The Slowdown: Recent Episodes
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Every weekday, Tracy K. Smith delivers a different way to see the world – through poetry. Produced in partnership with the Poetry Foundation and supported in part by the National Endowment for the Arts.
Today’s poem is Leaving by Madeleine Cravens. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “Today’s poem knows the world is enticing, seductive, full of possibilities. The hack is to consciously curate our pleasures — the slow, intentional cherishing of a life well-lived.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift...
Today’s poem is The Joseph Cornell App by David Roderick. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “The great actor James Earl Jones departed this earth. His passing reminded me of a hilarious app idea I devised at a party. I called it the God App, where the great actor...
Today’s poem is This Living by Amber Tamblyn. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “In my mere five decades on earth, I’ve faced many challenges — thwarted dreams, failed friendships, career disappointments — that often left me feeling alone, stranded in the dry badlands, searing heat bearing down. And...
Today’s poem is If only by Dawn Lundy Martin. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “Today’s poem unapologetically claims psychic space. In order to be at peace and clear-eyed, the speaker forgoes decorative language that would obscure what their heart and mind believe is ethically true.” Celebrate the power...
Today’s poem is Try to Praise the Mutilated World by Adam Zagajewski, translated by Clare Cavanagh The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “One of the great paradoxes in life is the presence of human suffering on the planet amidst prosperity. No religion can explain this other than point to...
Today’s poem is Lying My Head Off by Cate Marvin. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “One of the great feelings of aging is coming clean about my shortcomings. That honesty is an illuminating relief, because, as today’s surrealist poem suggests, the masks we take on eventually make us...
Today’s poem is Homo naledi by Sara Borjas. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “I see poems functioning in the way stones function, as protection, as foundation, even as weaponry. Today’s poem asserts those simple objects that manifest as testament of our durable existence in the face of opposing...
Today’s poem is The Big People by César Vallejo, translated by James Wright. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “Today’s poem strikes that note of fear of being cut off from the world and the impending feelings of abandonment.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The...
Today’s poem is March, the Garden by Chera Hammons The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “People often ask me: can poetry be taught? As if there is a playbook for writing poetry, guidelines, and steps. I believe writing poetry, like gardening, is a gradual accumulation of instinctive habits: observing,...
Today’s poem is A Conversation between Women by Jennifer Chang. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “On any given day, I can call up one of a handful of friends to have tough conversations. Occasionally, I need someone who will challenge my assumptions, who will help me work through...
Today’s poem is Mercy, Mercy Me by Olatunde Osinaike. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. We’re taking a break this week, so we’re sharing some of our favorite episodes from the archive. This episode was originally released on April 16, 2024. In this episode, Major writes… “The speaker in today’s poem survives by an...
Today’s poem is Letter to my sister by Trapeta B. Mayson. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. We’re taking a break this week, so we’re sharing some of our favorite episodes from the archive. This episode was originally released on July 31, 2023. In this episode, Major writes… “My mother did not live long...
Today’s poem is When Your Month is Lonely… by Christine Kwon. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. We’re taking a break this week, so we’re sharing some of our favorite episodes from the archive. This episode was originally released on April 10, 2024. In this episode, Major writes… “I read all those articles that...
Today’s poem is I Am Waiting by Lawrence Ferlinghetti. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. We’re taking a break this week, so we’re sharing some of our favorite episodes from the archive. This episode was originally released on May 14, 2024. In this episode, Major writes… “On a Saturday morning group Zoom call, I...
Today’s poem is First Kiss by Rooja Mohassessy. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “Today’s poem reminds us that kissing is universal, but also something that is not taught, and so, we fumble our way through until we get it right.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift...
Today’s poem is Theories of Influence by Anselm Berrigan The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “Reading is like wandering through our dreams where the details blur once we awaken yet we are still changed throughout our day. Sometimes, we want to be lost, but what is to be gained...
Today’s poem is Chanson d’automne by Paul Verlaine, with special guest Jacques Pépin. He is a French chef, author, culinary educator, television personality, and artist who has appeared on American television, has written for The New York Times and Food & Wine and has authored more than 30 cookbooks. He has been honored with 24...
Today’s poem is Narcissus and the Namesake River by Reginald Shepherd. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “Today’s poem takes up the myth of Narcissus, the nymph who falls in love with his own image.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation...
Today’s poem is For Mac Miller and 2009 by Kayleb Rae Candrilli. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “Because of my family’s addiction issues, I spoke out of fear to my children, and often rather harshly. I worried particularly that they would fall prey to the opioid epidemic that...
Today’s poem is At the Museum of Empress Livia’s Garden Room by Pimone Triplett. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “Today’s lyric poem walks us through a villa garden painted on a fresco. Reading the poem, it is as though we eavesdrop on the speaker’s awe, but also how...
Today’s poem is Nature Poem About Flowers by Matthew Rohrer. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “They say clothes make the man. Frequently though, clothes hide the person, particularly a person’s depth of feeling.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes...
Today’s poem is In Jerusalem by Mahmoud Darwish, translated by Fady Joudah, with special guest adrienne maree brown. Through her writing, which includes short- and long-form fiction, nonfiction, spells, tarot decks and poetry; her music, which includes songwriting, singing and immersive musical rituals; and her podcasts, including How to Survive the End of the World,...
Today’s poem is Picking Favorites by George Franklin. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “Today’s poem finds a capacious way of existing that honors an entire life and everyone in it.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp
Today’s poem is Oh, y’know, just your standard Q&A by Alex Z. Salinas. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “Today’s poem is the kind of interview that I long to give, one full of non sequiturs and expansive evasions.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The...
Today’s poem is Fragment 31 by Sappho, translated by Christopher Childers. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “If you listen close enough to a poem, especially to the very best of them, you can hear on their surface, the poet’s breathing and silences shaped by the pace and noise...
Today’s poem is End of December by Ashjan Hendi, translated by Moneera Al-Ghadeer. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “Tests to long-term commitments are bound to happen. Expending too much affection can lead to exhaustion and the bruise of eventual disappointment. As today’s poem suggests, one of the secrets...
Today’s poem is maggie and milly and molly and may by E.E. Cummings, with special guest Eric Whitacre. Whitacre is a Grammy Award-winning composer, conductor, and speaker. A graduate of The Juilliard School, his works are programmed worldwide, and his ground-breaking Virtual Choirs have united well over 100,000 singers from more than 145 countries. Upcoming...
Today’s poem is from “Take Me Back, Burden Hill” by L. Lamar Wilson. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “Humans, it seems, are bound to feel adrift. So many times in my life, I have worked to muster a belief that all of it matters. I have made great...
Today’s poem is Enlightenment by Vijay Seshadri. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “Today’s poem points to how people’s sense of desolation and lack of meaning sometimes fuel a desire to save the world, work they go about with patronizing superiority and condescension.” Celebrate the power of poems with...
Today’s poem is The Gardener 85 by Rabindranath Tagore. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “Poetry has a way of collapsing time, and by working the senses, having us experience an era. In the blues rhythms of Langston Hughes’ poetry, I hear early twentieth century New York, and going...
Today’s poem is Nude by James Kelly Quigley. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “I long to write poems of a mystical nature, where the wisdom of the ages is carried forth in new forms and phrases. Today’s brief poem, in its associative leaps, could be the seed to...
