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This Formless Magic

May 8, 2026 by Michelle Rene Arch

Such a captive maiden, having plenty of time to think, soon realizes that her tower, its height and architecture, are like her ego only incidental: that what really keeps her where she is is magic, anonymous and malignant, visited on her from outside and for no reason at all.  Having no apparatus except gut fear and female cunning to examine this formless magic, to understand how it works, how to measure its field strength, count its lines of force, she may fall back on superstition, or take up a useful hobby like embroidery, or go mad, or marry a disk jockey.  If the tower is everywhere and the knight of deliverance no proof against its magic, what else?

~ From The Crying of Lot 49 by Thomas Pynchon, born on this day in 1937

Frederic Edwin Church, 1884

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Spring Quiet

March 20, 2026 by Michelle Rene Arch

Gone were but the Winter,

   Come were but the Spring,

I would go to a covert

   Where the birds sing;

 

Where in the whitethorn

   Singeth a thrush,

And a robin sings

   In the holly-bush.

 

Full of fresh scents

   Are the budding boughs

Arching high over

   A cool green house:

 

Full of sweet scents,

   And whispering air

Which sayeth softly:

   “We spread no snare;

 

“Here dwell in safety,

   Here dwell alone,

With a clear stream

   And a mossy stone.

 

“Here the sun shineth

   Most shadily;

Here is heard an echo

   Of the far sea,

   Though far off it be.”

 

                               ~ Christina Rossetti

 

Marcus Stone, circa 1900

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I Looked Up from My Writing

March 13, 2026 by Michelle Rene Arch

I looked up from my writing,

   And gave a start to see,

As if rapt in my inditing,

   The moon’s full gaze on me.

 

Her meditative misty head

   Was spectral in its air,

And I involuntarily said,

   ‘What are you doing there?’

 

‘Oh, I’ve been scanning pond and hole

   And waterway hereabout

For the body of one with a sunken soul

   Who has put his life-light out.

 

‘Did you hear his frenzied tattle?

   It was sorrow for his son

Who is slain in brutish battle,

   Though he has injured none.

 

‘And now I am curious to look

   Into the blinkered mind

Of one who wants to write a book

   In a world of such a kind.’

 

Her temper overwrought me,

   And I edged to shun her view,

For I felt assured she thought me

   One who should drown him too.

 

~ Thomas Hardy

 

Johann Peter Hasenclever, circa 1846

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What Writing Demands

February 11, 2026 by Michelle Rene Arch

Angry people acted as if she was wresting herself away from them: stealing herself. They told her to forget the M.A. in creative writing which she had earned with honors and to get a real job. […] Her stories, full of love and roads and music, were the only company she sought, more than enough. She wanted to sustain this for a lifetime. […] This is what writing demands of writers: time. Energy. Courage. The fury of many and the rudeness of the rest.

 

~ Anneli Rufus, Party of One: The Loners’ Manifesto

 

Anonymous (19th century, French)

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A January Dandelion

January 23, 2026 by Michelle Rene Arch

All Nashville is a chill.  And everywhere

Like desert sand, when the winds blow,

There is each moment sifted through the air,

A powdered blast of January snow.

O! thoughtless Dandelion, to be misled

By a few warm days to leave thy natural bed,

Was folly growth and blooming over soon.

And yet, thou blasted yellow-coated gem,

Full many a heart has but a common boon

With thee, now freezing on thy slender stem.

When the heart has bloomed by the touch of love’s warm breath

Then left and chilling snow is sifted in,

It still may beat but there is blast and death

To all that blooming life that might have been.

 

                                                                ~ George Marion McClellan

 

Accuruss

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Spring

March 20, 2025 by Michelle Rene Arch

The air is like a butterfly

With frail blue wings.

The happy earth looks at the sky

And sings.

~ Joyce Kilmer

 

Blue Morpho Butterfly by Martin Johnson Heade (1819-1904)

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Winter Solstice Chant

December 21, 2024 by Michelle Rene Arch

Vines, leaves, roots of darkness, growing,

now you are uncurled and cover our eyes

with the edge of winter sky

leaning over us in icy stars.

Vines, leaves, roots of darkness, growing,

come with your seasons, your fullness, your end.

 

                                     ~ Annie Finch

 

“The Skater” by Prince Pierre Troubetskoy, 1895

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There Is Something at Work in My Soul

August 30, 2024 by Michelle Rene Arch

As I prepare to defend my dissertation proposal and confront the rigors of the final milestone of my PhD, it seems fitting that I should once again post this passage by Mary Shelley, born on this day in 1797.

 

I cannot describe to you my sensations on the near prospect of my undertaking.  It is impossible to communicate to you a conception of the trembling sensation, half pleasurable and half fearful, with which I am preparing to depart.  I am going to unexplored regions to ‘the land of mist and snow’ […].  You will smile at my allusion; but I will disclose a secret.  I have often attributed my attachment to, my passionate enthusiasm for, the dangerous mysteries of ocean, to that production of the most imaginative of modern poets.  There is something at work in my soul, which I do not understand.

~ From Frankenstein by Mary Shelley

 

Leonid Pasternak

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Assurances

May 27, 2024 by Michelle Rene Arch

Those who contemplate the beauty of the earth find reserves of strength that will endure as long as life lasts.  There is something infinitely healing in the repeated refrains of nature—the assurance that dawn comes after night, and spring after winter.

~ From Silent Spring by Rachel Carson, born on this day in 1907

 

Marcel Rieder (1862-1942)

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Branches of Figs

May 19, 2024 by Michelle Rene Arch

I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story. 

From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked.  One fig was a husband and a happy home and children, and another fig was a famous poet and another fig was a brilliant professor, and another fig was Ee Gee, the amazing editor, and another fig was Europe and Africa and South America, and another fig was Constantin and Socrates and Attila and a pack of other lovers with queer names and offbeat professions, and another fig was an Olympic lady crew champion, and beyond and above these figs were many more figs I couldn’t quite make out. 

I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldn’t make up my mind which of the figs I would choose.  I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and, as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet.

~ From The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath

 

Fir0002

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