Slow down...

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"For me poetry 

has always been a way of 

paying attention to the world.  

We hear so many voices every day, 

swirling around us, 

and a poem makes us 

slow down and listen carefully 

to a few things we have really heard, 

deep inside." 

~ Naomi Shihab Nye, 

in The Place My Words are Looking For

I like this description of poetry, "a way of paying attention to the world". Poems, whether I'm reading them or writing them, do cause me to slow down, examine the world around me, listen to it, and focus on things I might not even notice otherwise. Do you agree with Nye's words here? Why or why not?