About Marginalia

Marginalia.  It’s the notes scratched into the margins of a book.  It’s scribblings in the open space that are evidence that someone is engaging with the words on the page.  It reflects the thoughts, reactions, and insights that the reader turned margin-writer has as she takes in the words and chews on them.  

The first time I remember taking part in this ancient practice was my freshman year in college.  Our assignment was to choose from a list of “classic literature” and write a paper on it.  I was surprised to see Frankenstein by Mary Shelley on that list.  

“Isn’t that the story about the green monster that came to life from electricity?” I thought.  How that Hollywood horror movie could come from something deemed “classic literature” piqued my curiosity.  I selected that novel, and it blew my preconceived notions out of the water.  I couldn’t stop writing in that clean space on the side of the pages, and when it came time to pull my thoughts together and write the essay, I reread my pen scratchings.  There, a lifelong practice began—not just writing my own but loving to read others’ marginalia I found in any used book I held in my hands. 

I discovered Billy Collin’s poem in the early 2000s when a camp counselor asked me if I had ever read it (Thank you, Kyle Heys).  He loaned me his book so I could read it. “There’s a name for this delightful practice?” I exclaimed. I was shocked and delighted. 

My marginalia you find in this blog are not just my musings from the written word but also from others and the text of the world around me.  I hope maybe you will discover you engage with the scribblings found here and create your own musings.

Marginalia by Billy Collins

Sometimes the notes are ferocious,
skirmishes against the author
raging along the borders of every page
in tiny black script.
If I could just get my hands on you,
Kierkegaard, or Conor Cruise O’Brien,
they seem to say,
I would bolt the door and beat some logic into your head.

Other comments are more offhand, dismissive –
“Nonsense.” “Please!” “HA!!” –
that kind of thing.
I remember once looking up from my reading,
my thumb as a bookmark,
trying to imagine what the person must look like
who wrote “Don’t be a ninny”
alongside a paragraph in The Life of Emily Dickinson.

Students are more modest
needing to leave only their splayed footprints
along the shore of the page.
One scrawls “Metaphor” next to a stanza of Eliot’s.
Another notes the presence of “Irony”
fifty times outside the paragraphs of A Modest Proposal.

Or they are fans who cheer from the empty bleachers,
hands cupped around their mouths.
“Absolutely,” they shout
to Duns Scotus and James Baldwin.
“Yes.” “Bull’s-eye.” “My man!”
Check marks, asterisks, and exclamation points
rain down along the sidelines.

And if you have managed to graduate from college
without ever having written “Man vs. Nature”
in a margin, perhaps now
is the time to take one step forward.

We have all seized the white perimeter as our own
and reached for a pen if only to show
we did not just laze in an armchair turning pages;
we pressed a thought into the wayside,
planted an impression along the verge.

Even Irish monks in their cold scriptoria
jotted along the borders of the Gospels
brief asides about the pains of copying,
a bird singing near their window,
or the sunlight that illuminated their page–
anonymous men catching a ride into the future
on a vessel more lasting than themselves.

And you have not read Joshua Reynolds,
they say, until you have read him
enwreathed with Blake’s furious scribbling.

Yet the one I think of most often,
the one that dangles from me like a locket,
was written in the copy of Catcher in the Rye
I borrowed from the local library
one slow, hot summer.
I was just beginning high school then,
reading books on a davenport in my parents’ living room,
and I cannot tell you
how vastly my loneliness was deepened,
how poignant and amplified the world before me seemed,
when I found on one page

a few greasy looking smears
and next to them, written in soft pencil–
by a beautiful girl, I could tell,
whom I would never meet–
“Pardon the egg salad stains, but I’m in love.”

Bev Vanderwell

  • Bev spent her childhood in Kalamazoo (Portage, actually), Michigan. During her summer’s she spent time playing on the shore of West Lake and anticipating one week each summer at Camp Roger. Eventually Bev landed at Calvin University to get a degree in English education. God’s path for her never landed her in a traditional classroom, but ended up using and developing her gifts in a wide variety of places and ways. Early on she spent time working at Waldenbooks, tutoring students for Sylvan Learning Center, running a day camp for Camp Hayo-Went-Ha, teaching outdoor education at Camp Hayo-Went-Ha and Camp Roger, raising children, and serving as a group leader, children’s supervisor, and a teaching leader for a international ministry called Bible Study Fellowship. Currently Bev finds herself leading faith discussions at Hope Unexpected for single moms and providing educational support services for students at Rockford Christian School.
  • Bev spent her summers during college as a camp counselor at Camp Roger where she met her partner in crime and husband, Doug. Later they would get married and have two kids, both of whom currently work for schools.
  • The theme for this blog is inspired by a poem titled “Marginalia” by Billy Collins for there is sweet gold and richness of thought in the margins of life

My hope is to ponder life, create with words, cultivate joy, grow in my faith in Jesus, reflect His Light in this darkened world, and share the comfort God has given me in any way I can to others who need comfort too.