You should read this poem **.

Trust me. It’s very good.

Via the wonderful hula seventy. Her 365 lists project from 2018/19 remains one of my favourite blogging projects ever – nourishing, clever, interesting – a morning meditation served up in my inbox.

Perhaps worth a daily meditative revisit?

♥

On the subject of poetry, I feel like I may have finally cracked why I’ve never gotten on with poetry. A lifetime of, if not speed reading, very fast reading – and not reading aloud in my head.

It seems poetry requires slowness and thoughtful, careful reading and a voice in your head. Definitely a voice in your head.

I once would have described this as needing to really languish in a poem. But thanks to that widely shared Adam Grant NYT article, I now know languish doesn’t really mean what I thought it did. I was assuming closely related to languid – and not in that pale, sickly way – but kind of treacly, warm, tropical, lazy, and gorgeous. Alas.

I don’t know why^^ I took such pride in the number of books I could quickly churn though. Thankfully, I now realise that this is mental. Absolutely mental. Despite this knowledge, shaking off the read-racing habit is a challenging.

♥

On impulse I bought hard copies of yung pueblo: inward and also Natalie Goldberg: Three Simple Lines – after being entranced by her sharing a few haiku in conversation with Tara Brach

Will see how I get on.

** Danielle DeTiberus: Elegy for the Last Bottle of Ranch (for when the link inevitably breaks)

^^ Extreme positive reinforcement starting from childhood and continuing for way too long, I expect. I’d be willing to bet this is another of those fixed/growth mindset situations.