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American Public Media

Host Maggie Smith is your daily poetry companion. Poetry is one of the greatest tools we have to wield our own attention — to consider our own lives and the lives of others, to help us live creatively and compassionately, to use that attention to lean into wonder, and joy, and truth, and to find hope — to keep hoping. The Slowdown community knows that reflecting on a poem, every weekday, can connect us to our inner world and the world around us. Listen as you make your morning coffee, as you go on a walk in your neighborhood, as you pull away from the to-do list, as you resist the dismal, endless scroll to share five minutes of perspective through the lens of poetry, from poets old and new, well-loved and emerging onto the scene. Brought to you by American Public Media, in partnership with the Poetry Foundation.

The Slowdown: Poetry & Reflection Daily

Today’s poem is A dead whale can feed an entire ecosystem by Rachel Dillon.

The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Maggie writes… “To ask, “What can a poem do to help?” is to gesture toward a bigger question: “What can art do?” What can literature, or music, or film, or performance, or visual art do for us, particularly when we are struggling, individually and collectively? I think art can articulate the beauty and horrors of being alive. I think it can make people feel seen and understood, and therefore less alone. I think it can bear witness to what our planet is enduring.” 

Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp

1398: A dead whale can feed an entire ecosystem by Rachel Dillon

Today’s poem is Palinode by Lisa Low. 

The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Maggie writes … “Today’s poem is a kind of poem called a palinode. In a palinode, a writer changes her mind by retracting a viewpoint expressed in one of their earlier pieces of writing. Today’s poem makes us consider how we write about other people. It “flip-flops,” in a sense, but it certainly does so in an effective and artful way.” 

Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp

1397: Palinode by Lisa Low

Today’s poem is Panama by Sarah Green. 

The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Maggie writes… “There's a distinct disenchantment when the spell of the relationship has broken, and the magic’s gone. You’re not seeing the world through love’s rosy lens anymore. You wonder about what you might have overlooked, or misinterpreted, or just got wrong. I mean, I’ve been there. Most of us have been there more than once. It can take a lot of time and a lot of work, and maybe some therapy, to get to a place of acceptance, let alone contentment, after an important relationship ends. It can take even longer to get to a place of gratitude: to be able to parse how or why it ended from what it WAS. To be able to separate the END of the story from the story as a whole. To be grateful for what the relationship gave you and taught you.” 

Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp

1396: Panama by Sarah Green

Today’s poem is The Night Angler by Geffrey Davis.

The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Maggie writes… “My name is Maggie—not Margaret, just Maggie—but the name I hear most often on a daily basis might be Mom. I have my children to thank for that name, because they made me a mother. In this way, we birthed each other. And we continue to shape each other, over the years. Surely I would be different if I had different children. Surely they would be different with other parents.” 

Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp

1395: The Night Angler by Geffrey Davis

Today’s poem is Puerto Rico Goes Dark by Juan J. Morales. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Maggie writes… “Given the misinformation that circulates on the internet, often unchecked, I’d like to preface today’s poem with a fact: Puerto Ricans are U.S. citizens. Our struggles are bound because we are citizens, together, of this nation.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp

1394: Puerto Rico Goes Dark by Juan J. Morales

Today’s poem is The Night Where You No Longer Live by Meghan O’Rourke. 

The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Maggie writes… “The speaker of today’s poem addresses her late mother, asking questions that are devastating and relatable. While we don’t have access to the answers, this poem is a beautiful place for the questions to live.” 

Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp

1393: The Night Where You No Longer Live by Meghan O’Rourke

Today’s poem is Local Mission by Kai Carlson-Wee. 

The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Maggie writes… “I’m someone who likes to read a book without having read any reviews or think pieces about the book or the author. Sometimes I prefer to engage with art—to listen to a record or see a film—without expectations. With a relatively clean slate. I want you to have that experience with today’s poem, a longer one, so I’m going to get out of the way. Listen and let its many pleasures find you.”

Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp

1392: Local Mission by Kai Carlson-Wee

Today’s poem is Never-ending Birds by David Baker. 

The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Maggie writes… “Today’s poem is one I’ve carried around in my mind for years, one whose language I flash to instinctively when I see a flock of birds, especially a murmuration of starlings. I think of the phrase “never-ending birds”—a phrase coined not by the speaker of this poem, but by the speaker’s child.” 

Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp

1391: Never-ending Birds by David Baker

Today’s poem is The Poem Climbs the Scaffold and Tells You What It Sees by Natasha Oladokun. 

The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Maggie writes… “There is power in naming, as today’s poem reminds us. Once you’ve seen the violence tucked inside the place name Lynchburg, barely hidden at all—hidden in plain sight—I don’t think you’ll be able to see or say the word the same way again. Once you see it, you can’t unsee it. Nor should you.”

Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp

1390: The Poem Climbs the Scaffold and Tells You What It Sees by Natasha Oladokun

Today’s poem is Sehnsucht by Michael Dumanis. 

The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Maggie writes… “Today’s poem introduced me to a new word for longing or yearning—and it showed me a way to use that expansive desire as a frame for the magic of everyday life.”

Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp

1389: Sehnsucht by Michael Dumanis

Today’s poem is Flesh (“You in your ecstasy of coffee”) by Deborah Landau. 

The Slowdown is currently taking a break. We’ll be back soon with new episodes from a new host. This week, we’re revisiting some favorites from Major Jackson’s time as host. Today’s episode was originally released on May 5 2023. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. 

In this episode, Major writes… “When summer arrives, I run as fast as I can into its lushness. I am making new memories with family and friends that involve nights of alfresco dining, remote beaches, mountain ranges, and sun-drenched cocktail parties. Summer is the season that beckons most my senses; all that fruit bursting its wild colors: strawberries, apricots, and peaches. Whereas winter feels interminable, I am most aware summer’s bounty is numbered, finite.” 

Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp

[encore] 871: Flesh (“You in your ecstasy of coffee”) by Deborah Landau

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