399 episodes
The Slowdown: Poetry & Reflection Daily American Public Media
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- Arts
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4.8 • 38 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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1107: Accessory to War by Kim Stafford
Today’s poem is Accessory to War by Kim Stafford.
The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “Today’s sobering poem lands a powerful reminder: that even when we adhere to a belief against war, even when we wish not to collude in acts of aggression, in a powerful nation as ours, mere citizenship implicates us.”
Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp -
1106: Life In The Gush Of Boasts by Elijah Burrell
Today’s poem is Life In The Gush Of Boasts by Elijah Burrell.
The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “Most writers are not “All eyes on me,” but the psychology of the social media “like” and “follower” becomes validation, it seems, between books.”
Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp -
1105: Self-Portrait with Tumbling and Lasso by Eduardo C. Corral
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 -
1104: Black Book of Creation by Shanta Lee Gander
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 -
1103: Chaos Theory by Clint Smith
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 -
1102: How to Be a Good Savage by Mikeas Sánchez, translated by Wendy Call and Shook
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
Customer Reviews
Love it
I really like Tracy’s delivery. A few other podcasts I’ve tried have read poems too fast I find, but Tracy’s delivery is engaging and at a pace that allows time to digest.
I also really like the selection of poems. They are on a diverse range of subjects by lots of poets which is exactly what I am after
Mind opening!
What better way to start the day than with a poem? This podcast has been a glorious addition to my morning routine. Tracy’s voice is soothing and clear and her choice of poems is mind-opening. So glad I stumbled upon the slowdown!!!
PLEASE Tell everybody about this wonderful podcast.
What a brilliant, simple yet perfect idea. Get a poem delivered to you every day read to you beautifully by the poet Laurette. She says “These five minutes brings you back to noticing, you’re carried away, it’s a perfect infusion into your day. Every poem I read makes me feel more secure as a person, poetry is a language that describes who we are”
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