Reading a poem entails, to a special degree, the act of paying attention; we are required to concentrate our minds, not only to the extent we do habitually on words as they pass in ordinary life but as we are impelled to do on words in the intricacies, frictions, and evasions of lyric form. That so much in contemporary life encourages us to do otherwise — to accept things as they are, whether for the sake of ignorance or convenience — suggests, finally, why it is that poetry matters. Although Coleridge may have been referring specifically to poetry when he devised the phrase, might “a more continuous and equal attention” offer not just a way of reading but of living as well?