‘Attention Is the Beginning of Devotion’
The late poet Mary Oliver warned against looking without noticing. In an age of distraction, her work is more urgent than ever.
I can say definitively now that I faltered in pursuit of my New Year’s resolution. My self-improvement project for the year was to read a fresh poem every morning, before glimpsing the accumulation of unresponded email and lifting the lid off Twitter. My purpose, when I explained it to my wife and kids a few hours before midnight, was to ritualistically remind myself of emotions other than those triggered by the front page.
What I didn’t say is that I was also positioning myself like a senior citizen hunched over the crossword. I was warding off the possibility of mental deterioration.
I have a fear stoked by a doomsaying prophecy about the future
