{"id":6489,"date":"2011-05-29T17:39:38","date_gmt":"2011-05-30T00:39:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kathrynpetroharper.com\/mindfullife\/?p=6489"},"modified":"2026-01-21T16:32:33","modified_gmt":"2026-01-22T00:32:33","slug":"poetry-and-zen","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kathrynpetroharper.com\/mindfullife\/2011\/05\/29\/poetry-and-zen\/","title":{"rendered":"Poetry and Zen"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I have posted this quote before, but it&#8217;s useful to have a reminder:<\/p>\n<p><strong>On Writing Poetry<\/strong><\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Considering the ways in which so many of us waste our time, what would be wrong with a world in which everybody were writing poems? After all, there\u2019s a significant service to humanity in spending time doing no harm. While you\u2019re writing your poem, there\u2019s one less scoundrel in the world. And I\u2019d like a world, wouldn\u2019t you, in which people actually took time to think about what they were saying? It would be, I\u2019m certain, a more peaceful, more reasonable place. I don\u2019t think there could ever be too many poets. By writing poetry, even those poems that fail and fail miserably, we honor and affirm life. We say \u201cWe loved the earth but could not stay.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u2013Ted Kooser<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>I&#8217;m sharing this after reading Maezen&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/www.karenmaezenmiller.com\/dont-eat-the-label\">post of today<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I have posted this quote before, but it&#8217;s useful to have a reminder: On Writing Poetry Considering the ways in which so many of us waste our time, what would be wrong with a world in which everybody were writing poems? After all, there\u2019s a significant service to humanity in spending time doing no harm. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24,111,28,217,16,215],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6489","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-arts","category-buddhism","category-humanities","category-meditation","category-nature","category-poetry"],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kathrynpetroharper.com\/mindfullife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6489","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kathrynpetroharper.com\/mindfullife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kathrynpetroharper.com\/mindfullife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kathrynpetroharper.com\/mindfullife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kathrynpetroharper.com\/mindfullife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6489"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.kathrynpetroharper.com\/mindfullife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6489\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11850,"href":"https:\/\/www.kathrynpetroharper.com\/mindfullife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6489\/revisions\/11850"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kathrynpetroharper.com\/mindfullife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6489"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kathrynpetroharper.com\/mindfullife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6489"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kathrynpetroharper.com\/mindfullife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6489"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}