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:
Tag Archives: University of Mary Washington
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
“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
Poetry and Commentary, 2021
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!
I am on a comic fan’s cloud nine right now.
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!
The celebratory Big Mac.
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!
Mary Washington College’s Dr. Cain passed away.
I learned this morning that Dr. David W. Cain of Mary Washington College passed away on July 31 at the age of 79. Dr. Cain was my Christian theology professor at Mary Washington College when I was a freshman there in 1990.
Like so many other alumni, I remember him with great fondness. He was a truly outstanding teacher and a thoughtful, considerate man who was passionate about his work.
You can find a tribute to Dr. Cain here via the Covenant Funeral Service.
(I was actually only thinking about sliced cheese, though.)
The Roanoke Times publishes my letter about the 20th anniversary of 9/11.
I was so pleased this morning to see that The Roanoke Times published my letter to the editor about the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 terror attacks. You can find it right here.
I’m honored that my thoughts about the occasion appear to have struck a chord with people. This same letter was featured first on Wednesday by New York’s Newsday (with a weekday circulation of 437,000), and then here in Virginia by The Bristol Herald Courier (with a circulation of 39,000). As The Roanoke Times has a Sunday circulation of 85,000, this would mean that the letter was distributed to 561,000 readers.
Here’s a big word of thanks to the editors of The Roanoke Times for allowing me to communicate with with my neighbors through such a superb regional newspaper.
Newsday printed my letter to the editor about the 20th anniversary of 9/11.
I’m honored today to discover that Newsday published my letter to the editor about the 20th anniversary of the September 11th terror attacks. (It is an edited version of the letter that I submitted.) If you are a digital subscriber to Newsday, you can also read it online here.
Newsday is not only the newspaper that I grew up with — it is also the third largest paper in all of New York State and one of the largest in America. It has a weekday circulation of 437,000, and reaches nearly half of Long Island’s households. The 80-year-old publication has been the winner of 19 Pulitzer Prizes, with nominations for 20 more. I am especially grateful to its editorial staff for selecting my letter for such an esteemed newspaper.
Eric Robert Nolan, Author 