Curiosity

I’ve spent the past few weeks helping my composition students develop research questions and combing through poems I wrote in 2022—and realizing how essential curiosity is for both intellectual and creative endeavors. It’s the vital spark that keeps us digging, reaching, experimenting, and finding connections.

I worry sometimes that the sleek instantaneity of Google dims our curiosity. It takes away our time for puzzling and wondering and being uncertain. It encourages us to ask only small and Googleable questions, rather than deeper, more complex ones. And it discourages us from looking inside ourselves—or out at the world beyond our screens—for answers. So I’m dedicating this February to cultivating curiosity in myself and others.

Many of my poems, maybe all of them, begin as questions. What memory does this moment remind me of and why? What’s it like to swim the English Channel? How does sound move through water—and what might these echoes tell us about the difficulty of communicating through language? What does “dead reckoning” mean? Why did the US frame the initial effort to contain Covid as a “war” and how did that metaphor work out for us? Where does this trail lead?

Curiosity is a tug toward discovery—toward the surprises, insights, and revelations that animate a poem. Curiosity is love—if by love we mean steady open-minded focus that waits to see and hear what the other will do next, who they will become.

Curiosity is inspiration, it’s the in-breath that draws us out into the world. This is obvious whenever I watch dogs catch a scent—their ears perk, their nostrils crinkle, their whole bodies seek to answer the call of what’s that and where is it?

Curiosity calls us to pay attention to what is and to imagine what might be.

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