The Slowdown: Poetry & Reflection Daily
by American Public Media
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.
Copyright: Copyright 2024 Minnesota Public Radio
Episodes
1080: Dream Song 14 by John Berryman
6m · PublishedToday’s poem is Dream Song 14 by John Berryman.
The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “I miss being bored. I miss idly sitting in a chair, looking out a window, wondering what next to do with myself. I want the feeling of time as an endless desert — nothing in sight, nothing on the horizon.”
Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp
1079: Cassandra by Sasha West
6m · PublishedToday’s poem is Cassandra by Sasha West.
The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “The speaker in today’s poem, taken from Greek mythology, has sight beyond the veil. Their relationship to objects points to the kind of clairvoyance that artists exercise, connecting our physical, emotional, and spiritual worlds.”
Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp
1078: Ferment by Monica Rico
5m · PublishedToday’s poem is Ferment by Monica Rico.
The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “As a person who sticks to the recipe, step by step, exact measurements and all, I appreciate how today’s poem lifts up the magic of feeling and improvisation, of putting one’s whole body into a task.”
Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp
1077: “Something About…” by Peter Kahn
4m · PublishedThe Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “Why is it so hard to write a love poem? Well, I think sentimentality is often the culprit. Today’s poem, by contrast, avoids sentimentality by showing how our perceptions change when we fall in love, how the inner and outer worlds come to reflect each other.”
Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp
1076: a story from the eighties by Debra Marquart
5m · PublishedToday’s poem is a story from the eighties by Debra Marquart.
The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “Occasionally, I pretend to resist feelings of nostalgia. Somehow, I got it in my mind that remembrances of things past prevented me from standing fully in the here and now — that musings about foregone events would eclipse any potential value I placed in the present."
Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp
1075: Translation by Anne Spencer
5m · PublishedToday’s poem is Translation by Anne Spencer.
The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “The last time I camped, a wolf’s howl gave me chills; it brought me closer to some primitive ancestor. I fell asleep to fantasies of leading a pack through boreal forest. The last time I camped, I gazed on evening stars blinking their wondrous code, jeweling the dark sky.”
Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp
1074: My Father and I Drive to St. Louis for His Mother's Funeral and the Wildflowers by Chaun Ballard
7m · PublishedToday’s poem is My Father and I Drive to St. Louis for His Mother's Funeral and the Wildflowers by Chaun Ballard.
The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “Current global conflicts and discussions of borders spotlight the privilege of mobility. An American passport admits entry into 184 countries. Yet, even movement within the United States, for some people, is unsafe. Race and other identity markers, even today, circumscribe where people can travel and live with ease.”
Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp
1073: Great Question by Lisa Olstein
5m · PublishedToday’s poem is Great Question by Lisa Olstein.
The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “Why do we lean on love so much for sustenance? When passion dwindles to a set of burned twigs, where once there was a raging fire; it’s as though a theft has occurred, the result of which makes us homesick for ourselves.”
Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp
1072: Under the Bed by Kirun Kapur
5m · PublishedToday’s poem is Under the Bed by Kirun Kapur.
The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “While not the equivalent of glimpsing the spirit world cleave the air, the insight of poets amounts to a kind of clairvoyance. They make connections that close the gap between the known and the unknown.”
Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp
1071: Ode to the Idea of France by Dan Alter
5m · PublishedToday’s poem is Ode to the Idea of France by Dan Alter.
The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “At parties, I jokingly discuss with friends about collectively purchasing property, maybe even a castle. I want us to live out our days together, to communally enact our shared values. They… are not convinced. I romanticize social utopias, especially those that, guided by equity and love, espouse alternative ways of coexisting with each other and the land.”
Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp
The Slowdown: Poetry & Reflection Daily has 1117 episodes in total of non- explicit content. Total playtime is 105:08:55. The language of the podcast is English. This podcast has been added on February 22nd 2023. It might contain more episodes than the ones shown here. It was last updated on May 19th, 2024 02:40.
