“Ripple. My favorite word is ripple,” poet Naomi Shihab Nye said. I watched her from my seat in the audience at the Angelo State Writing conference two weeks ago during a Q & A session. Nye sat in a giant overstuffed chair. Though the effect wasn’t comical like Lily Tomlin’s rocking chair, with her hair swept in a side ponytail and wearing a dress with tights and flats, Nye exuded childlike wonder.
“What a great question: What’s my favorite word!” she exclaimed. “We all should think about what our favorite words are more often.”
Nye explained that on the drive to the conference, she’d driven past an old country mailbox. I imagined its mottled gray galvanized steel, perhaps a dent or two, a faded red flag to signal outgoing mail, and the name hand-painted across the side: “A. Ripple.”
I won’t be surprised if Nye writes a poem about ripples, about that old mailbox, about the goats the frolicked in the field beyond the mailbox, about the way the emotions and ideas from that moment have rippled out into the universe. She let us know how she begins to capture a poem, and it begins with the habit of mind.
It’s a simple story, but it’s stuck with me because it speaks to the life a writer must cultivate. To write, I must be present to receive, to notice how the universe is gifting me inspiration and meaning everywhere. In Writing the Australian Crawl, poet William Stafford explains how he identifies inspiration for a poem in the wild. “It’s not about meter, or rhyme, or any easily seen pattern, or any selected kind of content, or any contact with gods, or a goddess, that is crucial—it is some kind of signal to the receiver that what is going on will be a performance that merits an alertness about life right at the time of living it”
Creativity is more about that habit than an innate personality trait. The single greatest habit an artist of any kind can cultivate is openness to experiences. Nye calls this openness to experience observed moments when our spirits our drawn to tiny, odd things, that ultimately connect and have value.
One of my first writing teachers used to remind us, “God is in the details.” It became my writing mantra because it’s true. If we don’t have the details, it’s hard to find context for who we are, where we are, and why we are here. Then we can find the patterns, and those patterns show connections, and that’s the place from where our art can spring.
“Research suggests that our habits of perception and thinking drive creativity more than some mysterious genetic trait, and habits are things we can do something about,” explains David A. Owens in Creative People Must be Stopped: 6 Ways We Kill Innovation (Without Even Trying). “Individuals who are creative possess excellent skills of perception (observation), intellection (thinking and making connections between ideas), and expression (communicating their findings).”
Ripples, of course, are patterns. Reactions to a trigger. A stone plopped into a still pond. But ripple can be a verb too.
What if I cultivated the creative state of being rippled? What would it look like if I allowed my perception to flow in small waves, to fall in undulating folds, to flow with a light rise and fall of sound, or to move with an undulating motion? What might I write from observing that moment?
At the end of her interview, Nye offered this writing practice that I want to share with you.
Writing Prompt:
1. Write down 5 questions you are carrying in your heart.
2. Go outside and notice 5 things. Write them down.
3. Take those two lists and put them together into a poem.
If you try this writing prompt, I’d love to here about the observed moments you noticed. Please share them in the comments!
Recommended Viewing/Reading:
This video poem “Kindness,” written and read by Naomi Shihab Nye.
William Stafford’s title essay, “Writing the Australian Crawl” is available as a free PDF download here.
If you want to understand why our culture is so obsessed with work and why it’s so hard to stop working, read Hustle & Float: Reclaim Your Creativity and Thrive in a World Obsessed with Work by Rahaf Harfoush. It’s also where I first read David A. Owens’s ideas about creativity.
Thank you so much for this Sarah.
Lovely
💖🙏
Here's my resulting poem. It's not great, and doesn't adequately capture my pleasure in that moment. But....
Jazz to the north,
Venders' tents to the south,
but in between I walk alone past graying buildings
in the crisp, still air.
A dry leaf skittering along the curb startles me.
I own this moment.