The Slowdown: Poetry & Reflection Daily

Today’s poem is The Difficult Countryside by John Gallaher. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Maggie writes… “Moving through the world with a personal soundtrack in my ears makes me feel somehow insulated from the world AND more a part of the world. Clouds, birds, buildings, people—I see all of them differently with my favorite songs as the backdrop.” 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 Arrangements by Adrienne Chung. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Maggie writes… “Today’s poem speaks to the things we are drawn to, and to the compromises that must happen when we share space with others, and when there just isn’t room for everything.” 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 Cento Between the Ending and the End by Cameron Awkward-Rich. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Maggie writes… “In times that feel divisive and fragmented, today’s poem is a reminder of what we can do and BE together. It’s a reminder of the whole that is greater than the sum of its parts.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp

TranscriptI’m Maggie Smith and this is The Slowdown. One of my favorite things about words is their history. As a writer, I’m curious about the words I choose for my poems. When I look up the origin of a word, it’s like unfolding a map, and seeing the journey that word has taken to reach me. Suddenly I know it better. It feels special to me, like a friend. Let’s take the word migrant, for example—a word I’ve used in a poem. Migrant comes from the Latin migrans, meaning "changing place." So a migrant is one who moves from place to place. The adjective migratory is related to migrant. As in migratory birds. The verb migrate is related, too. On any given day, reading or watching or listening to the news, I’m confronted with divisive arguments about where people belong. All over the world, there are violent conflicts over land: invasions and occupations. In the US, there is so much talk about our borders, and about immigrants, and particularly alarming lately, talk about citizenship. Many of those arguments seem so focused on difference that they ignore our common humanity. The words we use matter. The language we choose can strip a person’s dignity from them, or restore that dignity. When undocumented immigrants are called “illegals,” or “illegal aliens,” those words carry meaning. They also carry a heavy negative connotation. Those terms are dehumanizing, and I think that’s the point. I’ve been listening to the words being used for immigrants, for refugees, and for asylum-seekers in this country, and I have been watching their mistreatment. I have friends who work at elementary schools, and who are afraid that ICE will come and take their students, or their students’ parents. From SCHOOL. I have friends who are afraid for their loved ones, their neighbors, their coworkers. This country does not feel like a place of freedom and possibility for those seeking a better life. It feels like an increasingly hostile place.Today’s poem looks at the word migrant and its meaning apart from the current political climate. Movement from place to place, after all, suggests possibility, opportunity, and AGENCY. To migrate, whether you can fly or not, is to be free./’mīgrent/ by Tiana NobileOf an animal, especially a bird. A wandering specieswhom no seas nor places limit. A seed who survives despitethe depths of hard winter. The ripple of a herring steering her band from seas of ice to warmer strands. To find the usual watering-places despite the gauzeof death that shrouds our eyesis a breathtaking feat. Do you ever wonder whywe felt like happy birds brushing our featherson the tips of leaves? How we lifted our toesfrom one bank of sand and landed—fingertips first—on another? Why we clutched the dumb and tiny creaturesof flower and blade and sod between our budding fists?From an origin of buried seeds emergethese many-banded dagger wings.We, of the sky, the dirt, and the sea. We,the seven-league-booters and the little-by-littlers.We, transmigrated souls, will prevail.We will carry ourselves into the realms of light.“/’mīgrent/” by Tiana Nobile from CLEAVE © 2021 Tiana Nobile. Used by permission of Hub City Press.

