Let Us Love What Is Slow {poetry for lent}

Last week at Art House America, I wrote about the ways in which I'm drawn to poetry in times of spiritual or emotional dryness, and I quoted  Eliot's "Ash Wednesday":

Teach us to care, and not to care
Teach us to sit still.

On this Ash Wednesday, I'm still thinking about poetry.  The way reading it requires us to pause, to listen.  To focus. To be quiet.

To sit still. To care.

I rarely sit still these days, and my mind is always flying.  Being online has conditioned me to read quickly, to jump from link to link without much reflection. To skip the pieces that don't grab me right away, that don't offer some instant gratification, some immediate benefit, some shock-value. I watch television with my phone in hand, my mind divided, giving neither story my full gaze.  I watch my children with my phone in hand, attention divided; they notice.

And I hate that. I hate the way I'm changing my neural pathways with all this frantic interneting.  I hate living in the shallows. I hate not giving my children the full attention they crave.

Poetry is a solution to this problem.  Poetry requires full attention.  Reading it forces us to slow down. Writing it forces us to be mindful of the world around us, the desires within us, the beauty of language.

***

Last night three graduating English majors at Taylor presented their capstone projects.  They were  remarkable.  One was a collection of poems, and as I listened to the young woman read her work, I remembered the poems I used to write in college.  I remembered what it feels like to name your desires with words, to listen so attentively to your life that the truth grows in stanzas in your soul.  To be open and foolish enough to play with words like clay, finding surprises forming under your fingers.

To see the world in a drop of rain.

To really see.

***

This Lent, I'm giving something up.  And I'm taking something up, too: I'm taking up poetry.  I'll be reading or writing poetry every day.  And I'm going to share some of that poetry here, on the blog.  I want to share all kinds of poetry - old songs, new verses, perfect stanzas, amateur attempts.  I want you to write poetry, and share it here.  Would you like to?  Email me your poems, amylepinepeterson{at}gmail{dot}com. Give up your pride for Lent.  Write a poem and share it.

Let's pay attention together.  Let's slow down and listen - to the world, to the spirit, to each other. Let's not

Love the quick profit, the annual raise,
vacation with pay. Want more
of everything ready-made.



Let us love what is slow, that which takes time to read, to understand, to appreciate. Everyday, let's do something that won't compute, as Wendell Berry says. Let's read a poem.

Join me?