Today’s poem is America by Claude McKay, with special guest Tonya Mosley. Tonya is the host and creator of Truth Be Told and founder of TMI Productions. She is also a co-host of Fresh Air, and a correspondent and former host of Here & Now, the midday radio show co-produced by NPR and WBUR. The...
Today’s poem is Machete: Look by Jasminne Mendez. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “Today’s poem reminds us of the tools that break the bonds of human connection and life, how we must go against rhetoric that strips us of our power to feel empathy and exercise grace.” Celebrate...
Today’s poem is Fowl at Large by Sarah Giragosian. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “Courage is at the heart of writing, and as today’s poem suggests, a wildness of being, that fires away from timidity and into realms of the self as glamorous and unpredictable, as if you...
Today’s poem is Hunger by Kelli Russell Agodon. This spring, we asked our community to submit poems that have helped you slow down in your lives. Thank you to the nearly 300 of you who sent us poems to read and enjoy. This week we’re featuring the team’s selections. Today’s selection was submitted by Jeannine...
Today’s poem is Separation Wall by Naomi Shihab Nye. This spring, we asked our community to submit poems that have helped you slow down in your lives. Thank you to the nearly 300 of you who sent us poems to read and enjoy. This week we’re featuring the team’s selections. Today’s selection was submitted by...
Today’s poem is Sono by Suji Kwock Kim. This spring, we asked our community to submit poems that have helped you slow down in your lives. Thank you to the nearly 300 of you who sent us poems to read and enjoy. This week we’re featuring the team’s selections. In this episode, Major writes… “Today’s...
Today’s poem is From Blossoms by Li-Young Lee. This spring, we asked our community to submit poems that have helped you slow down in your lives. Thank you to the nearly 300 of you who sent us poems to read and enjoy. Today’s selection was submitted by Candace from North Carolina. This week we’re featuring...
Today’s poem is One Art by Elizabeth Bishop. This spring, we asked our community to submit poems that have helped you slow down in your lives. Thank you to the nearly 300 of you who sent us poems to read and enjoy. This week we’re featuring the team’s selections. Today’s selection was submitted by Doug...
Today’s poem is The Way by Cynthia Cruz. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “This past spring like every spring many of my students graduated into the uncertainty of their futures. Their lives can take so many directions. I am curious as to what ultimately launches us as human...
Today’s poem is from “American Analects” by Gary Young. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “I find that poems emerge out of dialogues that I have either with myself, other works of art, or my friends. In this way, my poems are a collaboration of silences.” Celebrate the power...
Today’s poem is Refusing Rilke’s “You must change your life” by Remica Bingham-Risher. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “I live with Rilke’s famous line, “You must change your life,” in my ear on repeat, an earworm, as if something is less than stellar about who I am today....
Today’s poem is Transfusion by Shara Lessley. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “Today’s fine poem creates the feeling of a medically induced slumber, but, by working layers of sound, a gorgeous aesthetic tension enlivens my ears.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today....
Today’s poem is Wind Poem by Song Yu, translated by Chloe Garcia Roberts. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “During moments of political crises, I think of wind, how conflicts arise and unfold. Today’s poem, written some 17 centuries ago, effectuates a storm. In the very structure of its...
Today’s poem is Pando Aspen Clone by Jacqueline Balderrama. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “When lost, truth is, someone always rescued me from my disorientation. Today’s poem reminds me that we are a single body, reliant on each other to find our way.” Celebrate the power of poems...
Today’s poem is Act of Gratitude by Cyrus Cassells. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “Reading poems that strike big-hearted notes of the ecstatic have me celebrate my own victories and joys, small things in life that are meaningful, yet unnoticeable to the distracted eye: a child’s hug at...
Today’s poem is Voice Clear As by Kemi Alabi. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “Long ago, I knew I needed a new conception of heaven. The one with pearly white gates and winged angels from my youth in church just wasn’t working for me. I mean, I get...
Today’s poem is But Beautiful by Rodney Terich Leonard. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “Some poets aim for meaning and clarity of emotion. And then, the best does that and more. They also play language as though words were comprised of tones and notes, as though the poem...
Today’s poem is Each Morning Again by Rose McLarney. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “My daily routines present no surprises; they keep the beat of my life. The foreseeable brings me comfort. I typically stick to the script of the previous day. But writing poetry is something that...
Today’s poem is Naïve by Tim Seibles. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “Today’s deeply reflective poem encourages a return to ourselves as open and loving, even at the risk of seeming dewy-eyed and idealistic.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation...
Today’s poem is We Never Stop Talking About Our Mothers by Diannely Antigua. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “I treasure the elder women in my life for their conscious, yet easy-going transference of soul-nourishing values. Matriarchs mediated conflicts among family members. They put into play care and cohesion....
Today’s poem is A Blessing by Samyak Shertok. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “Today’s remarkable poem exalts in the cultural rite of eating a meal prepared by an elder. Its sumptuous language and lush syntax are markers of the summer’s abundance.” Celebrate the power of poems with a...
Today’s poem is from “Requiem 1935-1940” by Anna Akhmatova, translated by Stanley Kunitz and Max Hayward. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “What is the role of poetry during war? Does it have a function? Then and now, poets and readers of poetry see language as the terrain where...
Today’s poem is In Love by Chloe Martinez. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “The first time I was in love, I started missing baseball practice. Instead, I went to the library. Cherie spent afternoons doing her homework there. I could barely think about anything but her. What an...
Today’s poem is A Toast by Oksana Zabuzhko. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “Today’s poem honors the immense feelings of connection art and poetry offer us. It notes what care is possible when we listen to each other and co-create a world where decency and regard are the...
Today’s poem is Selfsame River Thrice by Alicia Mountain. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “Writing poems can be a lot like shopping in a thrift store where all the forgotten items are yours, and the act of finding language is a form of discovery and recovery. Today’s poem...
Today’s poem is Illumination by Natasha Trethewey. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “Today’s elegant poem reads like a manifesto for those who rigorously annotate. For those who know that marking a book renders visible silent conversations.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today....
Today’s poem is from “The Crystal Text” by Clark Coolidge. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “Poetry negotiates that space between our inner life and the relational world we share with others. Magically, we make plain what we feel and observe to convey what some might call a soul....
Today’s poem is I Tune My Body and My Brain to the Music of the Land by Natalie Shapero. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “I wonder how much of our authentic selves are lost in the belief that we are stronger collectively, when we adhere this way, to...
Today’s poem is Fuji, Ararat by Legna Rodríguez Iglesias, translated by Eduardo Aparicio. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, guest host Leslie Sainz writes… “Today’s exquisite poem infuses the Petrarchan sonnet with playful existentialism and self-soothing. It’s Nietzsche meets Anti-Eat, Pray, Love—and as a work of translation, it defies impossibility.” Celebrate...
Today’s poem is Agony’s Rasp by Garous Abdolmalekian, translated by Ahmad Nadalizadeh and Idra Novey. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, guest host Leslie Sainz writes… “Today’s poem simultaneously inhabits the planes of presence and absence, conveying the suffering of avoidance from multiple perspectives. With restraint and disorienting beauty, we are...
Today’s poem is Urine Season by Niina Pollari. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, guest host Leslie Sainz writes… “When someone in my life—an acquaintance, a coworker, a friend or beloved—experiences a tremendous loss, I am acutely reminded of how language fails us. We give out heartfelt condolences such as “I’m...
