These are original silkscreen prints from Steve Miller — not of musical fame, but of Mary Washington College fame. They were given to me by the artist many years ago.
Found ’em in storage. Got ’em up in the Batcave immediately.
Tag Archives: Mary Washington College
“Tonight, Love, Now, Let’s Go”
Let’s make for Maine
tonight, Love, now, let’s go, let’s just go
north for that ménage à trois —
where water licks us,
where salt air kisses us,
where waves draw warm arms over us,
where rhythmic tide will move, move, move us,
just we intimate three —
you, me and the sea.
(c) Eric Robert Nolan 2022
Photo: Leaf on the beach in Ogunquit, Maine. Captain-tucker, CC BY-SA 3.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0>, via Wikimedia Commons.
The Roanoke Times publishes my letter about the Ukrainian people.
I’m very happy today to learn that The Roanoke Times has published my letter to the editor about the war in the Ukraine. You can find it right here:
Letter: A hopeful heart amid despair
Thanks, as always, to the editorial staff of The Roanoke Times for allowing me to share my thoughts.
Poetry and commentary, 2022
Hey, guys — if you happen to follow my poetry and commentary, I’ve started a new page here at the site for publications in 2022:
The Bristol Herald Courier prints my letter to the editor.
I am quite happy today to see the Bristol Herald Courier publish my letter to the editor about the courage of the Ukrainians defending their country (as well as the bravery of the Russians demonstrating against the war at great risk to themselves). You can find it right here at the Opinion page. Thanks to Managing Editor Roger Watson for allowing me to share my thoughts.
The Bristol Herald Courier is a Pulitzer Prize-winning, regional newspaper serving Southwest Virginia. It has a daily circulation of 39,000 people.
From a favorite professor of mine.
There is a great article today over at The Free Lance-Star that was authored by none other than Steve Watkins, one of my writing professors at Mary Washington College. You can find it right here:
Commentary: Censorship Stirs Emotions, and Fuels Interest in Banned Books
I had a haiku included on the Dead Letter Radio podcast!
I’m so happy to have a haiku of mine featured today on Episode 47 the Dead Letter Radio podcast. (This is a short, special episode dedicated to haiku; it features examples of the short form from more than 30 writers.)
Mine is an untitled haiku about a bleak night this past February; you can hear it at the 9:08 mark right here.
Thanks again to host Taize Jones!
A short review of “Station Eleven” (2022)
If you are a fan of apocalyptic thrillers, as I am, then HBO Max’ “Station Eleven” might disappoint — its truly unnerving initial episodes gradually give way to the character-driven drama that I’m sure are the focus its source material. (I haven’t read Emily St. John Mandel’s internationally bestselling novel, but I loved this miniseries so much that I plan to. And the book gets glowing recommendations from that most erudite of sources, my Mary Washington College alums.)
The show is still incredibly good. I’d rate it a perfect 10 for being a beautifully scripted, surprising, moving and original story that leans heavily into the themes that presumably spring from the book. I can’t remember the last time I was as emotionally invested in the survivors of an end-of-the-world tale. (Other reviewers have wisely observed that it’s surprisingly hopeful for a story about a flu that wipes out humanity.)
As far as its themes go, your mileage may vary with how well they resonate. It is very much about the power of art. (Here’s a treat for comic fans — its central plot device is an in-universe, self-published graphic novel that is has nothing to do with the plague.) “Station Eleven” seems to have a few optimistic things to say about human nature — and about the possibility of reconnecting with people who are important to us. (The former was a little less plausible to a cynic like me. I honestly believe that shallow, aloof or selfish people do not become less so after calamity strikes.)
I highly recommend this. It really is a successful example of experimental, genre-busting storytelling.
“Where Would We Go?” by Eric Robert Nolan
Where would we go, you and I?
The sea which breathes, in aquamarine,
its rhythmic, salty epic at our ankles
and inundates a foam refrain,
over and over, in rolling green glass:
the tide — the oldest poem — an immutable meter preceding
words, or man, or even ears to hear?
The unvarying sea
takes no notice of poets —
you and I, ourselves inconsonant poems,
varying as all our kind are wont to do …
faithless at the foot of the green, returning tide,
both our lives arrhythmic and
bitter with metaphor.
Where would we go, asalam?
The staid and angled mountains, vaulting up?
Mountains are always odes. The miles of stone
which rise to cut their rival heavens
lance the air, and spin the winds to narrative.
Those winds were singing long before us,
will sing when we are gone.
The mountains will not know our names
even as we whisper one another’s,
or the rise of your breathing where we lay there —
the blithe and meadowed slope that will not blush beneath us,
where we are ribald lyrics, songs out of our lawless senses,
lascivious and nearly wordless.
Where would we go, my muse?
The river that rushes like a fugitive ghost
absconding with its own requiem?
Rivers’ roars are always dirges, for rivers run past
lives beside their banks. Lifetimes
are as seasons to them, always ending.
This timeless river
is unconcerned for poets
and will not slow to note us.
Only our own faces on its hastening, dim and opaque surface.
answer back our gaze. We are elegies, reflected
in heedless, racing waters moving on.
Stay with me, here, for now.
We have two temporary
yet temperate pages all our own
over which is the script of our ardor:
my gray-grizzled Irish cheek and your Iranian skin,
to read and study, see and know, slowly and tenderly, in this ordinary room,
in this little city, in this waning light, in this fleeting moment,
in these fleeting lives.
I am inelegant free verse, but you …
you are my perfect poem.
We will draw the sheets over us,
over our moving euphony,
and frame to evoke one another —
the rounded warmth of your white shoulder,
the cadence of my pulse.
We will hear one another, and speak
in sedulous repetition
the particular rhythm of each of our names,
measured in the meter of tremulous breath.
(c) Eric Robert Nolan 2022
Dietmar Rabich / Wikimedia Commons / “Santorin (GR), Exomytis, Vlychada Beach — 2017 — 2999 (bw)” / CC BY-SA 4.0
(It’s all puns until someone loses an eye.)
Italian sausage toasted sandwiches give me nom-nom-nomicron.
The CDC recommends Heinz ketchup.
Eric Robert Nolan, Author 