Ron Richard Arriola

Anaïs Nin on How Reading Awakens Us from the Slumber of Almost-Living “It appears like an innocuous illness. Monotony, boredom, death. Millions live like this (or die like this) without knowing it.”

"It appears like an innocuous illness. Monotony, boredom, death. Millions live like this (or die like this) without knowing it."

Anaïs Nin on how reading awakens us from the slumber of near-living www.themarginalian.org/2017/01/19/a...

Journeys of the Mind: A Life in History by Peter Brown

A beautifully written personal account of the discovery of late antiquity by one of the world’s most influential and distinguished historians.

Peter Brown's Journeys of the Mind is now available in #paperback (6 Jan UK pub).

Order yours: press.princeton.edu/books/paperb...

A stunning love poem to life at the horizon of death from Nobel laureate Louise Glück www.themarginalian.org/2020/10/11/l...

I’m sorry for hurting you so much. I realized clearly what my problem is: how can I love another person if I can’t even love and forgive myself. I keep running away from people who loved me because I’m afraid to give broken pierces of myself.

200 Years of Great Writers and Artists on the Creative and Spiritual Rewards of Gardening Emily Dickinson, Virginia Woolf, Oliver Sacks, Rebecca Solnit, Bronson Alcott, Michael Pollan, Jamaica Kincaid, and more.

200 years of great artists and writers on the creative and spiritual rewards of gardening www.themarginalian.org/2022/05/07/w...

George Orwell’s “Animal Farm” Illustrated by Ralph Steadman “I do not wish to comment on the work; if it does not speak for itself, it is a failure.”

The great artist Ralph Steadman, who turns 89 today, illustrates Orwell's Animal Farm www.themarginalian.org/2014/04/25/a...

Steinbeck and the Difficult Art of the Friend Breakup “I can’t consider you a friend when out of every contact there comes some intentionally wounding thing.”

Let Steinbeck show you how to break up with a false friend www.themarginalian.org/2016/03/18/j...

Amaze by Rob McClure Didn't mean to leave you lost in the corn mazeso long,didn't know the gown of moonlightcould come caress your candy-bonesand bathe you in milk cherry blood.Didn't mean to set the cornro...

Ever feel like you will never find your way out of the week? Happy Friday! Here's "Amaze," by Rob McClure. #litmag #poetry
penmenreview.com/amaze/

Adrienne Rich’s Haunting Poem About Love and the Cosmic Perspective “…equations letting sight pierce through time into liberations, lacerations of light and dust…”

Adrienne Rich would have been 96 today. Her magnificent poem "Hubble Photographs: After Sappho" – a timeless meditation on love and our cosmic destiny – animated: www.themarginalian.org/2019/04/26/a...

Bunny & Tree: A Tender Wordless Parable of Friendship and the Improbable Saviors That Make Life Livable Traversing the landscape of life on the wings of trust.

Bunny & Tree – a tender illustrated parable about friendship and the improbable saviors who make our lives livable www.themarginalian.org/2023/07/11/b...

Adrienne Rich on Love, Loss, Public vs. Private Happiness, and the Creative Process “No one’s fated or doomed to love anyone. The accidents happen.”

"No one’s fated or doomed to love anyone.
The accidents happen, we’re not heroines,
they happen in our lives like car crashes,
books that change us, neighborhoods
we move into and come to love."

Adrienne Rich, who would have been 96 today, on life and love: www.themarginalian.org/2012/12/14/a...

Introducing Marginalian Editions: Extraordinary Forgotten Books Brought Back to Life I have become a person on the pages and in the margins of books. In nearly two decades of reckoning with my reading in writing, it has been my ongoing lamentation to see works of enduring beauty an…

In two decades of doing what I do, it has been my ongoing lamentation to see works of enduring beauty and substance perish out of print. Because the most valiant way to complain is to create, introducing Marginalian Editions

sunday newsletter If you yearn for depth and delight without the distraction of a social media feed, if you are weary of algorithms deciding what you see and read and constellate into reality, try the Marginalian Su…

Tired of having algorithms divine what you care about, decide what you see, and distract you with ads? Try the Marginalian newsletter — the week’s most inspiring and nourishing reads, free, ad-free, algorithm-free, entirely human, made of feeling and time since 2006: themarginalian.org/newsletter

The art of befriending time and change — Debbie Millman's illustrated love letter to gardening as a portal to self-discovery www.themarginalian.org/2025/04/25/l...

Love and Limerence: The Forgotten Psychologist Dorothy Tennov’s Revelatory Research into the Confusions of Bonding “It may not be in contemplation of outer space that the greatest discoveries and explorations of the coming centuries will occur, but in our finally deciding to heed the dictum of self-unders…

Love and limerence – the forgotten pioneer Dorothy Tennov's revelatory research into the confusions of the heart www.themarginalian.org/2021/11/25/l...

