All posts by Eric Robert Nolan

Eric Robert Nolan graduated from Mary Washington College in 1994 with a Bachelor of Science in Psychology. He spent several years a news reporter and editorial writer for the Culpeper Star Exponent in Culpeper, Virginia. His work has also appeared on the front pages of numerous newspapers in Virginia, including The Free Lance – Star and The Daily Progress. Eric entered the field of philanthropy in 1996, as a grant writer for nonprofit healthcare organizations. Eric’s poetry has been featured by Dead Beats Literary Blog, Dagda Publishing, The International War Veterans’ Poetry Archive, and elsewhere. His poetry will also be published by Illumen Magazine in its Spring 2014 issue.

right I probably shouldn’t even be allowed near a stove

because consequences



Update — since concerned people are querying me, please let me assure you that everything is okay.   Some steam was mean to me, but I am fine.

Stupid stove. Stupid pasta. Stupid laws of thermophysics.



 

“That valley is fatal where furnaces burn.”

“O where are you going?” said reader to rider,
“That valley is fatal where furnaces burn,
Yonder’s the midden whose odours will madden,
That gap is the grave where the tall return.”

“O do you imagine,” said fearer to farer,
“That dusk will delay on your path to the pass,
Your diligent looking discover the lacking,
Your footsteps feel from granite to grass?”

— excerpt from W. H. Auden’s “O Where Are You Going?”



W._H._Auden_(1956_press_photo)

A walk up Market Street in Roanoke, VA, Christmastime, 2023.

I almost said “Sorry for the funky music,” but they keep saying “Play that” and I am indeed a white boy.

I actually wanted to remove audio entirely from this video, but I can’t figure out how to do that with Youtube. (Damn it, Jim. I’m a poet, not a video editor.)



USPS 13-Cent Christmas Stamp, 1977

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Christmas tree at the corner of Market Street and Salem Avenue.

Roanoke, Virginia.

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“I will die. You will die.”

“I will die.  You will die.  We will all die and the universe will carry on without care.  All that we have is that shout into the wind – how we live.  How we go.  And how we stand before we fall.”

― Pierce Brown, Golden Son



And_The_Sky_Is_A_Hazy_Shade_Of_Winter_(180952239)

Photo credit: J Carlos, CC BY-SA 3.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0&gt;, via Wikimedia Commons

“At the First Touch of Winter, Summer Fades Away,” Valentine Cameron Prinsep, circa 1897

Oil on canvas.

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Source: Jenny Hayut

Today’s portmanteau:

Snacks + accident = snacksident.

Why did I inhale those peanut butter M&M’s?  It was a SNACKSIDENT.



2019-01-29_18_08_10_Peanut_M&amp;M's_in_the_Dulles_section_of_Sterling,_Loudoun_County,_Virginia

Photo credit: Famartin, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0&gt;, via Wikimedia Commons

1869 illustration from Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven”

I’m puzzled by this piece — I think this is the work of Gustave Dore, but I can’t seem to confirm that.  My neophyte’s experience with art has shown me that some of Dore’s contemporaries appeared to illustrate with the same style.

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