Claim OwnershipThe Slowdown: Poetry & Reflection Daily
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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.
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.
1061 Episodes
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Today’s poem is Self-Portrait with Tumbling and Lasso by Eduardo C. Corral.The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… "These days, we are loving reading and writing self-portrait poems, what I call the “verbal selfie.” It allows the author to be the runway, to elevate themselves into the frame of language. In so doing, the poet, like the author of today’s poem, experiments with perceptions of the self. I like how the poet in Rembrandt-fashion mythologizes himself in the lyric.” 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 Black Book of Creation by Shanta Lee Gander.The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “Today’s poem builds on the belief that imagining is a kind of magic and time travel, that listening to the soil and all the voices within is a monumental way into both history, and our future.” 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 Chaos Theory by Clint Smith.The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “Occasionally, I try to follow the series of decisions that led me to this present, however triumphant or painful. My life wavers between fate and destiny. But then again, poetry brings me to the belief that some mysterious force is at work, below, that unveils a spiritually deeper meaning to it all." 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 How to Be a Good Savage by Mikeas Sánchez, translated by Wendy Call and Shook.The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… "Today’s poem ironizes the lens through which the colonizer sees Indigenous peoples as uncivilized. It is a horrible term that diminishes a people’s humanity and ascribes assimilation as the cure of a presumed inferiority. It is an example of a poem that my friend Willie Perdomo describes as a poetry of “decolonial practice.”"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 1971 Pontiac LeMans by Thomas Bolt. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… "Today’s poem reminds me how, in some instances, automobiles are charged with a certain kind of masculinity that can be beautiful and destructive at the same time." Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp
1Today’s poem is Ode to The Lone Star State by Jubi Arriola-Headley.The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… "On a flight to Kansas City just before the most recent Super Bowl, the pilot taunted Chiefs football fans. Just before takeoff, he donned his Dallas Cowboys baseball cap. In jest, he claimed, despite not having made it to the Superbowl, his team still carried the banner as “America’s Team.” Half the plane booed. He announced those who booed could remove their seat cushions and sit on iron the entire flight. The whole cabin laughed. Texas often takes it on the chin. I, too, once decried the second largest American state maybe because my Eagles often lost big games to the Cowboys. Yet, my appreciation for Texas has grown over the years.” 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 Something by Andrea Cohen.The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… "On a long drive through upstate New York, I ran out of podcasts, six hours in. So, I asked Siri to tell me a joke. She said, “Why did the meatball tell the spaghetti to go to sleep,” then answered, “It was pasta bedtime.” I thanked Siri for keeping me company… then became self-conscious about speaking to an artificial being.” 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 Rant by Nathalie Anderson.The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… "It feels like many people are passing from our lives. Not that the death of a poet is any more devastating, but when a poet dies, my grief is heavier. The year 2023 saw the loss of many poets I admire, including Benjamin Zephaniah and Louise Glück. When poet Donald Hall died in 2018, I noticed a great shift of voices, one generation exiting as another emerged. We will no longer hear their music in language. Maybe, this has always been the case.” 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 Mercy, Mercy Me by Olatunde Osinaike.The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… "The speaker in today’s poem survives by an adherence to their values — but also by a willingness to adopt new codes, to risk new experiences, to take on new attitudes.” 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 Gacela of the Dark Death by Federico García Lorca, translated by Merryn Williams.The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… "Today’s poem has me recall a pilgrimage to the home of a cherished poet, whose mystery is the very fire that channels my faith in poetry as nothing less than pure feeling.” 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 Nameless Places by Tony Petrosky. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… "This summer, I get to write in a castle in Italy at an artist retreat. I am hoping my assigned room is in a dungeon. Otherwise, I am afraid high ceilings will mean high windows, which will mean a room flooded with light. I wish to arrive at light like a burst that suddenly suffuses my eyelids; I want the page to contain inexpressible awe at our existence, to enact a calamitous and beautiful journey. Today’s short poem honors the unseen, formidable spaces that define us as much as our existence in the light." 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 00000000 by Erin Marie Lynch.The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… "Today’s poem disentangles the quest for money, transactional desire, and lyric subjectivity. Its teasing interplay of language brings into close proximity art, social class, and manners of currency.” 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 When Your Month is Lonely… by Christine Kwon. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… "I read all those articles that proclaim how lonely we are becoming; I believe there’s some truth to it. Here’s my fear: all my work is making me alien to myself and others. I’m happy people are in my life. I wish not to skirt over their humanity, nor my own. I do not want our relationship to devolve to obligation, or come off as transactional. But we naturally negotiate that space of difference between ourselves and others; how rewarding when we can really connect to 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 Eid Mubarak by Fady Joudah.The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… "Today’s poem makes a profound commitment to carry the living and the dead in language forward into time, to record our presence, to meld the collectivity and richness of humanity into a singular vision that feels like 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 To Find Stars in Another Language by Elizabeth Bradfield.The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… "Sometimes it is necessary to create our own stories and poems that account for our reality, for who we are, presently, in the 21st century. Our dreams and imagination serve as a bridge in expanding conceptions of the self. One of my favorite poets once declared “The dream of every poem is to be a myth.” I like this idea, that poems can order our world, give agency and permission, cultivate, and open our collective unconscious.” 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 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
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Part of my morning routine. Thank you for your time and passion.
Yay first to comment! I use this podcast for a quick little meditation after my morning workout. it's fantastic.