Literary Catchall

a depository of inspiration for a Midwestern writer and lifelong reader

[literarycatchall]

“[It came by] asking myself what shape my longing could take, and what I might do to see my longing through.”

— Tyree Daye on the writing of his poem “Again” (2026)

[literarycatchall]

“But I remembered how easily and quickly

the mind travels vast distances to find meaning

in the strange and striking shapes of our lives.”

— “Kiss. Baptism.,” David Campos (2026)

[libenter-lego]

Museums Victoria Collections

Emily McPherson College of Domestic Economy, Melbourne, ca 1947

[literarycatchall]

“It was in this labyrinth,

in it alone,

that I found my way.”

— “In this Labyrinth,” Najwan Darwish (2025)

[books0977]

Isabella Rossellini reading and studying her lines for David Lynch’s film Blue Velvet, 1985. Photo Eve Arnold.

“The sexual material in “Blue Velvet” is so disturbing, and the performance by Rosellini is so convincing and courageous, that it demands a movie that deserves it…Given the power of the darker scenes in this movie, we’re all the more frustrated that the director is unwilling to follow through to the consequences of his insights.” – Roger Ebert

[literarycatchall]

“I feel always trembling on the brink of poetry. The almond tree, the birds, the little wood where you are, the flowers you do not see, the open window out of which I lean and dream that you are against my shoulder, and the times that your photograph looks sad. But especially I want to write a kind of long elegy to you . . . perhaps not in poetry. No, perhaps in prose. Almost certainly in a kind of special prose.”

— Journal entry, Katherine Mansfield Beauchamp

[detroitlib]

View of a man with a book cart in the stacks of the Main Library, Detroit Public Library. Handwritten on back: "Stack room."

Burton Historical Collection, Detroit Public Library

[literarycatchall]

“this forest of branches / is your inheritance”

— “A Thistle Will Do,” Omar Berrada (2025)

[literarycatchall]

“Only if you see someone, can you become / someone.”

— “Sonnet for the Chickens,” Tom Healy (2025)

[literarycatchall]

“A splashed white van appeared from a side road

then turned off and I drove on into the drab morning

which was mudded and plain and there was a kind of weary happiness

that nothing was trying to be anything much and nothing

was being suggested. I don’t know how else to explain

the calm of this grey wetness with hardly a glimmer of light or life,

only my car tyres swishing the lying water,

and the crows balanced and rocking on the windy lines.”

— “Acceptance,” Kerry Hardie (2025; emphasis my own)

[literarycatchall]

“What’s ghostlier than gray morning winter light?”

— “Day of the Dead,” Peter Balakian (2025)

[literarycatchall]

“You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.”

— “Wild Geese,” Mary Oliver

[literarycatchall]

“Ineffable testimonies

Of the love that permeates

Existence”

— “My Dead Relatives,” Myrna Nieves (2024)

[literarycatchall]

“I’d like to know how far

I’ve gone

how much farther there is”

— “Dead Reckoning,” Hyejung Kook (2024)

[literarycatchall]

therefore we’ll kiss; for maybe

what was Disappeared

into ourselves

who (look). ,startled

— “Here’s a Little Mouse,” e. e. cummings (1928)

[literarycatchall]

“God is the river that remakes me in its image. I didn’t know what was waiting on the other side. I swam through it anyway.”

— “Masculinity Ode,” Ally Ang (2024)

[literarycatchall]

“croon ballads as I displace you”

— “Solstice Re-pot,” Shailja Patel (2024)