Ritual

The repeated act that becomes poem

#Field Notes

This week’s exploration of ritual grows directly out of last week’s post. What began as a brief reflection has opened into a fuller examination — moving from quiet habit and noticing into ritual as both daily practice and poetic craft. This post expands that initial thread, lingering a little longer with repetition, return, and the ordinary acts that shape our days and our poems.

Each morning, before the house stirs, I make tea the same way. Kettle filled to the line. The small blue cup pulled from the back of the cabinet. Steam rising. It takes no thought now. My hands know the sequence. But within that repetition lives a quiet steadiness, a small anchoring in time.

There are so many rituals like this: walking the same path, lighting a candle before writing, pausing at the window at dusk, saying the same goodnight words. These gestures are not grand. They are ordinary, even invisible. And yet they hold us — marking time, offering comfort, becoming containers for attention.

In poetry, ritual often appears as repetition, invocation, return. The poem becomes a space where the ordinary act gathers meaning through its being done again and again. The familiar becomes luminous.

Craft-wise, ritual in poems often appears through repetition, lines or phrases that return like a chant or a prayer. Each time the language circles back, it gathers a little more weight, a little more meaning. What begins as simple becomes resonant through its being said again. You can see this beautifully in the work of Jane Hirshfield, whose poems frequently return to ordinary gestures — sweeping a floor, breathing, preparing food — allowing repetition to deepen presence and insight.

Some poems build through accumulation, stacking small moments or actions one upon another, letting significance emerge slowly. Others move in cycles of return, revisiting the same gesture, place, or thought, mirroring the way rituals mark time in our lives.

Often, these poems center on the simplest actions — walking, washing, lighting a candle, pouring tea — but layer them with memory, emotion, or quiet reflection. Through ritual, poems find rhythm and grounding, honoring the ordinary as a space where meaning lives.

Inside the Frame & Phrase Post

• Writing the Ritual: Warm-up

• Looking at Jane Kenyon’s “Otherwise”

• #Bookshelf of Recommended Books

• #Frame & Phrase Multi-layered Prompt with Image

• Poem Share: Hayden Saunier’s “The Possibility of Redemption at the Drive-Thru Car Wash”