I’ve had the pleasure of getting acquainted recently with The Blue Mountain Review. The poetry there is simply superb. I suggest that it makes excellent summer reading — I know I’ll be bringing it along on the annual “River Trip” with the Mary Washington College kids.
Click here and peruse the newly published Issue 7: The Blue Mountain Review, Issue 7.
For more information about the journal, you can find its Facebook page right here: The Blue Mountain Review.
Down in the startled valley
Two lovers break apart:
He hears the roaring oven
Of a witch’s heart;
Behind his murmur of her name
She sees a marksman taking aim.
(1952)
That sounds like a hand for a children’s card game.
I encountered all of these during just a six-minute walk outside my friend’s house yesterday. The jackrabbit, the deer and one of the baby groundhogs were all too fast for me to get a shot of.
The baby groundhogs were adorable – they’re just nervous little balls of brown fur. The trick is sneaking up behind them. (Watch your six, groundhogs.)
Let’s take this viral.
Just take a selfie hiding in the bushes.
And try to look reeeeeeeeaally pissed — as though your boss had the mind of a five-year-old, and it was your job to present his “positions” to the world on television.
Once again, heading into Roanoke Southwest.
“Industrial Revolution,” by Eric Robert Nolan
1.
Did Leonardo Da Vinci
Endlessly dream of machines?
Not his own baroque creations, those
Wood and wire winged artworks
That hung over his study:
Alate and ordered, latticed contraptions,
Each a suspended symmetry,
Gargoyles in geometry.
Did he dream of machines to come?
I picture him up late,
Poring over his own illustrations first, then
Ushered into Euclidean sleep
By soothing mathematics —
The soft and ordered blossoms of
His own woodwork designs
Were flower-petal angles in his brain.
Could he, asleep, have foreseen
The assembly line, Ford’s
Ant-like Model T production?
Did he have an artist’s abhorrence
For its linear, dull, and utilitarian order?
Was it a nightmare for him?
2.
How did farmers feel
In the Industrial Revolution?
Staid agrarian men, their disapproving eyes
On the newfangled factories
Lining the horizon.
A rising scent of sulfur announces an age —
The new ripe stink
Of an advancing century.
The lined and coal colored fortresses,
Of an impregnable era.
Were castles for the Barons
In a new, feudal America —
Only burning – their smoke
Seeding a virgin sky
Up from the wide black loins and the lined, cracked skin
Of a newly darkened Earth.
Did they resent or marvel at
The New Century’s soot Aesthetic –
The black castles of iron?
A lined and ordered Hell —
Souls among the smokestacks,
And bellies full of conflagrations?
To the later observers of old photographs,
The blackening symmetry
At ninety-degree angles might
Resemble the rise of circuits.
Can you imagine farmers
Having prescient dreams?
What would one have thought, all tucked under
A homespun quilt at dark
Resenting advancing fortunes?
Might even one, once, in his antipathy
Have predicted, asleep,
The microchip’s square face?
I know no etymology
For the word, “Revolution.”
Is its root “revolt?”
To rise up against?
Or “revolve,” as in a circle?
“Revolve” as in “return?”
3.
Could Edison or Tesla
Have envisioned television – its great glass eye
Like Homer’s Cyclops,
Dull and full of vulgar visions,
Its mood made capricious
With changing channels?
We ought to pluck it out, or, at least,
Turn away at dinner.
We should cling to the books of our childhoods
Like the bellies of great sheep.
But we are not as sly
As Odysseus.
4.
During the old Cold War
In my 1980’s childhood
My father said he believed
Machines could prevent The End.
The Communist Revolution,
The Bolshevik revolt,
Had made its rising Bear
America’s enemy, in
A Nuclear Exchange, but Reagan
Marshaled forth our own machines in greater numbers.
I feared them —
The ICBM’s —
As a boy I imagined them
Rising in the sky in perfect symmetry
To make the new, black backcloth
Of the Atomic Age.
At the age of 13
I wrote a poem describing
Their blossoming explosions.
In my childhood dreams
Their interlocking contrails
Looked like lattice work
Or angled flower petals.
In nightmares they are prescient
The warheads already know
The name of every child turned to soot.
My father, however, envisioned
Devices on all our wrists
Connecting us all – we’d know
That distant Russian farmers
Were no Politburo.
Finally realizing
That we were all the same
We’d be reluctant to push
The Button.
Before the 90’s advent
Of The Internet
Was this a kind of prescience?
