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.

Horror comics, a Samurai death poem, and the origin of “Mayakovsky.”

Celebrate National Poetry Month — here’s is Ota Dokan’s famous farewell, written while he died from an assassin’s knife.

 

“Had I not now that I was dead already

I would have mourned

the loss

of my life.”

 

I came across this piece when I was 20 years old and reading Dark Horse Comics’ outstanding “Aliens: Hive” limited series, written by Jerry Prosser and illustrated by Kelley Jones.  (Yes, there are people out there who are nerdy enough to learn poetry from comic books.)  “Hive,” to this day, remains one of the most enjoyable science fiction stories I’ve ever read.  Prosser’s script and characters were amazing, and Jones’ art was beautiful; both men exemplified what two talented creators could accomplish with the under-recognized medium.

Most of my online friends know that “Mayakovsky” is a pseudonym I employ when writing movie reviews and such.  This story’s protagonist is from whom I took the name — not the famous poet.  Like I said … NERDY.

Image

Image

ImageImage

 

Auden on Shakespeare

Well, who in his own back yard 
Has not opened his heart to the smiling
Secret he cannot quote?
Which goes to show that the Bard
was sober when he wrote
That this world of fact we love
Is unsubstantial stuff:
All the rest is silence
On the other side of the wall;
And the silence ripeness,
And the ripeness all.

—W. H. Auden, from the preface of The Sea and the Mirror, ed. Arthur Kirsch (Princeton University Press, 2003

“She drained me like a fevered moon.”

Celebrate National Poetry Month — here is “Fletcher McGee,” from Edgar Lee Masters’ “Spoon River Anthology.”

Below it are two photos of Mary Washington College’s outdoor amphitheater.  (Alum Janet Walbroehl Winston took the photos; Russell Morgan is pictured.)  Many, many moons ago, I was cast in an outdoor production of “Spoon River” as a Freshman.  “Fletcher McGee” was one of the roles I portrayed.  I was not Laurence Olivier.  After our first performance, one classmate advised me, “Stop overacting.”  You kinda don’t get much more candid than that, or concise.

Oh, well.  I still had fun.  I have wonderful memories of early Autumn evenings, eating cafeteria cheeseburgers and fish sandwiches, wearing vintage costumes and rehearsing lines with the other 19-year-old kids.  And that amphitheater was a beautiful place among those tall, overarching Fall trees, even if it was in a state of disrepair even then.

After I die, if I wind up speaking like the ghosts in Masters’ “Spoon River,” maybe that’ll be the place I will choose to haunt.

“Fletcher McGee”

She took my strength by minutes,
She took my life by hours,
She drained me like a fevered moon
That saps the spinning world.
The days went by like shadows,
The minutes wheeled like stars.
She took the pity from my heart,
And made it into smiles.
She was a hunk of sculptor's clay,
My secret thoughts were fingers:
They flew behind her pensive brow
And lined it deep with pain.
They set the lips, and sagged the cheeks,
And drooped the eye with sorrow.
My soul had entered in the clay,
Fighting like seven devils.
It was not mine, it was not hers;
She held it, but its struggles
Modeled a face she hated,
And a face I feared to see.
I beat the windows, shook the bolts.
I hid me in a corner
And then she died and haunted me,
And hunted me for life.

Image

Image

Can you hear that distant howling?

I’ve gotten a lot of queries from readers lately about progress on the next book in “The Wolf War” series.

Rest assured — I am working on it.  I promise devastated lands under harsh moonlight, disciplined soldiers moving quietly in the night, and our heroes keeping company with the dead.

I will apprise everyone of the journey as it proceeds.  

SHAKE IT LIKE A POLAROID PICTURE.

 

Image

Robot review!

Head on over to the Book Marketing Network for another edition of “What I Am Reading.”  4-LAN the Friendly Robot is reviewing E.G. Manetti’s “The Cartel.”

http://thebookmarketingnetwork.com/profiles/blogs/what-i-am-reading-12

Image

“Troubadour” is the one I’m actually reaching for …

This was passed along to me by Carrie (Harbach) Schor, a Longwood High School Alum.  She’s a sweet-natured and extremely intelligent girl who has always been wonderfully supportive of my writing.

Thanks, Carrie.  🙂

Image

“Lullaby,” by W. H. Auden

Celebrate National Poetry Month — here is one of the greatest poems of all time, W.H. Auden’s “Lullaby.”

