emptiness of sky.
And water is as empty as sky, only
Easier to fall into,
Heavier to breathe."
November 6, 2019
4.5
Didn't finish- library loan was expiring. Bolton was a talented poet. His work made me realize how poetry can often times offer the best window into an unfamiliar world. Bolton writes about his Kentucky adolescence beautifully and with intelligence. I was envious at times reading his descriptions.
Didn't finish- library loan was expiring. Bolton was a talented poet. His work made me realize how poetry can often times offer the best window into an unfamiliar world. Bolton writes about his Kentucky adolescence beautifully and with intelligence. I was envious at times reading his descriptions.
August 3, 2021
Departure
February 14, 2023
vienas geriausių poezijos rinkinių kokį teko skaityti.
Poetą aptikau studijuodamas, o knygą nusipirkau dar po daugybės metų.
Buvo verta.
Poetą aptikau studijuodamas, o knygą nusipirkau dar po daugybės metų.
Buvo verta.
June 6, 2023
this is the best book of poetry
April 28, 2016
West Kentucky Quintet is one of the best poems I've ever read. There are scores of gems in Mr Bolton's collection (published after a young, self-inflicted death), but If I had to pick one single poem to anthologize, it would be the Quintet, the 5 parts of which are entitled Then, Back Then, Back, Hell and Back, Hell.
For those of us with roots in the South, consider these lines from the Back portion of WKQ:
"Somehow, every time I'm gone I'm gone long enough
To forget with what intensity
I hate this place.
In Sandy's I smoke a pack and a half and drink longneck Buds,
Pronouncing "thing" "thaing" to the sweet dumb smile
Of the girl behind the bar....
....
If you can get past the ignorance and indolence,
The racism and sexism, the people
Are good enough people--
But dying, and dying with brutal regularity,
Of gunshot wounds, car wrecks,
And lung cancer
Bolton & I overlapped many places at different times; how strange to read about New College of Florida in poems such as Tropical Courtyard. To experience the U. Arizona poetry program about a decade before I started.
It's like I know him, even though the only details I really know that are not found in his writing are the exact manner of his death.
For those of us with roots in the South, consider these lines from the Back portion of WKQ:
"Somehow, every time I'm gone I'm gone long enough
To forget with what intensity
I hate this place.
In Sandy's I smoke a pack and a half and drink longneck Buds,
Pronouncing "thing" "thaing" to the sweet dumb smile
Of the girl behind the bar....
....
If you can get past the ignorance and indolence,
The racism and sexism, the people
Are good enough people--
But dying, and dying with brutal regularity,
Of gunshot wounds, car wrecks,
And lung cancer
Bolton & I overlapped many places at different times; how strange to read about New College of Florida in poems such as Tropical Courtyard. To experience the U. Arizona poetry program about a decade before I started.
It's like I know him, even though the only details I really know that are not found in his writing are the exact manner of his death.
November 14, 2011
I was fortunate to meet Joe briefly when he came by to sit in on a writing class and give a reading at his old stomping grounds, WKU. Losing him is still heartbreaking, especially since what we have left shows poetry that should have followed a great tradition from Warren, to Justice, to Bolton. The first collection in this, Breckinridge County Suite, is still the volume I pull out regularly and leave on the night stand.
May 5, 2008
A tragedy that Bolton took his life, for this book shows the promise of what could have been. Many of the poems reflect a poet striving to find his or her voice. The stronger poems demonstrate a flair for the quotidian Americana and the longing for meaning.
April 29, 2008
All time favorite book. I need a new copy. I lost the copy with all my notes in it! (By lost, I mean loaned to some jerk-ass that never gave it back.)
February 9, 2010
Breathtaking
Displaying 1 - 21 of 21 reviews