The Slowdown: Poetry & Reflection Daily

Today’s poem is My Life by Water by Lorine Niedecker.

The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, guest host Victoria Chang writes… "I admit, I spent much of my childhood imagining my future away from Michigan. But now, I only have positive memories of my childhood landscape. The Michigan landscape is my country. We are all always living and writing from somewhere, and thus we are being defined by our landscapes. We wouldn’t be someone without a somewhere."

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 Loquat Trees & The Boy Next Door by Saúl Hernández.

The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, guest host Victoria Chang writes… "Today’s poem reminds me of how, under every tree that bears fruit, there are secret stories of desire, of loss, and of 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 Perhaps the World Ends Here by Joy Harjo.

The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, guest host Victoria Chang writes… "Today’s poem is an ode to the kitchen table and all the ways that a table holds everything in our lives — all the pain of the world, its history, and all the beauty at once."

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 She Died by Mary Szybist.

The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, guest host Victoria Chang writes… "As the years have gone by since my mother’s passing, since my father’s passing, something else has bloomed unexpectedly, which is a connection with others who have experienced deep loss. The details of other people’s losses are always different, but the feelings are familiar. These shared experiences are the things that tie us to each other. I’ve learned that to see and share our experiences with others is to be alive and 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 It's This Way by Nâzim Hikmet, translated by Randy Blasing and Mutlu Konuk.

The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, guest host Victoria Chang writes… "I have begun to think that hope is a presentness, that perhaps hope is within the present, not the future, not in the subjunctive, the what if? For there is beauty all around us all the time. To have hope is to wake up and perceive in the now, instead of spending the little mindspace we have caught up in the future and possibility."

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 Spring View by Du Fu, translated by Arthur Sze. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual.

In this episode, guest host Victoria Chang writes… “I have always loved imagining how people lived a long time ago, what they thought about, how they dressed, what they ate. One of the best ways to see how people really lived is through poems, really old poems. Du Fu is a poet who lived during the Tang Dynasty in China from 721 to 770, A.D. He was one of the three most prominent poets in the Tang era, along with Wang Wei and Li Bai. Du Fu lived during turbulent war times, which feels like every era of history, including our present times.”

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 Mahmoud by Maya Abu Al-Hayyat, translated by Fady Joudah. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual.

In this episode, guest host Victoria Chang writes… “As an adult, one of the things I’ve always wondered about was the baby boy we lost to a miscarriage. He was almost three months old by the time he passed away. I still carry the hospital bracelet in my wallet, the one that says simply, “baby boy.” Some days, I still wonder about him — what he would have looked like as a teenager. He would have been sixteen years old this year. I imagine him having just received his driver’s license, the loud sound of the door opening, his backpack with all of the little tchotchkes and keychains hanging from them rattling and hitting the door. I can almost hear his voice as he enters the house. Almost.”

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 first person by Ed Roberson. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual.

In this episode, guest host Victoria Chang writes… “How can we learn if no one helps us to learn? How can we help each other learn if we don’t speak up, if we don’t talk to each other honestly? How can we learn if we don’t look harder at ourselves and the things we do or don’t do, know or don’t know, every single day?”

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 Certain Light by Marie Howe. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual.

In this episode, guest host Victoria Chang writes… “Today’s poem always moves me. I love the way this poem so lyrically depicts the surprising beauty and connection that can emerge amidst the deepest darkest moments of illness.”

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 Leaving by Brigit Pegeen Kelly. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual.

In this episode, guest host Victoria Chang writes… “This is a poem that seems so easy to describe, yet it’s so hard to pin down–my favorite kind of poem–both clear and mysterious. It’s dreamlike, mystical, biblical, and so much more. It magically depicts what it’s like to be a child on the cusp of something, in the face of the largeness of the world.”

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