Mindfulness and Poetry: Delicious Word Awareness
Everyone's a poet.
Of course, everyone's a critic, too! This means that there are
plenty of opportunities to heighten our awareness of words and
how we use them.
Words create pictures, and just as a painter uses a combination
of colors and strokes to express a concept, we offer an artistic
rendering of thoughts through carefully chosen words.
Our linguistic intelligence is what allows us to both recognize
and generate vivid word vignettes. Whether you enjoy novels,
biographies, mysteries, sonnets, haiku, song lyrics,
conversations, soliloquies, or newspaper stories, you can
develop greater word awareness by focusing on descriptive
phrases.
In our everyday speech, we tend to speak in phrases and
punctuate these with expressions, pauses, gestures, or laughter.
Although the words themselves convey meaning, the total picture
we create is a combination of inflection, context,
juxtaposition, and even eye contact.
Don't think you have your own personal poetry style? Think
again. You use words in your own way, and it's likely that,
given an assignment to express a particular concept, your
version would have recognizable elements.
Try this test: describe a birthday cake.
There's a good chance that you would use words to express the
shape, flavor, color, decoration, ingredients, size, and
presentation of a cake, and that the precise way you do that
would be unique when compared to others' descriptions. In
addition, you're likely to come up with a different description
if asked to do so a month from now.
You can easily and enjoyably boost your word awareness by 1)
selecting a particular cue word as a trigger for mindfulness, or
2) focusing on phrases used in specific settings. Better yet,
try both!
By using a particular word as a mindfulness trigger, you can
watch how others create poetic representations of the same
element.
Ready for your secret food awareness word? Here it is: morsel.
Listening for a specific word will develop your ability to make
distinctions in the way it is used and allow you to watch for
subtle variations. Does "morsel" refer to something creamy or
chewy? Is it savory or sweet?
To play with poetry and mindfulness at the same time, notice
phrases used to describe food. Listen to them with an ear for
rhythm, and picture them as lines of a poem.
Read menu descriptions, food articles or cookbooks and be aware
of the adjectives most likely to get your mouth watering.
Sensual words like "succulent" and "luscious" elicit
physiological responses. Pay attention to those, and listen for
the phrases you hear that create especially vivid sense
experiences.
Linking word pictures with taste helps us anchor our linguistic
intelligence with our bodily intelligence, and this makes our
mouths very happy indeed!
Delectable words, Delicious poetry. Mmmm-- True taste sensation.