Tag Archives: Eric Nolan

“Her Smile Was Silver Jupiter”

It was a mad and spinning world in which you met her, but she was a mad and spinning girl — so brightly and resolutely burning that she herself was celestial. There was starshine bottled up in her heart, solar winds charged the particles of her thoughts, ions in the atmosphere ignited her impulses. Her willful joy was her own burning sun.

When she was sly, her eyes were hasty comets. Her passion amassed from Saturnal storms. Her smile was silver Jupiter– you wanted to repose over its white sands, beside the stained and rose-metal lakes of smoldering, darkening copper.

Between the spaces of her words, chasms of cosmos would occasionally open. You could stare into those depths for indifferent and measureless distances of light years — the sublime nightmare-nothingness that Providence had made, the Forever-of-Empty-Dark. But before you could be afraid, her own gravity drew you in.

And you were glad. That such loveliness could exist in a single soul was reassurance. (The Forever-of-Empty-Dark wasn’t entirely empty, after all.) And you were grateful — grateful for her rejoinders, for the taste of her mouth on your own, for her girlish laugh, for the way that she regularly lighted a murky Earth with the moonbeams of her quiet kindnesses.

She was unstoppable. Ultraviolet rode the coronal shades of her irises, and flared in her contemplation. She blazed. Magnetic radiation murmured in her poetry. You loved her for her uniqueness in a universe of cold space, for the way that she burned and turned and burned and turned without ever slowing or expiring. When her light fell across you, you could almost believe that you, too, were spinning and illuminated. You loved her enough for the illusion alone.

You loved her more for her gravity that drew you in and held you, and for her arms that did the same.

— “Her Smile Was Silver Jupiter,” by Eric Robert Nolan



Abandon all hope, ye who enter here …

Hey, guys.  If my strange and archaically worded ravings amuse you, I’ve started a page here at the site for 2026 poetry.  You can find it right here:

Poetry, 2026



 

The cool people at Spillwords Press published my “Weeping Willow Haiku.”

You can find it right here.  🙂

Thanks, as always, to Chief Editor Dagmara K and the rest of the staff at Spillwords Press!



The Galway Review 14 anthology was released yesterday with my love poem, “Where Would We Go?”

I’m honored to be one of 17 poets worldwide whose work was selected for The Galway Review 14, the latest annual anthology from The Galway Review in the Republic of Ireland.  My love poem “Where Would We Go?” appears on Page 60; it was first first published online by the journal a month ago.

You can order a copy by contacting The Galway Review directly at thegalwayreview@gmail.com.

This is the second time that my work has appeared in one of the journal’s yearly anthologies.  Thanks once again to Managing Editor Ndrek Gjini and the rest of the leadership and staff of this distinguished publication.



Mary Washington College friends are the best.

My alumbud Rick Slagle: “My Mary Washington friend has been published again and I am enjoying my 2nd Eric Nolan book!”

Thanks, man!



Eric Robert Nolan featured in World of Poetry anthology.

Well, here’s a nice way to start the year — I found out this morning that my poetry was included in Cooch Behar Magazine’s latest anthology, World of Poetry.

You can find it right here over at Amazon.

Thanks, as always, to Editor Sourav Sarkar for featuring my work in yet another wonderful poetry book from India!



Throwback Thursday: my (TERRIFYING) awkward phase!

⚠  WARNING — THIS POST MAY CONTAIN GRAPHIC OR DISTURBING IMAGERY.  ⚠  Is it any wonder that I am happier as an adult?  The first picture below was taken in the early 1980’s.  The latter was taken a couple of days ago.

Granted, I’m not exactly Chris Hemsworth now, but ya gotta admit that 53-year-old me is a damn sight better looking than 13-year-old me.  Adolescent Eric looks like a cross between an anemic Oscar Wilde and an accursed species of upright, hairless goat.

“Thanks for the trauma!” I told my sister after she texted it to me.

“It’s what I’m here for,” she told me.



Three of my poems were included in Issue 30 of the Poetry Hall bilingual journal.

I’m so happy to share here tonight that the Poetry Hall quarterly bilingual journal again published three of my poems today in Issue 30.  The poems selected were “Milky Way Haiku” (“银河俳句”), “Demurring Haiku” (“谦拒俳句”) and “Blood-Moon Haiku” (“血月俳句”).   As always, they appear in the journal in both English and Chinese.

You can find Issue 30 right here at Amazon.

Thank you, once again, to Editor-in-Chief Xu Yingcai and translator Zhang Ning for allowing me to see my writing appear in this distinguished international literary journal!



Signing a book for a friend.  🙂



The Galway Review publishes my poem “Where Would We Go?” — and also selects it for its 2026 anthology.

I’m ecstatic!  The Galway Review today published my poem “Where Would We Go?” — and also selected it for its next anthology, The Galway Review 14.

You can find the poem at The Galway Review online right here.

The anthology will be released in April 2026; I’ll post purchasing details when they become available.

The Galway Review is the leading literary magazine for Galway, the fourth largest city in the Republic of Ireland.  It features contemporary reviews, fiction, non-fiction, poetry and photography, and seeks to publish work that is “beautiful and different.”

I am once again grateful to Managing Editor Ndrek Gjini and his colleagues for allowing me to see my work showcased by this important literary resource for Northern Europe and beyond.