MaxReif's Blog

• THE SIGNIFICANCE OF WORDS

  July 8, 2009

  • Author's Intro This is an intensely autobiographical, possibly even narcissistic piece. If anyone sticks with it and finds something universal in it, I'll be pleased. It was a pleasure to organize these threads of thinking and feeling about "the Good Life" that have been circulating in my being for nearly half a century.  THE SIGNIFICANCE OF WORDS Something’s a little strange:I ...
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• Becoming a Poet

  March 25, 2009

  • BECOMING A POET 1.In college I never understood poetry. Certain distant acquaintances walked around in what appeared to be a kind of haze. People spoke of them, with a kind of awe, as poets. I didn't grasp their poetry, but I wanted to be spoken of that way, too! Whether most poets begin with such crass aspirations, I don't know. Most things that are worthwhile in my life, though, have begun with ...
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• ODE TO WALKING AND SINGING

  March 7, 2009

  • ODE TO WALKING AND SINGING (a poem)Someday I'll set off walking and singing a Holy Nameand never come backbecause there's nothing like it,small body under a great sky,walking stick and hatand the path-ribbon stretching out or loopingas far as you want to go,no good reason, really, to stop,especially when you sing,because the human voiceis a bird in a cage and song allows it to soar,and when at ...
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• FDR: Larger Than Life, Except That He Lived!

  February 28, 2009

  • What a story for a writer!And yet, to my knowledge, it's not yet the subject of a novel, a major movie drama, or a play*. And it's been more than half a century since the curtain closed on the life in question! I'm talking about Franklin Delano Roosevelt, whose life is the subject of a 4-part, 1994 PBS ("American Experience") documentary biography my wife and I watched recently on ...
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• A WRITER'S RESERVOIR

  February 22, 2009

  • Again I wonder whether anything edifying, inspiring, or otherwise "alive" will ever flow from my pen or keyboard.But then, I've been wondering that for decades now, and something always has. That's the miracle, isn't it, writers? We're sort of junkies for that creative hit. At least, I am. But it's not the kind of addiction I'd enter a 12-step group for. I WAS once in a 12-step group ...
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