This is a picture from The Free Lance-Star in 2013. It shows the site of my undergraduate psychology classes at Mary Washington College.
Perhaps the demolition of the building will finally silence the demons connected with that D I got in Statistics of Psychology in 1993.
If you’ve got a self-published story on Wattpad, you can enter into Wattpad’s contest just by tagging it “Wattpadprize14” and making sure it is set as “completed.” The deadline is April 30.
http://www.wattpad.com/wattpad-prize?utm_source=mkt&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=wprize14
A reader of “The Dogs Don’t Bark In Brooklyn Any More” sent me this link.
The name of the group is Sam the Sham & the Pharoahs.
Chloe Agnew from Celtic Woman sings “Danny Boy.”
As I have mentioned before, my friend and “poemrade” Stanley Anne Zane Latham is a beautiful writer with an enviable talent for descriptive language. Among other things, I love her ability to employ simple, direct language to master an image, and I love the use of color in her poetry and prose. (Her work is a real treat for any reader who is a visual thinker.)
Below is Chapter 1 of her memoir, “A Feast, A Roadmap and A Tanager.” Read it.
I recently had the honor of being interviewed by Bunbury Magazine, in the United Kingdom, about “The Dogs Don’t Bark In Brooklyn Any More.” Bunbury is a beautiful online magazine focusing on the arts, with outstanding photography, artwork, poetry, short stories and interviews.
I had great fun with the interview, which included a lot of thoughtful questions, and more than a couple of fun ones.
As “Dogs” is a post-apocalyptic science fiction story, the editors at Bunbury featured my interview in Issue Four, the Dystopian Special. I’d like to thank Christopher Moriarty and Keri-Ann Edwards at Bunbury for their kind attention to a new writer, and to Reg Davey at Dagda Publishing for arranging this wonderful opportunity for me.
Enjoy the Dystopian Special here:
http://issuu.com/bunburymagazine/docs/bunbury-issue-four
What does that make me? Her Guy Monday? Guy Tuesday?
Nooooo … MISTER SATURDAY NIGHT.
Happy National Poetry Month — this is the poem that I believe I liked best from among those I was taught at Longwood High School.
While everybody else loves its closing lines, my favorite line is the one about the falcon.
Eagle-eyed horror fans might also recognize this as the poem recited by the doomed general in Stephen King’s “The Stand” — both the book and television miniseries adaptation (though King has the character mispronounce the name as “YEETS”).
Thanks to Poem of the Week for the text: http://www.potw.org/archive/potw351.html
THE SECOND COMING
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: a waste of desert sand;
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Wind shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
Celebrate National Poetry Month — this is probably my second favorite poem of all time, and the very first poem I ever read by W.H. Auden. For me, it is a thousand times darker than Edgar Allen Poe’s “The Raven.” (“Oh stand, stand at the window, as the tears scald and start.”)
I first found this piece during my early high school years, after Whitley Strieber’s “Communion” used its “Plunge your hands in water” stanza to preface a chapter.
Thanks to the Academy of American Poets for this link:
As I Walked Out One Evening
I walked out one evening, Walking down Bristol Street, The crowds upon the pavement Were fields of harvest wheat. And down by the brimming river I heard a lover sing Under an arch of the railway: 'Love has no ending. 'I'll love you, dear, I'll love you Till China and Africa meet, And the river jumps over the mountain And the salmon sing in the street, 'I'll love you till the ocean Is folded and hung up to dry And the seven stars go squawking Like geese about the sky. 'The years shall run like rabbits, For in my arms I hold The Flower of the Ages, And the first love of the world.' But all the clocks in the city Began to whirr and chime: 'O let not Time deceive you, You cannot conquer Time. 'In the burrows of the Nightmare Where Justice naked is, Time watches from the shadow And coughs when you would kiss. 'In headaches and in worry Vaguely life leaks away, And Time will have his fancy To-morrow or to-day. 'Into many a green valley Drifts the appalling snow; Time breaks the threaded dances And the diver's brilliant bow. 'O plunge your hands in water, Plunge them in up to the wrist; Stare, stare in the basin And wonder what you've missed. 'The glacier knocks in the cupboard, The desert sighs in the bed, And the crack in the tea-cup opens A lane to the land of the dead. 'Where the beggars raffle the banknotes And the Giant is enchanting to Jack, And the Lily-white Boy is a Roarer, And Jill goes down on her back. 'O look, look in the mirror, O look in your distress: Life remains a blessing Although you cannot bless. 'O stand, stand at the window As the tears scald and start; You shall love your crooked neighbour With your crooked heart.' It was late, late in the evening, The lovers they were gone; The clocks had ceased their chiming, And the deep river ran on.
Eric Robert Nolan, Author 