The Slowdown: Poetry & Reflection Daily
Poet Major Jackson is your guide on the pathways to feel and understand our common journey – through poetry. In sharing poems, we take a moment to pause and acknowledge the world’s magnitude, and how poets illuminate that mystery. Join The Slowdown for a poem and a moment of reflection in one short episode, every weekday. Produced by APM Studios in partnership with The Poetry Foundation and supported in part by the National Endowment for the Arts. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. Make us a part of your routine as you drink coffee in the morning, as you take a walk in nature, or as you wind down to go to sleep in the evening. With host Major Jackson, we collectively take a moment to calm, to inspire, to learn, and to engage with the best emerging poets and established writers of our time and generations past, from Emily Dickinson to Danez Smith, from Amanda Gorman to Mary Oliver. Listen to our back catalog for episodes by our previous hosts, Tracy K. Smith and Ada Limón, as well as guest hosts Jenny Xie, Brenda Shaughnessy, Tina Chang, Nate Marshall, Shira Erlichiman, and Jason Schneiderman. Our hosts and production team select poems that move them, and we hope they move you, too.
Episodes
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 beings with a purpose, or not. If ever we meet as new friends, I will likely ask what you do for a living...
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 of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tiny...
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. I move instinctively towards myself as though I were a massive project, believing I will someday, agai...
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. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp
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 sentences, the poem enacts the motion of a mighty gust and its aftermath — a murmuring calm an...
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 with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/r...
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 the end of bedtime, first sip of steaming soup on a frigid day that fogs your face, the way...
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 clouds and blue skies as symbols of ascension from earthly plains. And it wasn’t just in church — heaven was everywhere, in museums...
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 were a musical composition. They treat language as a resource by creating echoes through rhyme or cadence or...
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 disrupts my set pattern. Composing language into a meaningful act of artful feeling provides necess...
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 makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp
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. They lovingly told stories, recalled important family members, and...
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 gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4syn...
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 we find ourselves heard and affirmed in our beliefs. Poets protest, bear witness, and mourn.”
Ce...
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 immense feeling, to live with a perennial lump in my chest!”
Celebrate the power of poems with a ...
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 order of the day.”
Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes ...
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 reminds me how emotionally difficult it is to retrieve the past, even for the purpose of art.”
Celebrat...
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. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp
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. I often describe poetry as a mirror that reflects back our interiority. But today’s poem w...
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 a set of civic virtues that may not fully align with our worldview. Is there a part of us that wishes to express something differen...
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