I learned recently that this year, for the first time, the Wimbledon tennis tournament had an official poet. My first reaction was what a delightful, whimsical idea. My second reaction was that it's so much better an idea if you don't demean it by calling it delightful or whimsical -- if you instead take it seriously.
How inspiring to think that what we do might be worthy of poetry! And how revelatory to think that we might be so self-confident and so intentional as to appoint the poet beforehand, to in effect promise ourselves and those close to us that what we do will be worthy.
In fact, let's take this as our challenge: If you find it incongruous that someone might write a poem about what you do every day, maybe you ought to be doing something else.
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