The Slowdown: Poetry & Reflection Daily
561 episodes Last Updated: Aug 18, 23
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.
Episodes
Aug 18, 2023
946: Crackerbell
Today’s poem is Crackerbell by Mary Ruefle. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, guest host Shira Erlichman writes… “Today’s poem confronts the fork in the road where we are pushed to change. And though this push is ruthless and confusing and total, the speaker humbly persists. I learn a lot from that persistence, which could also be called self-love.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp
Aug 17, 2023
945: The Jungle
Today’s poem is The Jungle by Carrie Fountain. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, guest host Shira Erlichman writes… “Today’s poet reflects on a girlhood lived in contrast to boys. What does it mean to be a girl, then a woman, then a mother to a son in this culture, this chaos, this jungle?” 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 Sonnet written walking under the mess some magnolia made by Jay Deshpande. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, guest host Shira Erlichman writes… “Today’s poem understands not just the bloom of romantic love, but the rot and mess and grit that’s just as worthy of our praise, of the glorious spending of our hearts.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp
Aug 15, 2023
943: The Dictator in Prison
Today’s poem is The Dictator in Prison by Adélia Prado, translated by Ellen Doré Watson. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, guest host Shira Erlichman writes… “In one lifetime we’re tasked with bearing a range of horrors. It amazes me that underneath it all––the denial, dissociation, or rage––the heart keeps going. I used to think this gust of empathy was my weakness. I now know it’s a superpower.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp
Aug 14, 2023
942: Very Large Moth
Today’s poem is Very Large Moth by Craig Arnold. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, guest host Shira Erlichman writes… “Today’s poem teaches us that you can’t choose your holy moments. The poet is a sudden citizen of bewilderment. When it comes time to express a kinship across species, he finds himself bereft.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp
Aug 11, 2023
941: After We Buried The Dog In The Dark
Today’s poem is After We Buried the Dog in the Dark by Jin Cordaro. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “My family has a shelf of movies to test whether someone new to our orbit has a heart. At the top of this short list is the film Hachi: A Dog’s Tale. based on the true story of a white Akita dog named Hachiko. If said person is not bawling their eyes out by the end of this movie they just might not have a pulse. The movie is in its own category of sentimentality, one which dogs demand of us. Yet, what breaks through is a textured allegory about a dog’s loyalty. A dog’s love is primitive, mythic, and the stuff of folklore.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp
Aug 10, 2023
940: Survivor
Today's poem is Survivor by Geffrey Davis. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “These days, whenever I sit down to dinner with my kids or am fortunate to catch them in their busy lives, I wistfully recall the pleasures of becoming a father… and the shock of it. Not that Langston was an abstract idea for nine months, but when your child, pretty much a biological speculation grown into a creature, is placed in your arms for the first time screaming itself into the world, an amazing wave of obligation and accountability lands full force into your heart. No experience up till that moment suffices to prepare you. When my friends arrived home with their adopted daughters, I read that same jolt of recognition on their faces.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp
Aug 09, 2023
939: A Guy in a Black SUV
Today’s poem is A Guy in a Black SUV by William J Harris. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “Today’s poem, through use of hyperbole, voice, and tone, arrives at visualization as a form of retribution. Its strong cinematic action subverts and upends gender norms. The poem reminds me how we stretch our minds to manifest feelings and unknown states within—a power that affords us catharsis.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp
Aug 08, 2023
938: Sorcery
Today’s poem is Sorcery by Jessica Hagedorn.The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “Today’s poem cautions us to the bewitching, yet striking, perfection of art and beauty. We are susceptible to its magic, and even sometimes, to the magic of its maker.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp
Aug 07, 2023
937: While Shaving
Today’s poem is While Shaving by Alfredo Aguilar. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes "Today’s poem beautifully illustrates a startling recognition: parents provide us with the skills they’ll need us to perform when they are no longer independent, the lessons we will remember them by when they are no longer with us." Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp