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What would be a Facebook status update, if I were into that sort of thing. I don't know how I feel about that thing that Poets.org seems to be doing — at least sometimes — in their Poem-a-Day emails.  That thing where they include a little "About this Poem" blurb after the poem — a kind of metatextual note from the author.  I get that this could be nice.  That it could add to the enjoyment of the poem, even, perhaps.  (Hm.)  But so far (I only signed up for the service — finally — this week) it seems to be giving me sentences like this one: This poem contends with ego-pain in a context of non-duality. Or this one: It’s deeply concerned with the ways in which poetry, like a shield, often becomes a token of the violence it means most to avert. Okay.  That one's not as bad.  But still.  Are we sure we need to be doing this?  Really? [nightingaleshiraz] [?] [Via Giulio Cesare, Santa Marinella] [martedì 26 agosto 2014 ore 15:59:16] [¶] Forty-four years today, the second conditional, and some other things I will or won't be telling you straight. Last week I decided we needed to watch a Robin Williams movie.  Apart from the Obvious Reason, there was the other, Less Au Courant But Almost As Obvious Reason, plus the Usual Reason (this last having to do with the fact that it's almost always a good night for a giggle if you can get it).  We picked The Birdcage, and so of course there was that scene.  Which, several days later — on the red couch in the study, in the wake of three week-days in Tuscania (and more tellingly, in the wake of some much-missed aglio-olio-peperoncino) — was still doing that thing that good scenes do.  And then it got me thinking about Martha Graham, which got me Googling about Martha Graham.  Which (and we've arrived, dear reader, you can wake up now) got me at least a couple of nice things for a writer to think about: What is Form? Form is the Memory of Spiritual Content. When do Form and Content Meet? Form and Content meet in Action. Practice means to perform, over and over again in the face of all obstacles, some act of vision, of faith, of desire.  Practice is a means of inviting the perfection desired. *** Some people give you things that aren't off-key or wrong.  They are always small things.  A memory of her.  A line about grace.  The corner of a curtain lifted up, to some loss of their own.  A way of placing themselves exactly as near and as far away as you need them to be.  The written equivalent of being quiet.  I don't know if it's because these people are so few and far between, or what.  But these things are not only small, they are precious. Here's a poem by Rilke, that Jennifer sent.  If you know someone like me who's in a place like mine, it's a good poem to pass on. God speaks to each of us as he makes us, then walks with us silently out of the night. These are the words we dimly hear: You, sent out beyond your recall, go to the limits of your longing. Embody me. Flare up like flame and make big shadows I can move in. Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror. Just keep going.  No feeling is final. Don't let yourself lose me. Nearby is the country they call life. You will know it by its seriousness. Give me your hand. *** Also.  Please remember?  No one asked you to be town crier. [nightingaleshiraz] [?] [Via Giulio Cesare, Santa Marinella] [sabato 23 agosto 2014 ore 11:51:08] [¶]