399 episodes
The Slowdown: Poetry & Reflection Daily American Public Media
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- Arts
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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1128: Post-Industrial Society Has Arrived by Vidhu Aggarwal
Today’s poem is Post-Industrial Society Has Arrived by Vidhu Aggarwal.
The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “This week’s episodes are a special feature on ekphrasis – poems which engage with works of art. Poets possess an expansive intuition, a proclivity towards image-making that meets head-on the most difficult of artists. In responding to works of art, poets perform the gift of interpretation. By turning language into a critical practice, they find pathways into paintings and teach us how to see what they see. They make the paintings speak.”
Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp -
1127: Two Paintings Seen Again by Rachel Hadas
Today’s poem is Two Paintings Seen Again by Rachel Hadas.
The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “This week’s episodes are a special feature on ekphrasis – poems which engage with works of art. Today’s ekphrastic poem makes a compelling assertion that to fully register the power of art, we must take our time to take it in.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp -
1126: Not So Much an End as an Entangling by Linda Gregerson
Today’s poem is Not So Much an End as an Entangling by Linda Gregerson.
The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “This week’s episodes are a special feature on ekphrasis – poems which engage with works of art. The vision of birds stilled in motion at the center of Tom Uttech’s paintings invite similar speculations. Today’s poem reads an exodus of earth’s species as an ominous commentary, I surmise, on the decimation of the environment.”
Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp -
1125: English by Janel Pineda
Today’s poem is English by Janel Pineda.
The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “Today’s poem brilliantly figures the psychological complexities of adopting a new language, and a way of thinking, while losing another.”
Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp -
1124: What Good Is A Castle by Linda Susan Jackson
Today’s poem is What Good Is A Castle by Linda Susan Jackson.
The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “Those signs are back; a favorite restaurant near campus suddenly closed. My network news show has a new host; my local bagel shop removed the best breakfast sandwich this side of cream cheese from its menu board. These are reminders that nothing is permanent. Is anything sacred? Of course not. The only constant in life is change.”
Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp -
1123: In the House With No Doors by Sarah Kay
Today’s poem is In the House With No Doors by Sarah Kay.
The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “Today’s poem speaks to the intimacy roommates share, how sometimes we start off as strangers then, as we enter into each other’s routines, become the best of friends.”
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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