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.

“Death to the Hermit” illustration from Dode-Dands, 1762

From “The Human Life’s Flight.”  Denmark.

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Happy Winter Solstice, friends.

Greetings from this poet during the longest night of the year.

May the gradually lengthening days ahead bring peace and good health to you and yours.


No, I am not actually going punk.

It’s a joke. As I’ve explained here before, I messed up giving myself a haircut. Then I realized that shaving most of it off was really my only recourse if I wanted to look vaguely normal. But I left it in a mohawk as a joke. The temporary hair dye and the earring are gags too.

I’d like to think that I didn’t do too bad of a job with the mohawk? It’s leagues ahead of the conventional haircut that I attempted first, at least. (I was doing so well for a while, too. Then I got impatient and started hacking a way at it.)

But I’m still trying to make lemons out of lemonade here. (I’ll never get that idiom right the first time, and I don’t care.) And just to add insult to injury, one of my news reporter friends made the meme you see at the bottom. The b*****d.

So I’m not as much punk as I am a punk. Which is a shame, because I really wanted to cosplay as one of those kids from “Return of the Living Dead” (1985), or maybe good ‘ol Chris Wright from my long ago acting classes. (He had an immense dyed mohawk, and he might have been the only punk at Mary Washington College circa 1991.)

Oh, well. I’ve still got The Clash’s “Rock the Casbah” in my playlist. And I shared a Dead Kennedys video on Facebook the other day. (You know which one.) That counts for something.


Cover to “Grendel Tales: Homecoming” #3, Matt Wagner, 1995

Dark Horse Comics.

“The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars …”

Men at some time are masters of their fates:
The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars,
But in ourselves, that we are underlings. 

— Cassius, in William Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar (Act 1, Scene 2), 1623

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Photo of the first page of Julius Caesar from a facsimile edition of the First Folio of Shakespeare’s plays, published in 1623

Poster for “Affair in Trinidad” (1952)

Columbia Pictures.

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Skybald covers The Beatles’ “Eleanor Rigby!”

This is a friend of mine (and a fellow writer) in the United Kingdom.  (Phil is the vocalist here.)

His band, Skybald, did a damn fine job with this cover of The Beatles’ “Eleanor Rigby.”

Check it out!

Cover to “Superior Carnage” #5, Clayton Crain, 2013

Marvel Comics.

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This was not the evening I envisioned.

That awkward moment when you try to look punk but you inadvertently turn yourself into the god damned Ocean Spray logo.

I’m just waiting for Keanu Reeves to infiltrate a gang of surfers-turned-bank-robbers on my damned head.


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Variant Cover to “Superman” #710, Adam Hughes, 2011

DC Comics.

ggh