The Half Room of Living and Loving When I can’t sleep, I read children’s books. One night, I discovered In the Half Room (public library) by Carson Ellis in my tsundoku — an impressionistic invitation into a world …

The half room of living and loving www.themarginalian.org/2025/03/21/h...

Blue and white tiled background with a repetitive pattern. Writing in blue boxes gives details of the lecture: Repetition is a Form of Change: An Oblique Strategy in Poetry, A.E. Stallings, Professor of Poetry. 9 May, 5.30pm, Examination Schools.

SAVE THE DATE for the next Professor of #poetry lecture by A.E. Stallings.

'Repetition is a Form of Change: An Oblique Strategy in Poetry'

📆9 May 2025 at 5.30pm
📍Examination Schools, Oxford

No booking required. This is a public lecture and all are welcome!

#poetrycommunity #poetrysky

Work Alone: Ernest Hemingway’s 1954 Nobel Acceptance Speech “Writing, at its best, is a lonely life.”

Work alone – Hemingway's short, superb Nobel Prize acceptance speech www.themarginalian.org/2013/03/21/e...

The Daily Routines of Great Writers “A writer who waits for ideal conditions under which to work will die without putting a word on paper.”

The daily routines of great writers www.themarginalian.org/2012/11/20/d...

Three ways Pope Francis influenced the global climate movement At the centre of the social and ecological polycrisis is a religious crisis of the human heart.

'He tried his best to use his prominent position to hold power to account.'

Prof Celia Deane-Drummond highlights three ways Pope Francis influenced the global climate movement ⬇️
#OxfordClimate

Nobel-Winning Physicist Niels Bohr on Subjective vs. Objective Reality and the Uses of Religion in a Secular World “The fact that religions through the ages have spoken in images, parables, and paradoxes means simply that there are no other ways of grasping the reality to which they refer. But that does n…

Quantum pioneer Neils Bohr on subjective vs. objective reality and the uses of religion in a secular world www.themarginalian.org/2018/02/01/n...

If You Come to Earth: A Tender Illustrated Celebration of the Many Ways to Be Human and What Makes Our Miraculous Planet a World A humanistic love letter to who and what we are, together on this lonesome, wild, and wondrous rock adrift around a common star.

If You Come to Earth – a tender illustrated celebration of the myriad ways to be human and what makes our planet a miraculous world www.themarginalian.org/2020/12/05/i... #EarthDay

Myths, Facts, and Poetic Truth: Amy Lowell on Legends as a Lens on Our Elemental Limitations and Powers “Legends… are bits of fact, or guesses at fact, pressed into the form of a story and flung out into the world as markers of how much ground has been travelled.”

Myths, facts, and poetic truth – Amy Lowell (one of the most underestimated geniuses of the past century) on legends as a lens on our limitations and our powers www.themarginalian.org/2022/06/30/a...

Sundogs and the Sacred Geometry of Wonder: The Science of the Atmospheric Phenomenon That Inspired Hilma af Klint Notes on the eternal dialogue between art and science in our yearning to know reality.

Sundogs and the sacred geometry of wonder – the fascinating science of the atmospheric phenomenon that inspired Hilma af Klint www.themarginalian.org/2023/05/17/h...

How to Grow Old: Bertrand Russell on What Makes a Fulfilling Life “Make your interests gradually wider and more impersonal, until bit by bit the walls of the ego recede, and your life becomes increasingly merged in the universal life.”

"Make your interests gradually wider and more impersonal, until bit by bit the walls of the ego recede, and your life becomes increasingly merged in the universal life."

Nobel laureate Bertrand Russell on how to grow old: www.themarginalian.org/2018/07/03/h...

The Peace of Wild Things: Wendell Berry’s Poetic Antidote to Despair, Animated On where to seek refuge from the forethought of grief.

The Peace of Wild Things – Wendell Berry's poetic antidote to despair, animated www.themarginalian.org/2021/03/12/w...

Keith Haring on Change and Creativity “To be a victim of change is to ignore its existence.”

Beloved artist Keith Haring, who died far too young, on creativity and how to cope with change www.themarginalian.org/2022/07/04/k...

Nature and Creativity: The Science of “Soft Fascination” and How the Natural World Resets the Brain “Our everyday experience does not prepare us to assimilate the gaping hugeness of the Grand Canyon or the crashing grandeur of Niagara Falls. We have no response at the ready; our usual frame…

Nature and creativity – the science of "soft fascination" and how time outdoors resets the brain www.themarginalian.org/2022/07/01/d...

This week's oasis of selected sanities in a single place at the link: 4 kinds of loneliness, 3 kinds of forever, 20 ways to matter, and one peaceful bull: mailchi.mp/themarginali...

A heron's antidote to fear of death www.themarginalian.org/2024/12/06/h...