poem
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Teaching Blake
Before you go
a word further,
let me posit that
teaching Blake
requires a kind of
rigor
you may
want to avoid,
that is, unless
you’ve learned
enough detachment
from day-long conversations,
matching silences
—in rooms of
Virginia, Libya,
and Japan
where drapes
match
sofas and
beds,
where paintings
match
neither—
to suggest
with restraint,
of course,
that eleven o’clock
efforts, even
lifting a coffee mug,
a fax, a receiver,
a finger, are
bivalved
marriages
of heaven
and hell,
acidic mysteries of
some concern.