Today’s poem is A Book of Music by Jack Spicer. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, guest host Leslie Sainz writes… “Today’s nimble poem inspires me to think about rope idioms in the context of romantic relationships. When did you show your lover the ropes? Have you given your lover enough...
Today’s poem is Lonely Women by Choi Seungja, translated by Won-Chung Kim and Cathy Park Hong. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, guest host Leslie Sainz writes… “I learned how to enjoy my own company while living in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania. One evening, I decided to enter the Campus Theatre, an art-deco...
Today’s poem is Love Poem by the Light of the Refrigerator by Alisha Dietzman. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, guest host Leslie Sainz writes… “Today’s poem, with its phantom-like repetition and delicate renderings of stereotypically gendered décor, demands our aesthetic attention. It is at once domestic and elemental, modest and...
Today’s poem is Horse by TR Brady. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, guest host Leslie Sainz writes… “Today’s deceptively simple poem is as provoking as it is spare. With parallel syntax and capacious anticipation, we witness the unbridgeable silences that exist between man and beast, man and earth, and, most...
Today’s poem is Screenplay by Harryette Mullen. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, guest host Leslie Sainz writes… “Today’s poem performs the mundane in cinematic fashion. Through sharp auditory imagery, deliberate juxtaposition, and the suggestion of ritual, it reminds us that, though the musical scores of our lives are never not...
Today’s poem is Hyperacusis by Santee Frazier. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, guest host Leslie Sainz writes… “I find that I’m especially sensitive to sound. I also find that sonics drive my poetics. In my role as an editor, I gravitate towards writing that prioritizes rhythm, be it harmonious or...
Today’s poem is When I Was in My Early Thirties I Saw Elton John in a Nightclub in Atlanta Called Tongue and Groove by Khadijah Queen. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, guest host Leslie Sainz writes… “Today’s poem transports us to a night out worth remembering, not for its intoxicating...
Today’s poem is Fish, Serpent, Egg, Scorpion by Kwame Dawes. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “Today’s poem highlights that cycle of hard truths and compassion passed between fathers and sons.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp
Today’s poem is Dolly Would by Julie E. Bloemeke. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “To build an image and reputation from dreams requires herculean efforts that often involve doubts, failures, and sacrifices, but as we hear in today’s poem, a devotedness to one’s art that transforms a passion...
Today’s poem is Orientation by Cindy Juyoung Ok. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “Every poem is a bridge between nature and us, in that what lies hidden, what is below, is somehow familiar, and brought to consciousness.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown...
Today’s poem is i have an irrational fear of spiders by Charlie Getter. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “Today’s poem smartly interrogates the role of fears and how they might unreasonably control our lives.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation...
Today’s poem is Visible Light by Heidi Seaborn. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “As a child, on summer evenings, my friends and I ran through the neighborhood collecting lightning bugs. They were most visible in vacant lots, but we feared those dark places we sometimes entered. So, the...
Today’s poem is At the Rainbow Cattle Company by Bruce Snider. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “Today’s poem names the silent syncopated talk of the body that occurs when two people are in sync, in graceful movements, when they let each other lead.” Celebrate the power of poems...
Today’s poem is Americans by Katie Peterson. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “Whenever I hear a person refer to people by their geographic or cultural or national association, I wince. In doing so, we falsely implicate everything from intelligence levels to physical appearances. This strikes me as crude,...
Today’s poem is The Alien by Greg Delanty. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “However tight the team of parents, and family and community beyond that, supporting a child in utero, that baby is carried by one body alone. Their body is not only one of creation, of labor,...
Today’s poem is Felonious States of Adjectival Excess Featuring Comparative and Superlative Forms by A. H. Jerriod Avant. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “I am drawn to poets who, like the author of today’s poem, bring imagination and attention to sonic idioms of a poem. They make reading...
Today’s poem is How It Will End by Denise Duhamel. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “Today’s poem illustrates how difficult it is to plot the fate of a couple, especially one whose ups and downs are played out publicly.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to...
Today’s poem is Cy Twombly’s Untitled (Say Goodbye Catullus, to the shores of Asia Minor) by Javier O. Huerta. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “This week’s episodes are a special feature on ekphrasis – poems which engage with works of art. Ekphrastic poetry sometimes pushes back against the...
Today’s poem is Hagar in the Wilderness by Tyehimba Jess. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “This week’s episodes are a special feature on ekphrasis – poems which engage with works of art. Today’s poet pays homage to an artist who, with her own hands, made art out of...
Today’s poem is Post-Industrial Society Has Arrived by Vidhu Aggarwal. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “This week’s episodes are a special feature on ekphrasis – poems which engage with works of art. Poets possess an expansive intuition, a proclivity towards image-making that meets head-on the most difficult of...
Today’s poem is Two Paintings Seen Again by Rachel Hadas. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “This week’s episodes are a special feature on ekphrasis – poems which engage with works of art. Today’s ekphrastic poem makes a compelling assertion that to fully register the power of art, we...
Today’s poem is Not So Much an End as an Entangling by Linda Gregerson. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “This week’s episodes are a special feature on ekphrasis – poems which engage with works of art. The vision of birds stilled in motion at the center of Tom...
Today’s poem is English by Janel Pineda. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “Today’s poem brilliantly figures the psychological complexities of adopting a new language, and a way of thinking, while losing another.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a...
Today’s poem is What Good Is A Castle by Linda Susan Jackson. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “Those signs are back; a favorite restaurant near campus suddenly closed. My network news show has a new host; my local bagel shop removed the best breakfast sandwich this side of...
Today’s poem is In the House With No Doors by Sarah Kay. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “Today’s poem speaks to the intimacy roommates share, how sometimes we start off as strangers then, as we enter into each other’s routines, become the best of friends.” Celebrate the power...
Today’s poem is Childhood by David Baker. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “I enjoy today’s poem immensely for how it makes its opening comparison, then leads us to the sweet conclusion, one about an experience we all share. Yet, it individualizes through the power of metaphor.” Celebrate the...
Today’s poem is The Empire of Light by Michael Dumanis. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “Today’s poem reveals how poets distinctly process the world. A fragmented mix of images might reflect how we naturally think. Spontaneity defines our lyricism, and its pleasure is its speed.” Celebrate the power...
Today’s poem is Monet Refuses the Operation by Lisel Mueller. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “Poets and visual artists work to give representation to the world which shimmers and blurs. Sometimes only impressions are available. Rather than a fidelity to things as they are, we desire to represent...
Today’s poem is A Black Doe in the Anthropocene by Artress Bethany White. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “Here is my ignorance; I thought we settled the matter of the “Anthropocene” a long time ago. Isn’t there enough conclusive evidence? Wars, loss of biodiversity, overpopulation, endangered species, deforestation,...
Today’s poem is At My Funeral by Hélène Cardona. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “Ultimately, we do not know the experience of dying. We can only imagine. Artists, though, have fun playing with the mystery of what happens when we transition to no longer walking the earth in...
Today’s poem is I Am Waiting by Lawrence Ferlinghetti. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “On a Saturday morning group Zoom call, I wore my Philadelphia Phillies cap. A friend almost choked on his coffee, confusing my red hat for a MAGA hat. It made for a funny exchange,...
