You heard it here first.
Okay, you probably DIDN’T hear it here first; because every time there is new footage for “Star Wars: the Force Awakens,” the Internet goes bananas.
Here it is anyway.
All posts by Eric Robert Nolan
“Within, the wealthy lament/ The traffic at the Whitestone Bridge.”
Here’s a particularly nice shot of the Whitestone Bridge, connecting Queens, New York, with the Bronx (and Connecticut beyond). My Longwood High School Alumnus James Dentel shot this recently, and he was kind enough to let me use it.
This is the bridge referenced in my poem, “Amanda,” which was featured by Dagda Publishing and by Dead Snakes.
I used live not far from here. Yes, New York can be a rough place, but Whitestone, Queens and adjacent Beechurst were two of the greatest neighborhoods I ever inhabited.
Here, Kitty, Kitty.
It’s the quick November dark that descends annually, silently on us like a vast black cat – just after we turn our clocks back for daylight savings time.
I’ll be greeting the newly early dark tonight by relaxing with Issue 8 of Peeking Cat Poetry Magazine. I’m going to revisit two poems that I especially like: Scott Thomas Outlar’s “Sucking Vapors” and Erren Geraud Kelly’s “Coffeehouse Poem #43.”
“One link is missing, Prospero, my magic is my own.”
“One link is missing, Prospero,
“My magic is my own;
“Happy Miranda does not know
“The figure that Antonio
“The Only One, Creation’s O,
“Dances for Death alone.”
— from Antonio’s refrain, in W. H. Auden’s
“The Sea and the Mirror”
Mantis religiosa.
Known also as the praying mantis.
We’ve got ’em in New York. But they are both larger and far more numerous in Virginia.
Apparently, the ancient Greeks regarded them as magical creatures who could tell lost travelers the way home.
“Oh mother, what tree is this?”
“Oh mother,
“What tree is this?
“What wounds are these?
“I am Attis on the pine.
“Christ on the cedar.
“Odin on the world ash.”
— from “Arkham Asylum: A Serious House On Serious Earth,” by Grant Morrison and illustrated by Dave McKean
People tend to think of either “The Dark Knight Returns” of “The Killing Joke” as the seminal “dark” Batman graphic novel.
I suggest that this trounces both of them.
Dead Snakes features “Dead Snakes”
Well, this is pretty meta … Dead Snakes has featured two poems about “Dead Snakes,” by author Mary Bone. And they’re both quite good.
http://deadsnakes.blogspot.com/2015/10/mary-bone-two-poems.html
The gardens at Dumbarton Oaks, Georgetown
I visited the gardens at Dumbarton Oaks in Georgetown the other day — after a cruise down Wisconsin Avenue past a couple of old haunts I frequented in my 20’s with characters like Nickolai Butkevich and Rhett Carlson.
The gardens were beautiful, and a sharp fir smell greets entrants like a rarefied, ethereal, quiet host. It reminded me of Brooklyn Botanical Gardens, another quiet place to which I’d like to return one day.
If you’re in the Washington area, and you’d like to see for yourself, check out Dumbarton Oaks’ website here:
Fall creek in West Virginia, photo by Forest Wanderer
Photo credit: http://www.ForestWander.com [CC BY-SA 3.0 us (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/us/deed.en)%5D, via Wikimedia Commons.
Producto maldita bien. (Damn fine product.)
La Fe Pulpo es deliciosos, en cualquiera marinara o aceite vegetal.
Octopus is a little harder to find in Virginia, but you can find it in specialty supermarkets. Le Fe is a brand I haven’t seen in New York, but it’s damn good.
Anyway, what’s up with the weird rumor going around word nerd circles? Turns out the correct plural for “octopus” actually IS “octopuses,” and not the Latin-sounding “octopi?”
Eric Robert Nolan, Author 