My father was a poet too.
Today, in his absence,
After I write this
I’ll share it with Eugene, my friend,
In Russia.
5.
My mother’s best machine
Is a tablet on her lap
Looking ironically like
Half the Christian commandments.
She asks me how I am.
I lie and say I’m fine.
In my heart, I am a farmer
Tucked under a quilt.
Circuits rise in the East;
In the West,
Missiles rise and arc at dusk.
My own machine
(with which I write this now)
Is full of distant visions:
The new and chic and sinful interests —
Zooey Deschanel and Richard Dawkins,
The New Girl and the erudite Briton,
Lust and apostasy in Windows.
Someday will there be
Prescient machines?
(Now, about the present, they’re omniscient.)
My favorite TV program
Shows monotheistic machines,
And an embittered robot
Has a nuclear suitcase.
The hunted warn one another,
“The Cylons look like us now.”
Elsewhere, seen
By my machine
An internet flame war
Turns NUCLEAR.
A nationalistic ugliness ensues
Stoked along the coals of the global circuitry.
My screen is the glass face
Of a monster hurling stones.
Maybe this, instead, is Homer’s Cyclops.
My laptop “hibernates”
When left alone too long
Once I imagined it dreaming
Of a better owner.
So unlike Da Vinci’s,
The asymmetric gargoyle
Of our own uncertain future
Hangs over our heads.
With a Sword of Damocles.
Its lopsided face
And lack of proper geometry
Is still our own design.
6.
I’m almost 41 and miss the girl I love.
She had a Revolution — rising in her cheeks
Flush red when
I tickled her tummy in public
That time in Virginia Beach.
Hailing from The South, we’d joke
She was a “farmer’s daughter.”
In her last words to me, she said
She couldn’t know the future.
(She isn’t prescient, after all.)
“A lot needs to happen.”
And now I need to be
Industrious.
When people ask me what I dream
I say that I do not.
Besides, I’d rather not.
Not when the red flush rises yet again in her high white cheeks
Like twin sudden gardens full of roses.
And I endlessly dream of machines.
I dream that I am one.
My face is the same, except
A bright-hot piston heart
Replaces soft aorta,
Hardened steel instead of red tissue,
And my mind
Is a reliable hard drive
Holding balanced equations.
This would be easier.
I want a world of heuristics.
Algorithms instead
Of red flush memories.
I want a Revolution.
I want the world to change.
If I see my Love again,
I will hold flowers
And angle in for a kiss.
“My heart is a machine now,” I’ll tell her.
I’ll brightly peel back
The soft, pale imperfect flesh and say,
“I’m stronger. Look, I’ve changed.
“Look at my heart. Look.
“See the steel here.
“Feel these steel angles, these veins are now only
“Piano-wire lattice work,
“Taut and tightly strung.
“Feel how the hardened symmetry
“Forms a perfect circuit.
“My heart is a bird-machine –
“It has Da Vinci’s wings.
“My heart is a latticed contraption.
“My heart for you is NUCLEAR.
“My heart is a prescient machine that sees our future.”
“My heart beats
“Its new and hardened life
“At angles.”
Her fingertips will be as soft
As flower petals.
I want a Revolution.
I want the world to change.
But if I meet my Love again
Will her eyes return to me?
Revolt?
Or turn away?
[Dedicated to Robert J. Nolan]
Originally printed in Dead Snakes: http://deadsnakes.blogspot.com/2013/11/eric-robert-nolan-poem.html
© Eric Robert Nolan 2013
Photo credit: By Ivan2010 (Own work) [CC BY-SA 4.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)%5D, via Wikimedia Commons
“The Belko Experiment” (2016) is a fairly gut-wrenching and potent horror film. I was going to describe it as “Battle Royale” (2000) meets “The Office” (2005 – 2013). But, from the looks of the poster, somebody more or less beat me to it.
As you can imagine, there is a sequence of blood-curdling events after the workers of an entire office building are forced to fight one another to the death. It’s made all the more horrifying (and a bit sad) by a surprisingly effective early montage that shows these people are indeed likable and relatable.
I’m not sure how I feel about the ending. There’s a twist that is nicely satisfying, I’ll grant the movie that. But there was far too little exposition, and a closing shot that was a little too ambiguous and open-ended … maybe even abstract. I’d be happier if the person doing the talking told us a lot more. If you think about it, they mostly just reiterated what various characters had hypothesized earlier.
