In case you wondered …

… How To Think Like a Poet. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

In our time, the active contemplation of visible phenomena is a difficult task, one perhaps more difficult than in times past. The primary difficulty is very old: habit and familiarity blunt our senses, make us take for granted the strange things we gather around us. The object that engaged us so deeply in a store window—that made us dream of its future uses, and of who we might be and of how we might be perceived if we possessed the object—becomes, after we have possessed it for some time, yet another overlooked thing in our cluttered rooms. The glitter of possibility dims, and what was once a prize now gathers dust, or hangs in the back of the closet.