Today’s poem is Mercy by Dessa. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “I never took to the attitude of I’ll show them. It concedes that those people, people who did not think enough of me to take care of my feelings, are still in my life, in an unhealthy...
Today’s poem is Frame Six by Cheswayo Mphanza. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “Occasionally, I experience a psychological disconnection between my work, my life, and the world. Finding myself not home, again, my spirit was trending a Willy Loman aesthetic. A ‘disassociation of self’ often reminds me I...
Today’s poem is The Mothers by Jill Bialosky. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “Today’s poem beautifully captures those complex emotions of watching our children emerge into themselves — and its threat to our identity.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation...
Today’s poem is Egrets, While War by Tishani Doshi. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “Today’s compelling poem honors the ancient and indomitable essence of human beings who continue on even in the face of tragedy, who crossover into the perfect fullness of their truth and emotions.” Celebrate the...
Today’s poem is Sl(e)ight by Alice White. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “We recognize the vulnerability in children. Our natural impulse is to protect them from the troubles and potential harms that will come their way, knowing that suffering is an inevitable part of their journey. For this...
Today’s poem is The Nation by Roy Fisher. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “It’s important for us to avoid what Nobel laureate Wole Soyinka once phrased as “saline consciousness,” that is, the belief that only what lies within our boundaries is worth noticing. We can roam beyond our...
Today’s poem is Blue Hour by Chanda Feldman. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “Although about the birth of a child, what I love about today’s poem is how it parallels my growing sense of care for natural environments. When my children were born, their bodies demanded a softness...
Today’s poem is Never Did Say So by Caridad Moro-Gronlier. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “Today’s poem explores the depths of its speaker by applying the lyrics of an iconic artist who gets that indomitable spirit of smart, independent women.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift...
Today’s poem is Life on Earth by Dorianne Laux. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “Poems buttress me against the hurt and the harm and the uncertainty of life itself. I fear that the global conflicts we’re witnessing are negatively impacting the health and mental wellbeing of people who...
Today’s poem is Accessory to War by Kim Stafford. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “Today’s sobering poem lands a powerful reminder: that even when we adhere to a belief against war, even when we wish not to collude in acts of aggression, in a powerful nation as ours,...
Today’s poem is Life In The Gush Of Boasts by Elijah Burrell. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “Most writers are not “All eyes on me,” but the psychology of the social media “like” and “follower” becomes validation, it seems, between books.” Celebrate the power of poems with a...
Today’s poem is Self-Portrait with Tumbling and Lasso by Eduardo C. Corral. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “These days, we are loving reading and writing self-portrait poems, what I call the “verbal selfie.” It allows the author to be the runway, to elevate themselves into the frame of...
Today’s poem is Black Book of Creation by Shanta Lee Gander. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “Today’s poem builds on the belief that imagining is a kind of magic and time travel, that listening to the soil and all the voices within is a monumental way into both...
Today’s poem is Chaos Theory by Clint Smith. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “Occasionally, I try to follow the series of decisions that led me to this present, however triumphant or painful. My life wavers between fate and destiny. But then again, poetry brings me to the belief...
Today’s poem is How to Be a Good Savage by Mikeas Sánchez, translated by Wendy Call and Shook. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “Today’s poem ironizes the lens through which the colonizer sees Indigenous peoples as uncivilized. It is a horrible term that diminishes a people’s humanity and...
Today’s poem is 1971 Pontiac LeMans by Thomas Bolt. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “Today’s poem reminds me how, in some instances, automobiles are charged with a certain kind of masculinity that can be beautiful and destructive at the same time.” Celebrate the power of poems with a...
Today’s poem is Ode to The Lone Star State by Jubi Arriola-Headley. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “On a flight to Kansas City just before the most recent Super Bowl, the pilot taunted Chiefs football fans. Just before takeoff, he donned his Dallas Cowboys baseball cap. In jest,...
Today’s poem is Something by Andrea Cohen. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “On a long drive through upstate New York, I ran out of podcasts, six hours in. So, I asked Siri to tell me a joke. She said, “Why did the meatball tell the spaghetti to go...
Today’s poem is Rant by Nathalie Anderson. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “It feels like many people are passing from our lives. Not that the death of a poet is any more devastating, but when a poet dies, my grief is heavier. The year 2023 saw the loss...
Today’s poem is Mercy, Mercy Me by Olatunde Osinaike. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “The speaker in today’s poem survives by an adherence to their values — but also by a willingness to adopt new codes, to risk new experiences, to take on new attitudes.” Celebrate the power...
Today’s poem is Gacela of the Dark Death by Federico García Lorca, translated by Merryn Williams. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “Today’s poem has me recall a pilgrimage to the home of a cherished poet, whose mystery is the very fire that channels my faith in poetry as...
Today’s poem is Nameless Places by Tony Petrosky. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “This summer, I get to write in a castle in Italy at an artist retreat. I am hoping my assigned room is in a dungeon. Otherwise, I am afraid high ceilings will mean high windows,...
Today’s poem is 00000000 by Erin Marie Lynch. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “Today’s poem disentangles the quest for money, transactional desire, and lyric subjectivity. Its teasing interplay of language brings into close proximity art, social class, and manners of currency.” Celebrate the power of poems with a...
Today’s poem is When Your Month is Lonely… by Christine Kwon. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “I read all those articles that proclaim how lonely we are becoming; I believe there’s some truth to it. Here’s my fear: all my work is making me alien to myself and...
Today’s poem is Eid Mubarak by Fady Joudah. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “Today’s poem makes a profound commitment to carry the living and the dead in language forward into time, to record our presence, to meld the collectivity and richness of humanity into a singular vision that...
Today’s poem is abundance of light by erica lewis.
The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “I hear in today’s poem a haunting, reckoning, and nostalgia – dominant themes among poets on the road. On stages and podiums, we traded poems about heartbreak, childhood memories, and personal loss. What emerges is a triumphant questioning spirit that overcomes grief and uncertainty.”
Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp
Today’s poem is Frederick Douglass by Robert Hayden.
The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “Today’s monumental poem keeps alive the fighting spirit of one of the great minds of the 19th century, whose eloquent speeches and books brought into focus freedoms we sometimes take for granted.”
Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp
Today’s poem is Afternoon in Andalusia by Sahar Romani.
The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “Today’s poem also provides us with a sense of how the mind and heart make from symbols and patterns a space beyond our reach, where we fleetingly glimpse, if not encounter, the divine.”
Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp
Today’s poem is Nocturne by Oliver Baez Bendorf.
The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “In young adulthood, long before children, jobs, home ownership, my evenings felt like a blank canvas of cultural and spiritual possibility. I felt a joyous connection to all around me, artists and writers and musicians, thinkers and believers, both living and departed, alive in their pursuit of beauty and knowledge. I was starving and knew it. On South Street, one bookstore stayed open till midnight. Many nights I closed it down, sitting in a corner reading a paperback, a beer in my pocket or a cup of coffee in my hand. At some point, I knew I needed to make art, to move to celebrating the world’s loveliness. I was perpetually hungry to do so.”
Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp
Today’s poem is I’m Nobody! Who are you? (260) by Emily Dickinson.
The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “Today’s popular poem encourages a kind of disappearance from life rather than a need for attention. Cosmologically speaking, there’s a virtue in acknowledging one’s insignificance, maybe, too, in instigating others to enjoy the pause of anonymity and quietness of being."
Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp
Today’s poem is On Earth by Andrew McFadyen-Ketchum.
