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      November 18, 2016Curtailed SonnetJames B. Nicola

      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 #53 - Fall 2016

      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.”