 

Lullaby

  by W. H. Auden

Lay your sleeping head, my love,
Human on my faithless arm;
Time and fevers burn away
Individual beauty from
Thoughtful children, and the grave
Proves the child ephemeral:
But in my arms till break of day
Let the living creature lie,
Mortal, guilty, but to me
The entirely beautiful.

Soul and body have no bounds:
To lovers as they lie upon
Her tolerant enchanted slope
In their ordinary swoon,
Grave the vision Venus sends
Of supernatural sympathy,
Universal love and hope;
While an abstract insight wakes
Among the glaciers and the rocks
The hermit's carnal ecstasy.

Certainty, fidelity
On the stroke of midnight pass
Like vibrations of a bell,
And fashionable madmen raise
Their pedantic boring cry:
Every farthing of the cost,
All the dreaded cards foretell,
Shall be paid, but from this night
Not a whisper, not a thought,
Not a kiss nor look be lost.

Beauty, midnight, vision dies:
Let the winds of dawn that blow
Softly round your dreaming head
Such a day of welcome show
Eye and knocking heart may bless,
Find the mortal world enough;
Noons of dryness find you fed
By the involuntary powers,
Nights of insult let you pass
Watched by every human love.

– See more at: http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15542#sthash.5TV828Ab.dpuf

Thanks, Academy of American Poets

Don’t Look Under the Bed! Actually … scratch that. Go look. Look now.

“Under the Bed” is an outstanding horror magazine that pleasantly reminds me of the ones I grew up snatching off the newstands and begging my parents to buy me.  It’s a great source of horror reviews, interviews, news, opinion pieces, and much more.  For good old fashioned, creepy fun, check it out and peruse it just before bedtime.  Monthly subscriptions are just $1.99 an issue:

https://www.fictionmagazines.com/shop/subs/under-the-bed-monthly-subscription/

I was honored recently to have my supernatural horror story, “The Song of the Wheat,” selected for publication.  It will appear in Under the Bed’s next issue, which will be released on May 5.  Managing Editor Wednesday Lee Friday, who has a keen eye for story revision and who is a pleasure to work with, shared the issue’s cover image with contributing writers today.  (If you’re a zombiephile like me, you’ll love it.)

I’d like to thank Ms. Friday and her colleagues for allowing me to be among the fun group of readers and writers of Under the Bed!

Image

Dirty Dishes and Memory Lane

My big brother and Mary Washington College Alum, Russel Morgan, visited campus recently and took some terrific photos  — MWC has changed a LOT since 1994, but there are still many places I recognize.

The first picture is of the dining hall where I worked as a student employee — horsing around with the other kids, constantly drinking coffee and that sweet red “bug juice” punch, and adopting cookies, cheeseburgers and tater tots as staple foods.  It is also where I worked countless hours on “Dishline,” the assembly-line-like workspace where I and the other kids cleaned all the dishes that were returned.  Wow.  That was a lot of wet work.  I believe that I still smell of ketchup to this day.  I indeed capitalize “Dishline,” as it is both famous and infamous, and figured largely in the formative years of many past students.  If you attended Mary Wash and you know what being “on carts” was, then you are a “Seacobeck Alum.”

Also pictured, in the second photo, are New Hall and Alvey Hall.  (I’m certain new Hall must have been dubbed with a donor’s name in the intervening years since I graduated.)  The men and women I lived among here are among the finest I’ve ever met.  To quote the Mystery Science Theater 3000 episode, “I Accuse My Parents,”  “I threw some kickass parties here.”

In the third photo are Mason and Randolph Halls.  My college girlfriend (and possibly the sweetest person I’ve ever met), Kim Haun, lived in Mason.  That low-lying structure linking the two was a literal tunnel, where dorm rooms existed at the time.  (We quite creatively nicknamed it “The Tunnel.”)  Here is where I partied as a Freshman with Steve Miller.  (No, not the musician, Steve Miller — but the irony here is that my pal Steve was a huge fan of the eponymous star and played all of his albums while we sipped rum and cokes on the weekends.)  My college experience would never have been the same if Steve and his upperclassmen friends hadn’t taken me under their wing.

[EDIT — It was actually MWC Janet Walbroehl Winston who took these photos!! Russ, you scene-stealer!!!]

Image

Seacobeck Dining Hall.

Image

New Hall and Alvey Hall.

Image

Mason and Randolph Halls, with”The Tunnel” in the middle.

Image

Image

Ball Hall.