The quest for beauty has led me elsewhere. This blog is now only maintained for archival purposes.

I have realized that most of Annette von Droste-Hülshoff's poetry is untranslatable, at least by me, and that my own poetry failed to achieve what I believe poetry ought too. In February 2013, I removed all but three of my translations, which I judged to be acceptable, from this site. To anyone interested in a further exploration of her work, I would recommend learning German.

I also removed all of my own poetry, which, although not nearly as bad as everything I wrote earlier in life, still essentially failed to achieve my artistic goal. Perhaps not everyone can create beauty, but the ability to recognize it is far more important to me. Since March 2012, I have dedicated myself to the study of beauty in it's purest living manifestation, native wildflowers, such as the species Mertensia virginica, from which this blog takes it's name.

Anyone who is interested in seeing my photographic studies of the Native Wildflowers of the DC Metro Area can go to my Flickr page   FritzFlohrReynolds