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Tag Archives: Eric Nolan Author
Jon Snow
He’s got 99 problems, but a liche ain’t one.
Peeking Cat Poetry Magazine features “hens staring upward”
I’m honored today to see my poetry featured for the first time in “Peeking Cat Poetry Magazine.” The poem is a recent piece, entitled “hens staring upward,” and begins on Page 25 of Issue 8 (October 2015).
You can download Issue 8 in in pdf format for free! Just click here:
Or, you can purchase the magazine in paperback format for just $3.50 right here:
Peeking Cat is an outstanding magazine in the United Kingdom, publishing poetry and flash fiction from writers throughout the world. I’m grateful to Editor Samantha Rose for allowing me to share my voice with its readers.
“hens staring upward” first appeared this Fall in Dead Snakes.
As of today, this blog has 100 followers!!!
Yeah, okay, that pales in comparison to my friends who have 400 or more. But I feel like David Koresh! Except … nonviolent. And nonreligious. And I’m only a BORDERLINE sociopath instead of the full shebang. Whenever I feel my worse half coming on, I warn those near me with the Taco Bell slogan, lest they be affected when I MAKE A RUN FOR THE BORDER.
Seriously, though, THANKS for reading, guys! Given that at least 100 people are now “following,” I feel like I should express some sort of coherent ideology here, instead of just horror movie reviews, tips on which comics to read, and my own misguided attempts at portraying myself as among the literati.
So I have resolved to produce a manifesto. Don’t hold your breath; it might take a while. But I’ll write it and place it here. I promise.
“All Our Faults Are Fallen Leaves,” by Eric Robert Nolan
You guys know I struggle with writing “happy poems.” When I sat down to write this, I intended it as a kind of “Happy Autumn” poem to all my friends.
I wound up using the fires of Hell as its central motif. Oh well. It actually does have a positive message. Really! Give it a glance! So, Happy Autumn, guys!! And … y’know … go to hell?
“All Our Faults Are Fallen Leaves”
Again an annual angled auburn hand
announces advancing Autumn —
fingers aflame, the first Fallen leaf,
As slow in its descent, and as red,
as flailing Lucifer.
Hell in our sylvan vision
begins with a single spark.
The sting of the prior winter
subsided in July,
eroded at August.
Now, as at every September,
let new and cooler winds
fan a temperate flame.
May this nascent season only
bring brick-tinted perdition
and carmine Abaddon.
Where flames should burn, may there be
only rose tones on wide wine canvasses,
tormentless florid scarlets,
griefs eased in garnet trees.
What I hold in my heart to be true
is Edict at every Autumn:
Magentas may not make
forgetful a distracted God,
unless we ourselves forget
or burn to overlook.
Auden told us “One Evening”
to “Stand, stand at the window,”
and that we would love our neighbor,
but he didn’t counsel at all
about how we should smolder there.
Outside my window, and yours,
if the Conflagration itself
acquits us all by claiming only
the trees upon the hill,
the Commonwealth a hearth,
Virginia an Inferno,
Then you and I
should burn in our hearts to absolve
ourselves and one another,
standing before the glass,
our curtains catching,
our beds combusting,
our bureaus each a pyre.
Take my hand, my friend, and smile,
there on the scorching floor,
beneath the searing ceiling and
beside the blackening mirror
that troubles us no longer,
for, about it, Auden was wrong.
God’s wrathful eye
will find you and I
incandescent. The damned
are yet consigned to kindness.
All our faults are Fallen leaves.
Forgive where God will not.
Out of our purgatory
of injury’s daily indifference,
let our Lake of Fire
be but blush squadrons of oaks,
cerise seas of cedar, fed
running ruby by sycamore rivers,
their shores reassured
by calm copper sequoias,
all their banks ablaze
in yellowing eucalyptus.
Let the demons we hold
harden into bark
holding up Inferno.
All their hands are branches now;
all their palms are burning.
There, then, softly burning, you and I,
may our Autumn find
judgmentless russets,
vermilion for our sins,
dahlia forgiveness,
a red for every error,
every man a love,
every love infernal,
and friends where devils would reign.
(c) Eric Robert Nolan 2015
— Author’s note: the poem to which I’ve responded above, with its images of standing at the window and the mirror, is W. H. Auden’s “As I Walked Out One Evening.”
Photo credit: “Orange in Middletown,” by AgnosticPreachersKid (Own work) [CC BY-SA 4.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)%5D, via Wikimedia Commons.
I am thinking of renaming this website. Whaddya think of these?
1) Portrait of the Artist as a Jung Man
2) The Po’ Man’s Poe
3) Pay No Attention to the Nerd Behind the Curtain
4) All Auden, All the Time
5) Eric Robert Nolan: Sleep With Me and I’ll Write a Poem About It
6) The Boy Who Cried Wolf
7) Eric Robert Nolan: Slow In Writing Sequels
8) The Poetry of Andy Kaufman (I’m Still Alive and This Is My Nom de Plume)
9) Nolan Country For Old Men
10) Nolan Ventured, Nolan Gained
11) Eric Nolan: Preternaturally Garrulous (I’ve been told that I overuse both words.)
12) The Writing of Eric Nolan: More Wolves and Birds than a God Damn National Forest
13) Wait … That Guy Who’s Always On Facebook ALSO HAS A BLOG?!
14) Just Say Nolan
15) That 90’s Guy
16) British People Are Mean To Me
17) Nerdiopathy
18) I Know Why The Caged Nerd Sings
“Our Room In Brooklyn,” by Eric Robert Nolan
I’m still celebrating Dagda Publishing’s “first birthday” (I’m snapping up the free fiction titles as quickly as anyone else), and I hope that their staff and editors get a nice break now that the publishing house is a year old. (They do work hard, really.)
I myself am worried about the “Terrible Twos.” Is that when they start yelling and throwing their spaghetti against the wall, and picking things up and saying “MINE?”
Seriously, though, Dagda is a wonderful independent publisher — they are a tremendous boon to new and emerging writers, to whom they extend invaluable opportunities for exposure. I know I am very fortunate to have had Dagda help me find my voice and reach an audience. Here’s a link to one of the first poems I published with Dagda, “Our Room In Brooklyn.”
http://dagdapublishing.co.uk/2013/04/10/our-room-in-brooklyn/
