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’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!
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, 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
Italian sausage toasted sandwiches give me nom-nom-nomicron.
The CDC recommends Heinz ketchup.
If you happen to enjoy my mad scribblings, all of my poetry and commentary for 2021 can be found right here.
Have a safe and happy New year!
Her freckles entice —
spilled cinnamon flakes upon
whipped cream in coffee.
(c) Eric Robert Nolan 2021
Photo credit: Ilya Yakover ilyayakover, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons.
Hey, guys — remember I told you how I just discovered that Dark Horse Comics quoted me in promoting its amazing 2019 “Grendel” series (right under Alan Moore, no less!)?
It turns out that some major entertainment news sites featured the entirety of the company’s promotional materials, so the quote was carried in tripwire magazine, Broken Frontier and Pastrami Nation.
I’m still honored that I was even quoted at all, in connection with an iconic comic character that I’ve loved since I was a kid. This is a fan’s dream!
I discovered something incredibly cool this afternoon — it turns out that the good people over at Dark Horse Comics quoted me in their 2019 promotion of Matt Wagner’s superb Grendel: Devil’s Odyssey. The eight-issue limited series marked the return of the iconic Grendel Prime, who I last followed as a zealous young fan in the pages Grendel Tales (1993-1997), Batman/Grendel II (1996) and Grendel: Past Prime (2000).
Dark Horse quoted a review I wrote of Wagner’s Grendel: Omnibus Volume 1 (2012), which was a compilation of the writer-artist’s brilliant early work on the title.
I’m thrilled. Wagner’s a genius — and while Grendel’s dark, violent content is not for everyone, it’s always been a seminal title for the medium of comics. I remember greedily snapping up back issues when I was a college student in 1992 — I never thought the day would arrive when a review of mine would be referenced to attract new fans.
So with a poem just published in Peeking Cat 40, that makes 10 anthologies where one of my poems or stories have appeared — plus two chapbooks on top of those. (The first anthology would have been Dagda Publishing’s Threads eight years ago.) When I received my copy of Peeking Cat 40 today, I promptly celebrated with MacDonald’s. (We eat healthy at my house.)
The book is superb. I’m thrilled to join so many talented writers from around the world in such an outstanding showcase of prose and poetry selected by Peeking Cat Literary over the past year. Thanks once again to Editor Sam Rose!
Eric Robert Nolan, Author 