The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “After my last heartbreak, before I even tried to enter into a new relationship, my friend Victoria noted how she and I never give up on love, which we both know is not found in any one person, but an aspirational state two people can achieve when they partner on an authentic journey together. Although the insidious and unprocessed hurts from past relationships threaten to work their way into our daily interactions, a new love is an invitation to get it right in this lifetime.”
Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp
Today’s poem is Alain Locke in Stoughton Hall by John Keene.
The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “Today’s dramatic monologue reminds me that poets are also archivists, storytellers who celebrate the past. We go beyond our self as subject matter to become humanity’s finest chroniclers.”
Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp
Today’s poem is Rooms by the Sea by Lauren Aliza Green.
The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “My early adult years were a stream of impulsive decisions. Some worked out and many did not — for example, the used car with the too-good-to-be-true price tag, as well as my brief career as an accountant. The speaker in today’s poem also realizes our best laid plans are often thwarted by unforeseen consequences. Some decisions work out, some do not. Even well-reasoned choices are not guaranteed to bring our wishes within reach, especially when it comes to love.”
Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp
Today’s poem is Hair by Clarence Major.
The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “Today’s poem reminds me of what my mother, who knew our heads to be sacred and mystical, told me years ago: you don't just let anyone in your hair.”
Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp
Today’s poem is Love Sits by My Father by Qutouf Elobaid.
The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “People in love are complicated; no one knows this more than the children, who get a front row seat to how affection plays itself out in the home, or not. Which influences how they interact and understand intimacy operating, or not, around them. Many psychological experts suggest making affection and tenderness appropriately visible in the lives of children. It goes far to ensure emotional stability. What children observe may drive them as adults to positively replicate their parent’s model, attempt to fulfill their parents' lack, or avoid intimacy altogether. A kiss, a hug, any physical expression of fondness is an active possibility of healing that radiates out into the world.”
Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp
Today’s poem is In Praise of Mystery: A Poem for Europa by Ada Limón.
This June, the US Poet Laureate and former host of The Slowdown, Ada Limón, unveiled a poem that she wrote for NASA's Europa Clipper, a poem that will be inscribed in her own hand on the side of the spacecraft set for Jupiter's water moon, 1.8 billion miles away. Her work is partnered with the Message in a Bottle project, which invites anyone to have their name etched on the microchip mounted to the outside of the spacecraft. Our producer, Myka Kielbon, met with Ada in the ceremonial offices of the Poet Laureate in the Library of Congress, to connect on this moment that merges science, art and humanity.
A shortened version of their conversation is in today’s podcast feed. The full version of this interview is on our website, slowdownshow.org.
Today’s poem is Two Photographs by Theresa Lola.
The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “Susan Sontag, writing about Robert Mapplethorpe, once wrote, “a [photograph] convey[s] a truth about the subject, a truth that would not be known were it not captured. . . All such claims, however contradictory, are claims of power over the subject.” The speaker in today’s poem remarks how photographs, be they selfies or those professionally rendered, capture our growth.”
Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp
Today’s poem is Failed Essay on Privilege by Elisa Gonzalez.
The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “We are in the midst of an attack on perceived advantages. Earlier this year, the U.S. Supreme Court ended race conscious admissions in higher education. The decision is sure to have a domino effect in our society. The ruling closed one of the proven means to economic and upward mobility for everyone, but especially talented youth of various backgrounds born into low-income households, or, like me, raised in working-class communities.”
Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp
Today’s poem is I wanted music by Sarah Ruhl. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, guest host Shira Erlichman writes… “The doorbell rings. It’s my childhood friend, Jake. Where any two friends would exchange hellos, he and I say nothing. We get in his car without a word. There are only 3 rules at a Silence Party: 1) no talking 2) hang out 3) listen. Because we aren’t trying to fill the air with words––our observations, what we like or dislike––we are left to experience.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp
Today’s poem is from FIXER by Edgar Kunz. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, guest host Shira Erlichman writes… “In our old apartment, if it wasn’t one thing, it was another. Besides being old and hardly-maintained by management, the building was a living being, prone to moods. To fix her was an illusion. What we did was temporarily subdue, patch up, cover over.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp
Today’s poem is Thirty-Fifth Year by Charif Shanahan. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, guest host Shira Erlichman writes… “As each birthday arrives, what do we expect from our new age, its vantage point? Today’s poem unspools a wealth of questions, both practical and existential.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp
Today’s poem is Willing in the Orisha by Camonghne Felix. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, guest host Shira Erlichman writes… “Do we reach for ritual to melt paralysis? Do we reach for ritual when our personhood is fragmented, or lost to us? Today’s poem explores the daring act of ritual. I love its decision to move toward incantation, toward worship.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp
Today’s poem is Famous by Naomi Shihab Nye. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, guest host Shira Erlichman writes… “What makes someone famous? The dictionary says it’s the “state of being known or talked about by many people.” Today’s poet resituates our cultural obsession with stardom and flips on its head who gets to be fanatically revered.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp
Today’s poem is Crackerbell by Mary Ruefle. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, guest host Shira Erlichman writes… “Today’s poem confronts the fork in the road where we are pushed to change. And though this push is ruthless and confusing and total, the speaker humbly persists. I learn a lot from that persistence, which could also be called self-love.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp
Today’s poem is The Jungle by Carrie Fountain. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, guest host Shira Erlichman writes… “Today’s poet reflects on a girlhood lived in contrast to boys. What does it mean to be a girl, then a woman, then a mother to a son in this culture, this chaos, this jungle?” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp
Today’s poem is Sonnet written walking under the mess some magnolia made by Jay Deshpande. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, guest host Shira Erlichman writes… “Today’s poem understands not just the bloom of romantic love, but the rot and mess and grit that’s just as worthy of our praise, of the glorious spending of our hearts.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp
Today’s poem is The Dictator in Prison by Adélia Prado, translated by Ellen Doré Watson. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, guest host Shira Erlichman writes… “In one lifetime we’re tasked with bearing a range of horrors. It amazes me that underneath it all––the denial, dissociation, or rage––the heart keeps going. I used to think this gust of empathy was my weakness. I now know it’s a superpower.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp
Today’s poem is Very Large Moth by Craig Arnold. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, guest host Shira Erlichman writes… “Today’s poem teaches us that you can’t choose your holy moments. The poet is a sudden citizen of bewilderment. When it comes time to express a kinship across species, he finds himself bereft.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp
Today’s poem is After We Buried the Dog in the Dark by Jin Cordaro.
The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “My family has a shelf of movies to test whether someone new to our orbit has a heart. At the top of this short list is the film Hachi: A Dog’s Tale. based on the true story of a white Akita dog named Hachiko. If said person is not bawling their eyes out by the end of this movie they just might not have a pulse. The movie is in its own category of sentimentality, one which dogs demand of us. Yet, what breaks through is a textured allegory about a dog’s loyalty. A dog’s love is primitive, mythic, and the stuff of folklore.”
Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp
Today's poem is Survivor by Geffrey Davis.
The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “These days, whenever I sit down to dinner with my kids or am fortunate to catch them in their busy lives, I wistfully recall the pleasures of becoming a father… and the shock of it. Not that Langston was an abstract idea for nine months, but when your child, pretty much a biological speculation grown into a creature, is placed in your arms for the first time screaming itself into the world, an amazing wave of obligation and accountability lands full force into your heart. No experience up till that moment suffices to prepare you. When my friends arrived home with their adopted daughters, I read that same jolt of recognition on their faces.”
Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp
Today’s poem is A Guy in a Black SUV by William J Harris.
The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “Today’s poem, through use of hyperbole, voice, and tone, arrives at visualization as a form of retribution. Its strong cinematic action subverts and upends gender norms. The poem reminds me how we stretch our minds to manifest feelings and unknown states within—a power that affords us catharsis.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp
Today’s poem is Sorcery by Jessica Hagedorn.
The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “Today’s poem cautions us to the bewitching, yet striking, perfection of art and beauty. We are susceptible to its magic, and even sometimes, to the magic of its maker.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp
Today’s poem is While Shaving by Alfredo Aguilar.
The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes "Today’s poem beautifully illustrates a startling recognition: parents provide us with the skills they’ll need us to perform when they are no longer independent, the lessons we will remember them by when they are no longer with us."
Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp
Today’s poem is Voyeuristic Intentions by Adele Elise Williams.
The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “If the Yoruba proverb, character is beauty, is true, then, given the hostilities in the world and mass indifference, a bright spirit, full of warmth and compassion, is likely forged over time out of suffering. Such a soul exudes empathy and light. And thus, we acknowledge and survive off each other’s radiance, a moral beauty, as the ancient Greeks believed, that equated to goodness. ”
Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp
Today’s poem is Happy Campus by Rodrigo Toscano.
The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “Today’s poem of self-mocking irony makes the connection between our daily routines and the natural and artificial environments that we navigate—how we negotiate a dissonance that complicates our sense of what’s real and what’s unreal.”
Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp
Today’s poem is Labor Theory of Value by Angie Sijun Lou.
The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “Today’s poet sees the field—or the writing of poetry—as a means of strengthening our bonds, our Platonic love. It’s a labor of seeing that transforms those fragmented moments, and unconnected objects in the world into an ever-expansive, idealized symbol of desire and understanding.”
Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp
Today’s poem is Penmanship by Allison Joseph.
The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “Today’s poem venerates the power of writing as an exchange with the world, how our thoughts travel outward, but then, in the end, bring us to the center of our own existence.”
Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp
Today’s poem is Letter to my sister by Trapeta B. Mayson.
The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “My mother did not live long enough to read my poems about her. I like to think that she would have appreciated how I processed our shared history and relationships, even the difficult moments. I like to think she’d have granted me the latitude to craft the poems I needed to write, and possibly understood that the practice of poetry is one of imagining and composing rather than simply reporting what happened. ”
Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp
Today’s poem is Epilogue by Robert Lowell.
The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “Today’s poem affirms the simple approach of narrating our lives as a means of shining a light on our complex era. Given our quick passage on earth, the poem argues that to tell our stories and name the people who populate our lives is noble and rewarding enough.”
Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp
Today’s poem is elegy for the moaner, 2016 by Airea D. Matthews.
The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “Grieving the death of a relative, or friend, is hard work. Work made even more difficult by the sudden and complex task of interring a body and its belongings. The living are thrust into the minutiae of funeral proceedings, caterers, florists, lawyers, movers, and estate professionals. All the while, hearts are heavy.”
Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp
Today’s poem is this is a library by Asiya Wadud.
The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “Today’s empathetic poem, which takes the tone of an elementary school primer, encourages a greater noticing of those who are leastwise among us, who fall outside the social fabric of our care. In doing so, hopefully, we might reverse prevailing attitudes toward the unhoused, who often are the target of violence and intolerance.”
Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp
Today’s poem is Prayer by Philip Metres.
The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “Today’s poem follows a long tradition of devotional poetry. In such poems, often a speaker asks for intervention, relief, and renewal. It is a human call out into the empty immensity of the universe. It is one of the things we do during quiet acts of meditation. We ask for help in dealing with our human cares. We ask to have our fears dissolved, to be shown a way, to break open into a new reality.”
Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp
Today’s poem is Via Politica by Luljeta Lleshanaku, translated by Ani Gjika.
The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “Everyday, people around the world are living through astonishing crises, both multi-generational and personal, vast and siloed. Today’s poem speaks to the all-encompassing and leveling despair we carry when we are survivors, or the descendents of survivors.”
Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp
Today’s poem is from "The Garden of Limbs" by Cristina Pérez Díaz.
The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “Today’s poem, which alludes to the biblical story of Adam and Eve and the first garden, celebrates the carnal sweetness of those chill days with a beloved. The poem brazenly proclaims the power (and maybe even recklessness) of sensuous mating that is its own form of world-building, voyage, and cultivation.”
Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp
Today’s poem is Country of Water by Mahogany L. Browne.
The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “Sometimes, I walk down the street, rooting for myself. Sometimes, it takes being in your own corner, especially when faced with a challenge for which nothing less than an attitude of absolute confidence will do. Today’s poem is all about self-blessing. Far from boasting or ego-tripping, the speaker makes an incantation out of self-affirmation.”
Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp
Today’s poem is Theme for the nautical cowboy by Kinsale Drake.
The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “One of the reasons why I'm drawn to poetry is because it invites a scale of seeing that sometimes might go undetected. The work of our guest, Leah Thomas, allows folks to engage in what might be hidden. Today’s poem, one by a poet featured on Season Three of As She Rises, invites that same scale of seeing and care, not only across universes, but also throughout time.”
Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp
Today’s poem is A Funeral Ending with Beyoncé by Karisma Price.
The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “When speaking about the dead, my uncle makes sure to hit his fisted hand on any object that looks grainy and some shade of brown. One theory is that the practice of touching wood has its roots in the medieval belief that trees contained spirits that positively intervened when summoned. Today’s poem continues this faith, that we can somehow protect ourselves, by acting out instinctive customs against bad news or fateful tragedy.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp
Today’s poem is Not It by Caitlin Doyle.
The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “Memories of our youth make the journey to adulthood seem like a flicker. One minute you’re ten years old, rounding 2nd base or performing Sleeping Beauty in a ballet recital… the next, you’re sitting on a call with colleagues, talking marketing strategies or marveling at the swiftness of time with family and friends.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp
Today’s poem is Dear Red by Jonathan Maule.
The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “Today’s poem understands the sacred exchange of contemporary literature. It is a spiritual and creative dowry of the mind and heart that is consecutively passed from writer to writer, from writer to reader.”
Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp
Today’s poem is Invented Landscape by L.A. Johnson.
The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “Each generation of poets rewrites the function of poetry in society. And this episode isn’t the first time I’ve chimed in. I once wrote: “poetry, like all imaginative creations, divines the human enterprise. This is poetry's social function.” I still believe that, but also know that poems which attempt to re-envision a better world, one that is kinder, more humane, more just, those poems are reaching for the greatest possibility to impact.”
Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp
Today’s poem is Take This Poem by Elizabeth Willis. This episode was recorded live, in-person, at On Air Fest 2023.
Onstage, Major described that “In coming to this role, I've been thinking a lot about how poetry shifts from the page to the voice. How the words hold different meanings written versus spoken. For when we speak out loud the words of the poets, we access their freedom and consciousness and rage for order. As my friend Robert Pinsky tells us, “poetry’s medium is the individual chest and throat and mouth of whoever undertakes to say the poem.” It is a physical embodiment that changes us and the spaces we occupy. The poem creates an environment.”
Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp
Today’s poem is Vision from the Blue Plane-Window by Ernesto Cardenal, translated by Jonathan Cohen.
The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “On a recent return flight to Nashville, I secured a window seat. I looked out as the jet sped up the runway, as the nose pointed skyward, and the earth receded. That’s when the fantasy began. My whole life I have imagined a world without war.”
Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp
Today’s poem is Love and the Deli Counter by Jill McDonough. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “I love the spaces we enter, in which we feel a rich sense of our differences, of our collective humanity, and a lightness of being. Today’s poem exhibits the kind of love and care and humor that passes through us out in the world.”
Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp
Today’s poem is from "fabula: towards a black mirror” by Victoria Adukwei Bulley.
The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “For both poet and reader, the best poems can offer a pathway out of the prison of false assumptions and the dangers of snapshot generalizations.”
Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp
Today’s poem is Who Among You Knows the Essence of Garlic? by Garrett Hongo.
The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “Today’s poem exemplifies the kind of deep historical and sensory awareness only possible when one has turned their senses into a laboratory of feeling and wonder.”
Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp
Today’s poem is Voices of the Air by Katherine Mansfield.
The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “When we discover the reach of our voices, we disturb the silence around us. We experience self-possession. Today’s poem makes an allegory of small creatures who also render their presence both meaningful and heard.”
Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp
Today’s poem is America, I Do Not Call Your Name without Hope by Dean Rader.
The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “Today’s poem encourages us to do more than celebrate the narrative of our country, to reflect on our sacred inheritance with its sacred past.”
Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp
Today’s poem is Poem by Jorie Graham.
The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “As readers of poetry, we get to engage with and listen to the mind of a poet who, in the normal course of a day, we might not casually encounter. For this reason, I treasure the anonymity of the page. We meet the speaker in the poem on their own terms without any preconceived notions.”
Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp
Today’s poem is The Messenger by Brynn Saito.
The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “Today’s poem renders visible the change that needs to happen — the vows we make to ourselves in order to grow, to become the person we were meant to be; however painful, however triumphant.”
Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp
Today’s poem is How Long Could I Have Been Weightless? by Colin Channer.
The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “Today’s poem reminds us that despite the wonders of engineering, our lives are fragile. It suggests that, maybe, we should avoid the false protections our modern age promises, that maybe we should live patiently and slowly within the bounds of ourselves.”
Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp
Today’s poem is My Dearest Black-Billed Streamertail by Michelle Whittaker.
The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “The speaker in today’s epistolary poem turns to the hummingbird as an avatar of their own wish to soar.”
Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp
Today’s poem is After the Farm was Sold to FedEx by Carlie Hoffman.
The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “Often, nostalgia can look like that woodblock key handed to us at the interstate rest stop. It opens a door, but the past is really a little room and kind of smelly, yet, in our mind, exists as a golden age. One we urgently grasp for.”
Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp
Today’s poem is A State of Permanent Visibility by Steve Healey.
The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “Today’s poem guides us to the revelation that we become the machines we dream, especially when what drives us is to be seen. We find ourselves contending with the mechanization of human behavior that divorces us from our power, which is the very real bodies we live in, and not the projected images of ourselves on screens.”
Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp
Today’s poem is Self-Portrait as Derivatives Trader by José Edmundo Ocampo Reyes. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “Change and adventure are important aspects of a poets’ growth. To write against convention is to test the limits of poetic form, of language, of our imagination. Sometimes that risk looks like writing in forms different than what is generally expected. Sometimes, shaking it up is approaching topics that feel vulnerable, both personally and communally. And I think, the greater the risk, the greater the reward.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp
Today’s poem is Voyeur by Paige Taggart. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “Today’s poem could be interpreted as an allegory for narcissistic personalities — how they violently demand our attention, and how we give it.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp
Today’s poem is The Statues and Us by Yannis Ritsos, translated by Martin McKinsey. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “My life is a constant stream of deadlines, such that I am forever trying to fit in what I love most — writing poetry. When I worked in the corporate finance office of a popular clothing retail store, I worked a regular 9-5. Back then, my life was more structured, and poetry bookended my days. I arose in the dark of morning and scribbled opening lines that would unfold into a larger piece. Light spread across the sky and only birdsong could be heard. I miss those days. When did writing poetry become something that I “fit in”? Trust me; I find meaning in all of my activities, work-related or domestic. But only one satiates this ongoing spirit of becoming, which is what creating is about. In that solitude, with each poem I wrote, I saw myself more clearly. ” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp
Today’s poem is Boy Shooting at a Statue by Billy Collins. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “How do we foster a greater belief in each other rather than in our guns? How might we come to live without fear of each other? I have no solutions. Today’s poem points to the conundrum of guns in society and points to the possibility of our imaginations to release us from their hold.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp
Today’s poem is Morning in a City by J. Mae Barizo. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “Today’s poem, an homage to poet Robert Hass, suggests one possible way of retaining is to live in the music of our existence, where memories though fleeting and at our peripheries, still carry indulgences of delight.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp
Today’s poem is The Poet by Bert Meyers.
The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “How do we celebrate our teachers? We pass down their advice. We recall legendary moments in the classroom. We discuss the brilliance of their poems, and sometimes, we gossip about their failures and triumphs. We keep their poems alive in public. When poets die, we also mourn the loss of great friends. Today’s poem is by a Los Angeles poet, one whose life and work are the subject of renewed interest and celebration, not only as a writer of astute verse, but also as a beloved teacher.”
Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp
Today’s poem is In An Elevator with Ashbery, Crossing Stanzas, Bashfully by Alina Stefanescu.
The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “Today’s poem gently refuses to consign poetry to the world of philosophical musing, semiotics, and language games, which many have experienced in the difficult and wildly associative poetry of the great American poet, John Ashbery.”
Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp
Today’s poem is Areyto for the Shipwrecked: The Case for Spanglish by Vincent Toro.
The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “Today’s poem celebrates the power of speaking multiple languages, of having options to fulfill poetry’s demand to achieve ever more expression of human emotion.”
Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp
Today’s poem is from THIRSTY by Dionne Brand.
The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “I love the beauty of natural spaces, and will never jettison the sense of sacred communion there, but cities serve as staging grounds for my feelings of agape, the benevolence I feel from and extend to fellow human beings.”
Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp
Today’s poem is Emptying by Aaron Zhang.
The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “I know that when I cannot write, when the words fail to arrive, something intangible is obstructing passage to the areas of my brain and heart. It hijacks my ability to imagine, to really hear the poetry of the world around me.”
Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp
Today’s poem is Portrait of My Father With the Letter V by Bill Hollands.
The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “Who we are today, and eventually, who we are in memory, grants our loved one’s access to modes of living. We can connect in remembrance of traditions of existence that affirm who we fundamentally are and what we could possibly become.”
Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp
Today’s poem is Burnt Plastic by Sean Singer.
The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, guest host Jason Schneiderman writes… “Today’s poem is by Sean Singer, who, like me, is a teacher, but at a certain point he became a cab driver to support himself. In his poems about driving a cab, he experiences not a lilting relational arc of guiding students through a semester, but a staccato chord of intense contact, a brief and unguarded glimpse into a life, one in which he is equal parts service provider and witness.”
Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp
Today’s poem is Part by Phillis Levin.