This film has a couple of “I swear I know that guy” actors. These include Tony Goldwyn, who I last remember from 1990’s “Ghost.” Turns out he’s a damn fine actor (in addition to being one of those people who weirdly appear to age little or not at all). They also include John C. McGinley, Owain Yeoman and Michael Rooker. And if you think you can recall the gentle giant played by Abraham Benrubi, the actor is none other than “Big Mike” from the classic “The X-Files” episode, “Arcadia.”
I was going to rate “The Belko Experiment” a 9 out of 10; it was exceptionally good. But I was just too nonplussed by that rushed ending, and I think I’ll settle on an 8.
“Thus fortified I might take my rest in peace. But dreams come through stone walls, light up dark rooms, or darken light ones, and their persons make their exits and their entrances as they please, and laugh at locksmiths.”
― Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu, “Carmilla,” 1872
R. J. Davey’s “Panthalassa” is an excellent read for both new and veteran readers of poetry, as the author’s direct and authentic poetic voice makes it easily enjoyable for either. Davey’s writing has an unaffected quality that makes his first published collection here stand out among books by freshman authors. And it makes “Panthalassa” easy for me to recommend.
There are 15 poems comprising this short volume, and some of the poems are themselves brief. They feel … unencumbered. There isn’t a trace of pretense or pedanticism about Davey’s work. There are occasional classical or biblical references, but none that weigh the poems down, and none that are self-indulgent. There is almost no archaic language, either. (I will say that I had to Google the book’s title – “Panthalassa” is the name for the primordial sea encircling the prehistoric “super-continent” of Pangea.)
Nor does Davey imitate other poets, either consciously or unconsciously. This isn’t a prospective new author trying to impress an editor. This is Davey talking. And he employs a simple, direct voice to share his thoughts. He uses unassuming language, however ambitious the targets his muse has set for him may be.
That makes these poems accessible to anyone. It was refreshing for me to sit down with a short book of new poetry that I could easily understand, and that I could share with just about anyone I knew. A dear friend of mine, for example, recently commented to me on a drive through the Virginia mountains that she felt that the poetry she read was often frustratingly oblique: “If they want to say something, I’d rather they just say it.” I think that this would be a great collection to lend to her.
Davey’s poems have an unusual conversational tone – it gives them the uncommon resemblance of a thoughtful discussion with a friend. An ironic example, I suppose, would be the poem, “Cigarettes,” which depicts exactly such an exchange between friends:
“we drank and conversed,
“musing upon the eternal:
“attempting to bring some meaning
“to this life …”
The result is an unexpected kind of trust. The poems feel “true.” Their directness gives them a sense of honesty.
Maybe my reaction here is because I am positioned to identify personally with the author; I suspect we are at similar stages in life, and I believe we have similar outlooks. (Davey is a friend, and has long been a quite valued colleague of mine.) Or maybe it is because Davey’s easy, ingenuous style better invites eisegesis. Either way, I’m impressed indeed by any poem that seems to perfectly describe something that I myself have felt.
But don’t misunderstand – despite his poetry’s informal qualities, Davey can employ poetic devices to great effect. The two examples that spring to mind are my two favorites in the collection: “In Her Eyes” and “A Love Like Cocaine.” Each piece explores a single simile throughout. The poetic comparison drawn by “In Her Eyes,” a particularly painful piece, is inventive and downright haunting. (I think I love these two poems because I identify with the speaker for each.)
I suggest that “Panthalassa’s” poems should be read aloud by the author himself – the way their conversational quality would be best appreciated. I hope Davey will consider an online platform like SoundCloud or YouTube, so that I we hear these in his own voice. I would like to listen specifically for the “beat poetry” quality that I think they have. And I think I would enjoy hearing them at a small reading at a bar – they just have that sense about them.
Again, I recommend this collection. (And, as of this writing, its Kindle edition is only 99 cents at Amazon.com, and it’s free to subscribers to Kindle Unlimited.)
I have an electronic copy of “Panthalassa,” but intend to print it out. I’d like to have it handy along with a few other poetry books by colleagues of mine, so that I can browse through a physical copy, the old-fashioned way. These are the kind of poems that I enjoy talking over with friends, much in the manner I remember from the long-ago, pre-internet days when I was an undergraduate, and reading poetry in the dorms and downtown bars.
I hope you enjoy these as much as I did.
It’s the psychedelic pizza joint with the life-sized Transformer out back.
That’s an unusual marketing strategy.
Eric Robert Nolan, Author 