399 episodes
The Slowdown: Poetry & Reflection Daily American Public Media
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- Arts
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4.0 • 2 Ratings
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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.
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1140: Fish, Serpent, Egg, Scorpion by Kwame Dawes
Today’s poem is Fish, Serpent, Egg, Scorpion by Kwame Dawes.
The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “Today’s poem highlights that cycle of hard truths and compassion passed between fathers and sons.”
Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp -
1139: Dolly Would by Julie E. Bloemeke
Today’s poem is Dolly Would by Julie E. Bloemeke.
The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “To build an image and reputation from dreams requires herculean efforts that often involve doubts, failures, and sacrifices, but as we hear in today’s poem, a devotedness to one’s art that transforms a passion into a stratospheric journey into the self. ”
Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp -
1138: Orientation by Cindy Juyoung Ok
Today’s poem is Orientation by Cindy Juyoung Ok.
The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “Every poem is a bridge between nature and us, in that what lies hidden, what is below, is somehow familiar, and brought to consciousness.”
Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp -
1137: i have an irrational fear of spiders by Charlie Getter
Today’s poem is i have an irrational fear of spiders by Charlie Getter.
The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “Today’s poem smartly interrogates the role of fears and how they might unreasonably control our lives.”
Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp -
1136: Visible Light by Heidi Seaborn
Today’s poem is Visible Light by Heidi Seaborn.
The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “As a child, on summer evenings, my friends and I ran through the neighborhood collecting lightning bugs. They were most visible in vacant lots, but we feared those dark places we sometimes entered. So, the hunt for them as ten-year-olds also felt like an adventure. We gently coaxed them into glass mason jars then sat on the stoop counting their lights to see who had the most. Their underbellies lit up and cast a glow onto our faces. Later, beneath a sheet in bed, I stared into the jar as the fireflies crawled the glass and emitted their light.”
Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp -
1135: At the Rainbow Cattle Company by Bruce Snider
Today’s poem is At the Rainbow Cattle Company by Bruce Snider.
The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “Today’s poem names the silent syncopated talk of the body that occurs when two people are in sync, in graceful movements, when they let each other lead.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp