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 ack...
1319: The Rain, Life, and Other Things by Leah Umansky
Today’s poem is The Rain, Life, and Other Things by Leah Umansky. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “I hear in today’s poem a spirit of riffing and casting forward in expressive notes. The speaker progresses by way of shifts and variations that ultimately arrives like a jazz solo. It’s where I find solace in movement and truth, in an embrace of simplicity.” 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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1318: Desert Sayings by Donovan McAbee
Today’s poem is Desert Sayings by Donovan McAbee. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “Today’s uproarious poem makes me want to abandon our life of chatter. To throw off our overly scheduled existence. I want to wake up to truths that can only be gleaned when I fade-out sequentially every duty that impresses upon me as needing to get done.” 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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1317: Grinning in Sardinia by Tomás Q. Morín
Today’s poem is Grinning in Sardinia by Tomás Q. Morín. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “Writing is mining. That’s what I tell students or anyone that aspires to give expression to their lives. It’s probably why the Greek goddess of memory, Mnemosyne, is credited with inventing language. So much of writing is digging into the past, is going in further to find words that shape our understanding of the irrational before we lose hold.” 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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1316: Portrait of My Mother Studying for Her Citizenship Exam by Eduardo Martínez-Leyva
Today’s poem is Portrait of My Mother Studying for Her Citizenship Exam by Eduardo Martínez-Leyva. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “With watery eyes, Mrs. Kumar shared the feelings of being in a room full of people with different histories and cultures, all raising their hands together, in unison, giving voice to a shared belief in the freedoms espoused by their new country. Her story is but one of many. Today’s poem tells another story of a path to citizenship. Such stories deepen my appreciation for the principle of ‘We, the people.’” 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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encore [1224]: Here We Are by Lauren K. Watel
Our episode today is one of many from the archives. We’ll be back tomorrow with more new poetry and reflection! Today’s poem is Here We Are by Lauren K. Watel. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “Today’s poem begins from the idea that we yearn for connection and healing, but that our conflicts feel irreconcilable — to the point that we do not trust a future free of our trauma, grief, and suffering.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp
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.
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