Today’s poem is And Then It Was Less Bleak Because We Said So by Wendy Xu. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Maggie writes… “When the world is on fire, it can feel frivolous to go dancing, to go to concerts, to host parties, to take vacations. Today’s poem so beautifully addresses the importance of holding onto joy—and onto one another—when the world feels dismal.” 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 Lake by Noah Falck. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Maggie writes, “Today’s poem acknowledges the beauty we have—the view we have. It also mourns the beauty that would exist without our interference. Holding space for both is a feat of empathy and imagination.” 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 Sky by Sara Abou Rashed. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Maggie writes, “When I think about ways to foster empathy, perspective, and care, one of those ways is poetry. I know poetry can’t stop bombs from falling, and it can’t feed the starving, and it can’t evacuate people to safety. I know this. But poetry can change our inner world. We need that change, one person at a time. We need to reclaim our humanity.” 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-Related Ripple in the Wheatfield by Mikko Harvey. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Maggie writes, “Who might I have been—or with whom, or where—if the timing had been different? Did I arrive too late to certain parts of my life, or too early? Or am I right on time? The “Choose Your Own Adventure” aspect of life is something on my mind a lot. I suspect it was on this poet’s mind, too.” 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 Are you bringing fruits, plants, seeds, by Karen Llagas. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Maggie writes… “Today’s poem looks at the anxiety and the absurdity of America: How many people seem fixated on the dangers outside our borders without acknowledging the dangers within.” 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 New York Address by Linda Gregg. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Maggie writes… “Today’s poem captures that feeling when you’ve just had it—you’ve absolutely hit your limit. But at the same time, you realize that you’re the only person who can pick yourself back up. You have to keep yourself going.” 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 Find Myself Defending Pigeons by Keith S. Wilson. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Maggie writes… “One thing I love about poems is how they give us the opportunity to take our time, to dial in, to look and listen closely. Not everything screams to be noticed. Some things barely whisper! Or they might just squawk or coo now and then.” 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 Bonfire Opera by Danusha Laméris. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Maggie writes… “Yes, I have new lines around my eyes and new glints of silver in my hair, but my body continues to surprise me in wonderful ways, too. It brings me a lot of pleasure—maybe even more pleasure than it did when I was in my teens, twenties, and even thirties. Because I appreciate it. And because I am less self-conscious. That is one of the gifts of aging: Becoming more yourself, and caring less about what others think about you or expect from you.” 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 Étude by Amy Gerstler. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Maggie writes… “Today’s poem is a celebration of sound, and also a celebration of our own power to interpret sound and make meaning—as poets do. Poems, like songs, are meant to live in the air. They are their own music.” 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 Crossing the Line by E. Ethelbert Miller. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Maggie writes… “Today’s poem reads to me like a love poem, a tribute, to a long friendship. It reminds me that part of how we know ourselves is through the people who know us best, and who have loved us through our changes.” 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 Tea by Leila Chatti. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Maggie writes… “Maybe the ultimate self care is learning to give yourself the respect, the tenderness, and the grace you extend to others. To love yourself the way you love others.” 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 Sex Without Love by Sharon Olds. The Slowdown is currently taking a break. We’ll be back on Monday, August 18 with episodes from our new host, Maggie Smith. This week, we’re going back into the archive to revisit Ada Limón’s time as host. In this episode, Ada writes… “Today’s poem is from a dear teacher, Sharon Olds. This poem has stuck with me for years. It examines the honest way in which some people are able to be intimate without all the heavy weight of romance.” 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 Lately I Am Trying by Sanna Wani.The Slowdown is currently taking a break. We’ll be back on Monday, August 18 with episodes from our new host, Maggie Smith. This week, we’re going back into the archive to revisit Ada Limón’s time as host. In this episode, Ada writes… “Today’s poem explores how the love of an animal can help us process grief and even remember the precious value of touch.” 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 Worry My Mother Will Die and I Will Know Nothing by Asa Drake. The Slowdown is currently taking a break. We’ll be back on Monday, August 18 with episodes from our new host, Maggie Smith. This week, we’re going back into the archive to revisit Ada Limón’s time as host. In this episode, Ada writes… “Today’s poem centers on ideas of hunger and fullness. It asks what can satisfy us in a world that is often telling us we are not enough and will never have 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 Trash by Joshua Bennett. The Slowdown is currently taking a break. We’ll be back on Monday, August 18 with episodes from our new host, Maggie Smith. This week, we’re going back into the archive to revisit Ada Limón’s time as host. In this episode, Ada writes… “Today’s poem is a perfect example of starting a poem in one place and ending it in another, unexpected place. I admire how this poem reveals a truth and a desire that pulsates under each stanza.” 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 [since feeling is first] by E.E. Cummings.The Slowdown is currently taking a break. We’ll be back on Monday, August 18 with episodes from our new host, Maggie Smith. This week, we’re going back into the archive to revisit Ada Limón’s time as host. In this episode, Ada writes… “I have a friend who will stare at something and say, “Now that’s a poem.” A glove in the snow, a bird feather stuck in the fence post, a good meal. It feels like she is blurring the lines between what we think is a poem and what is poetic, between what is real life and the language we use to capture it. Today’s poem, by the beloved poet E.E. Cummings, does that work of showing us the resounding “yes” to the poem—and also “yes” to the real, tangible, touchable, life.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp