The Practice of Awe: A Guided Poetry Exploration
How slowing down transforms attention into wonder
Frame & Phrase
#Margin Notes
Over the past year, I’ve noticed something quietly changing in these pages.
The prompts have become less about finding inspiration and more about practicing perception.
Perhaps that’s inevitable. Inspiration arrives on its own schedule. But perception—the ability to notice deeply, to linger, to look again—is something we can cultivate every day.
Recently, I read a thoughtful essay in the Two Sylvias Weekly Muse (June 28) newsletter about the practice of finding awe. It referenced an article by Dana Milbank in the Washington Post about a museum program in which visitors were encouraged not to see more works of art, but to spend more time with one. That simple shift transformed observation into wonder.
The idea stayed with me. It also nudged me. It made me realize that poetry asks something similar of us.
Attention is the act.
Perception is the skill.
Wonder is the response.
Awe is the transformation.
Poetry doesn’t ask us to look farther. It teaches us to look more deeply—to stay with a single image, a single sound, a single moment until the ordinary begins to reveal its quiet astonishments.
Poetry invites us to resist the impulse to hurry past what seems familiar. It asks us to remain with a moment long enough for it to become something more than an observation.
Often, what first appears ordinary—a weathered stone, a bird's feather, a strand of spider silk catching the morning light—gradually reveals a depth we would have missed had we moved on too quickly. The poem begins not when we find something extraordinary, but when we discover the extraordinary waiting quietly within the ordinary.
Poetry doesn't ask us to look farther.
It teaches us to look more deeply.
This week’s invitation continues that practice.
Not by asking you simply to write about a photograph, but by inviting you to discover what sustained attention can make visible.
The reflections above are only the beginning.
What follows is this week's guided practice—an invitation to move from reading into writing.
