Entr’acte

Thoughts on awareness rituals, hobos, and the antenna readiness of the poet Michael P. Hill

“Well,” said Pooh, “what I like best … “ and then he had to stop and think.

What I like best about writing poetry is that it makes us stop and think. It’s a little awareness ritual we can practice that helps us pay attention. Writing poetry establishes us in a present moment that contains both the past and the future.

And it really is a practice, in that you have to keep doing it in order to get better at it. And I don’t mean writing better poems. I mean getting better at stopping, thinking, and writing.

You have to be an antenna, catching whatever signals are in the air. That’s the beautiful thing about radio. The signals change. If you drive across the country, and you keep your radio down around 91.5 or lower, you get really different signals depending on where you are.

I’m sitting in my car right now, and my radio is playing, and the station is 88.1, and I’m getting some pretty sophisticated jazz from Max Roach. It’s perfect. I am enlivened by it. I could write about Judas Priest and Michigan, but that’s not my present moment. Before the end of this post, I may get there. I may start writing about Screaming for Vengeance and the Red Cedar River. But right now, I’m…