Writing with Witch Archetypes (Part 2)

Witch-Wife, Witch Wife, or Bella Baxter? + Color Magic (Creative Writing Prompt)

What’s your witch wearing? How can color make your writing pop? “Poor Things,” Winner of Best Costume Design has a lot to teach creative writers!

If a witch is a person who re-enchants the world with a fresh perspective untethered by the patriarchy, then Poor Things’ Bella Baxter is a witch. Emma Stone danced and masturbated her way into my heart. I’m so happy she won the Oscar. The Academy wasn’t “snubbing” Barbie but the gross consumerism evident in a film that seems at times to be simply an extended commercial for Mattel.¹

In my Writing with Witch Archetypes class, students have compared the opening stanza of Edna St. Vincent Millay’s poem “Witch-Wife” to Bella Baxter:

She is neither pink nor pale,
    And she never will be all mine;
She learned her hands in a fairy-tale,
    And her mouth on a valentine.

No shade on the color pink but it does seem to be the color most emblematic of a submissive, ultra-feminine brand of womanhood. Of course there are ways to subvert a reader’s expectations (as Kiki Petrosino does in her poem “Witch Wife” where she writes “my pink gloves, my green gloves” as she possibly boasts of murdering her enemies.)

Students have pointed out that Bella Baxter too had to learn how to be a person through reading books. Before Bella begins her journey of self-exploration, her “hands” explore her own body freely. Masturbation is not learned in a “fairy tale.” But she has to reign in her sexuality somewhat in order to become a part of society.

I’m not sure how valentines were perceived in Millay’s time but to me they are sentimental, a kind of lie. “And her mouth on a valentine” evokes a perfect, pink, bow-tied, mouth. A mouth that is shut, a woman who is silenced.

In the poem, I believe the witch learns and subverts conventional notions of feminine beauty in order to get what she wants, or to simply avoid punishment. However, Bella’s mouth opens to speak her mind, or moan in pleasure, whether that is from an orgasm or a dessert.

Bella is much like the speaker in Kiki Petrosino’s “Witch Wife.” Even in the title, Petrosino unhitches her speaker from another by eliminating the hyphen.

As Pam Grossman writes in the foreword to Literary Witches, “…I’ve come to realize that the Witch is arguably the only female archetype that has power on its own terms.  She is not defined by anyone else.  Wife, sister, mother, virgin, whore – these archetypes draw meaning based on relationships with others.”

Although I believe a witch is someone who is in relationship with nature, ancestors, Spirit, etc., I believe what Grossman means is that she is not defined by any traditional human relationship with restrictive gender or other norms.

As we just passed Spring Equinox and approach Easter, Kiki Petrosino’s response to Millay’s poem feels particularly apt to share.

Witch Wife

I’ll conjure the perfect Easter
& we’ll plant mini spruces in the yard—
my pink gloves & your green gloves
 
like parrots from an opera over the earth—
We’ll chatter about our enemies’ spectacular deaths.
I’ll conjure the perfect Easter
 
dark pesto sauce sealed with lemon
long cords of fusilli to remind you of my hair
& my pink gloves. Your gloves are green
 
& transparent like the skin of Christ
when He returned, filmed over with moss roses—
I’ll conjure as perfect an Easter:
 
provolone cut from the whole ball
woody herbs burning our tongues—it’s a holiday
I conjure with my pink-and-green gloves
 
wrangling life from the dirt. It all turns out
as I’d hoped. The warlocks of winter are dead
& it’s Easter. I dig up body after body after body
with my pink gloves, my green gloves.

My students have interpreted this poem broadly as a witch re-claiming her pagan roots from a Christianity that has co-opted them. Since Petrosino is American, I saw the bodies at the end as the literal bodies of Black and indigenous people whose genocide by colonialists built the wealth of the country. Perhaps she is resurrecting them in an act of social justice, fitting of the eclipse in Libra. But this is just one interpretation. I’m very curious about what you think, dear reader!

Creative Writing Prompt:

Write a response to Edna St. Vincent Millay’s “Witch-Wife” in the form of a poem or flash piece. Kiki Petrosino’s “Witch Wife” is a good model.

Consider some of the elements in Millay’s poem. How could you update or defamiliarize them? For example, the color pink appears in Millay’s poem as a reference to skin: “She is neither pink nor pale.” Petrosino defamiliarizes this element with “my pink gloves, my green gloves.” Perhaps the strangest element Petrosino adds is food, transforming Millay’s “she has more hair than she needs” to “dark pesto sauce sealed with lemon/long cords of fusilli to remind you of my hair.”

As a challenge, you could use synesthesia as Millay does with “And her voice is a string of colored beads/Or steps leading into the sea.”

Word Limit:

500

Interested in reading your creative work or any responses below! Also, how are you doing in this eclipse season? For me, it’s less “my pink gloves, my green gloves,” and more like I want to bury myself naked in the mud! Also, if you have thoughts on color magic, let me know!

1. In fairness, I found Oppenheimer to be mediocre. So one can’t rule out the white supremacist patriarchy ever in these awards, or anything.