Your favorite bibliophilic robot, 4-LAN, has shared his thoughts on Joleene Naylor’s “Vampire Morsels” today over at “What I Am Reading.”
4-LAN offers great reviews of new books at his blog; stop in there often to discover great independent authors.
http://thebookmarketingnetwork.com/profiles/blogs/what-i-am-reading-11
Celebrate National Poetry Month — here is Shakespeare’s “Sonnet 64.”
This might have been the first poem I ever committed to memory, back in my high school days. (It was either this or Edgar Allen Poe’s “The Raven.”) It escapes me now, as has the reason it was once so important.
When I have seen by Time’s fell hand defaced
The rich proud cost of outworn buried age;
When sometime lofty towers I see down-razed,
And brass eternal slave to mortal rage;
When I have seen the hungry ocean gain
Advantage on the kingdom of the shore,
And the firm soil win of the watery main,
Increasing store with loss, and loss with store;
When I have seen such interchange of state,
Or state itself confounded to decay;
Ruin hath taught me thus to ruminate
That Time will come and take my love away.
This thought is as a death which cannot choose
But weep to have that which it fears to lose.
http://www.shakespeares-sonnets.com/sonnet/64
I can’t resist sharing this link. One of the (quite many) cool things about AMC’s “The Walking Dead” is its unusual soundtrack, which makes the zombie apocalypse … soulful.
It’s a great soundtrack song, paired in this youtube video with a great poster for Season 4 of “The Walking Dead.” I love the show, even if I do speak heresy in nerd circles by opining that NBC’s “Hannibal” is better.
The demo version for this song is softer and is quite pretty.
I was cleaning out some old bookmarks tonight when I happened across this link — it’s a trippy-cool short horror film, and it includes an appearance by my great old friend and Mary Washington College alumnus, Travis Clements.
It title is “They Will Come for You,” and it was featured in the 2008 Virginia Film Festival. It delivers a darn good dose of creepiness for a film that is less than five minutes long — I think Travis and his friends did a great job with it.
If you’re wondering, Travis is the tall drink of water in the back. (I have always wanted to refer to someone as “a tall drink of water” after Red describes Andy that way in “The Shawshank Redemption,” and Travis is the tallest guy I know.)
Celebrate National Poetry Month!
This is probably the earliest poem I can remember — Shel Silverstein’s “Whatif,” It was read to us in grade school from “A Light In the Attic.”
“Whatif”
Last night, while I lay thinking here,
some Whatifs crawled inside my ear
and pranced and partied all night long
and sang their same old Whatif song:
Whatif I’m dumb in school?
Whatif they’ve closed the swimming pool?
Whatif I get beat up?
Whatif there’s poison in my cup?
Whatif I start to cry?
Whatif I get sick and die?
Whatif I flunk that test?
Whatif green hair grows on my chest?
Whatif nobody likes me?
Whatif a bolt of lightning strikes me?
Whatif I don’t grow talle?
Whatif my head starts getting smaller?
Whatif the fish won’t bite?
Whatif the wind tears up my kite?
Whatif they start a war?
Whatif my parents get divorced?
Whatif the bus is late?
Whatif my teeth don’t grow in straight?
Whatif I tear my pants?
Whatif I never learn to dance?
Everything seems well, and then
the nighttime Whatifs strike again!
http://faculty.weber.edu/chansen/humanweb/projects/MeghanUng/whatif.htm
I was lucky enough to reconnect today with Mike Hensdill, a colleague of mine from my newspaper days at the Culpeper Star-Exponent in Virginia.
Aside from being funny as hell to work with, Mike is a fantastic photographer with a great eye.
Check out his work here:
It’s National Poetry Month, and I insist on observing it, even if my Philistine friends ignore me.
This is probably the earliest exposure to verse that I can remember — my parents played Irish ballads on 8-Track tapes when we had company over when I was a tot. It is “Irish Soldier Boy,” performed by Paddy Reilly.
Yes … 8-Track tapes. I WAS A TOT.
Anyway, I grew up hearing these when I was very little. I believe the one that I remember best was “Wild Rover,” but I also remember this one after my mother remembered the title for me.
https://mail.google.com/mail/#inbox/1453dea36c62ea1b?projector=1
Because my eyes went right to that totally sweet-ass classic antique Underwood typewriter before they noticed the woman’s legs.
Sad, really.
Eric Robert Nolan, Author 