Mindfulness and Poetry: Delicious Word Awareness

Everyone's a poet. nnOf 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. nnWords 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. nnOur 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.nnIn 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. nnDon'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. nnTry this test: describe a birthday cake.nnThere'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. nnYou can easily and enjoyably boost your word awareness by n1) selecting a particular cue word as a trigger for mindfulness, or n2) focusing on phrases used in specific settings. nBetter yet, try both! nnBy using a particular word as a mindfulness trigger, you can watch how others create poetic representations of the same element. nnReady for your secret food awareness word? nHere it is: morsel. nnListening for a specific word will develop your ability to nmake distinctions in the way it is used and allow you to watch for subtle variations. Does "morsel" refer to nsomething creamy or chewy? Is it savory or sweet? nnTo play with poetry and mindfulness at the same time, notice phrases used to describe food. Listen to them nwith an ear for rhythm, and picture them as lines of a poem. nnRead 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" nelicit physiological responses. Pay attention to those, and listen for the phrases you hear that create especially vivid sense experiences. nnLinking word pictures with taste helps us anchor our linguistic intelligence with our bodily intelligence, and this makes our mouths very happy indeed! nnDelectable words,nDelicious poetry. Mmmm--nTrue taste sensation.n