The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, guest host Jason Schneiderman writes… “Today’s poem uses the form of a dictionary definition the way other poems use the form of the sonnet or villanelle. Instead of starting with a highly technical and specific word, like “irony” or “cardiovascular,” Phillis Levin starts with the seemingly simple word “Part,” a common word that, it turns out, can mean many things.”
Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp
Today’s poem is To the Friend Who Is Crying on the Phone by Vanessa Angelica Villarreal.
The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, guest host Jason Schneiderman writes… “In today’s poem, the poet looks at what it means for things to change—what it means to live in the present and to plan for the future—and how painful and destabilizing it can be when what we expected, planned for, worked for, and dreamed of—is suddenly taken away.”
Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp
This week’s episodes are guest hosted by Jason Schneiderman.
Transcript I’m Jason Schneiderman and this is The Slowdown.
I may have been the worst baseball player in the history of baseball. My batting average had only the digit zero in it. I had terrible asthma triggered by grass allergies, so for most of the practices and games, my eyes were tearing and my nose was running. I was so bad, that other players on my little league team took a vote and elected an athletic young blond boy named Troy to approach me with the request that I quit the team so that, and I quote “we could win a game.”
Listener, this happened when I was seven. My family had just moved to California from England. I had a strong British accent, I was experiencing extreme culture shock, and in an effort to help me fit in, my parents put me on a sports team where the adults hated me as much as my fellow seven year olds. I never told an adult because I didn’t think they’d take my side. Sometimes, when I’m trying to explain that what we now call bullying is what we used to call socialization, I tell this story.
And as far as I was concerned the joke was on Troy and his compatriots. I would have loved to quit the team, but it just wasn’t an option for me. And I also knew that sports meant a lot to Troy. I really didn’t care whether or not we won, but Troy did. And I also knew that getting rid of me might have made the team slightly better, but in truth, most of us were pretty bad, and the coach wasn’t going to make us any better, whether or not I was there. And some weirdly protective instinct made me aware that I was lucky that I was only being expelled from somewhere I didn’t want to be in the first place.
In today’s poem, the poet revisits a childhood experience in which the youthful collective exerts its power by ganging up on another boy. Notice how the poem moves from observation, to complicity, and then to how a youthful wound might take a lifetime to heal.
in the dormitories after dark
by James Fujinami Moore
Understand:they carried the boynaked, hogtied to a pole,down the hallway and I stood by.It was punishment. He hadbeen late too many times,and the older boys strippedhim down for—amusement—he smiledat first, too.I stood there, beside—or by—hearing them chantshower, showertheir faces grabby at eachhumiliation, shining from inside with it & madebrighter & even thenI knew it was holy, a ritual to bindus, a secret, the words that even years later lying beside you I’d refuse to say. Lying by.Even now, after your touchhas faded, I still remember this:the great white mass of himhung from the pole and swinging.How after a while he stoppedsmiling. How heavy it waswhen it was my turnto carry it.
Today’s poem is Uh Huh: Hi, Hula Tooth by K. Silem Mohammad.
The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, guest host Jason Schneiderman writes… “Today’s poem is part of a series that the poet calls Sonnagrams. He uses a program to rearrange the letters in each of Shakespeare’s sonnets to get a whole new poem, and then he makes a title out of the letters he didn’t use yet. Without knowing that the poem is an anagram of sonnet 135, it might not make a lot of sense. But knowing that it is, you’ll hear both the technical accomplishment of the poem-sized anagram and the playfulness of the composition process.”
Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp
Today’s poem is Simulation Theory by Leigh Stein.
The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, guest host Jason Schneiderman writes… “At the center of the Matrix is the idea that contemporary life is actually a computer simulation, and today’s whip-smart poem takes that idea as its starting point. The speaker looks at the oddly contemporary problem of people who can’t tell the difference between life and art. Instead of asking how can this help us rethink our reality, they ask what if it were real?”
Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp
Today’s poem is Short Talk on Waterproofing by Anne Carson.
The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, guest host Jason Schneiderman writes… “In today’s poem, Anne Carson engages Franz Kafka, but not directly. Carson calls our attention to a small act of care, the tiny detail of a loving act taking place against a background of atrocity. It reminds us that sometimes the best way to see clearly is to look from the side.”
Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp
Today’s poem is Sorrow Is Innate in the Human by Francesca Bell.
The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, guest host Jason Schneiderman writes… “Today’s poem is about motherhood. The speaker focuses less on what it means to her to be a mother, than on what her child is experiencing, and what her child might know and might need.”
Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp
Today’s poem is Where are the girls who were so beautiful? from “33” by Julia Alvarez.
The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, guest host Jason Schneiderman writes… “Lately, I’ve heard many bemoan the end of movie stardom, but it’s comforting to remember that it’s an old argument. Three decades ago, we were already wondering what had happened to the glamor and melodrama of 1950’s Hollywood and Hollywood stardom that we were sure had so much to teach us.”
Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp
Today’s poem is Stereo by Anne Waldman.
The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “‘Tis the season of weddings! In years past, I’ve poured libations; I’ve even read a poem, but this summer, I have the privilege and am hugely excited to officiate the nuptials of our friend and digital producer of The Slowdown, James Napoli and fiancé Britta Greene. Regarding, I’ll just say this: Love is an unrestrained force of tenderness and light in our world.”
Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp
Today’s poem is Dear Past and Future Metastasis, by Chiyuma Elliott.
The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “Today’s fine poem makes delicate use of captured dialogue. The poem reveals our clumsy attempts to render legible who we are. Mostly we pass expected, typical speech between us but, occasionally, we make utterances so clear that they startle even ourselves.”
Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp
Today’s poem is He Laughed With A Laugh by JonArno Lawson.
The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “Myka and I rescued today’s fun poem from the cutting floor of our children’s poetry episodes. We present it to you today. Enjoy!”
Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp
Today’s poem is Extreme Close-up by Susan Rich.
The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “Noticing and paying attention to my surroundings is more than for the purpose of writing poems. I’m trying to bring the world closer to me. To call up daily experience by zooming in, by locating language that is as lush as life yet elegantly sparse, well, then, that is an act of love and reciprocity.”
Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp
Today’s poem is The Pathology of Currency by Matthew Lippman.
The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “Today’s poem humorously parodies the secret nature of money and the endless, if not stressful, cycle of working and spending.”
Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp
Today’s poem is She Loves Me, She Love Me Not by Desirée Alvarez.
The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “Why do we make bad decisions, whether reasoned or rash, when we know deep down that they are not sound? I don’t believe people when they announce they have no regrets. I find feelings of regret slightly useful. They help us muse over missed opportunities or hasty actions. Regrets remind us to do better. To be more careful.”
Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp
Today’s poem is The Figure of a Man Being Swallowed by a Fish by Joshua Weiner.
The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “Today’s poem dramatizes the hidden transaction of our obsessions. We are claimed by the world as much as we take in — sometimes, even more.”
Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp
Today’s poem is For the Poet Who Is Your High School English Teacher by Gary Margolis.
The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “Today’s poem honors the teachers among us who are also poets, whose passion for poetry helps students to reimagine and change their world.”
Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp
Today’s poem is This Is My Vow by Lucia Mae Pitts.
The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “Today’s poem, though written nearly one hundred years ago, knows that to live today is to heroically make a pledge of hope, to seek the positives, to practice the gospel of joy, and in doing so to defeat pessimism and stave off an all-consuming gloom.”
Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp