399 episodes
The Slowdown: Poetry & Reflection Daily American Public Media
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- Arts
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4.8 • 1.1K 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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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 -
1134: Americans by Katie Peterson
Today’s poem is Americans by Katie Peterson.
The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “Whenever I hear a person refer to people by their geographic or cultural or national association, I wince. In doing so, we falsely implicate everything from intelligence levels to physical appearances. This strikes me as crude, reductive, unintentionally demeaning.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp -
1133: The Alien by Greg Delanty
Today’s poem is The Alien by Greg Delanty.
The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “However tight the team of parents, and family and community beyond that, supporting a child in utero, that baby is carried by one body alone. Their body is not only one of creation, of labor, of internal mystery, but one of a singular emotional gravity.”
Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp -
1132: Felonious States of Adjectival Excess Featuring Comparative and Superlative Forms by A. H. Jerriod Avant
Today’s poem is Felonious States of Adjectival Excess Featuring Comparative and Superlative Forms by A. H. Jerriod Avant.
The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “I am drawn to poets who, like the author of today’s poem, bring imagination and attention to sonic idioms of a poem. They make reading aloud fun.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp -
1131: How It Will End by Denise Duhamel
Today’s poem is How It Will End by Denise Duhamel.
The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “Today’s poem illustrates how difficult it is to plot the fate of a couple, especially one whose ups and downs are played out publicly.”
Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp -
1130: Cy Twombly's Untitled (Say Goodbye Catullus, to the shores of Asia Minor) by Javier O. Huerta
Today’s poem is Cy Twombly's Untitled (Say Goodbye Catullus, to the shores of Asia Minor) by Javier O. Huerta.
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. Ekphrastic poetry sometimes pushes back against the idea of simple art made complicated in idea, born from an eccentric personality. Inspired by another famous Twombly painting, one that itself is inspired partly by a poem, today’s poem realizes the frenetic sense of the artist’s canvas is a conceptual product of a sophisticated and sometimes frustrating mind.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp
Customer Reviews
What a gift!
I love that Slowdown consistently offers beautiful, accessible poetry read by someone passionate about life and the craft. I often use the slowdown in the classroom and professional development teaching workshops as a powerful opener to spark curiosity and discussion. I shared the “Chaos Theory” episode with 125 students in our last class of the academic year. What a gift! Thanks for all that you do, Major.
If you can get past the host, it’s great!
The boring, cliched host opens every episode with a story about Me, Me, Me, Me, Me, Me but if you can survive those 45-60 seconds you’re typically rewarded with a fresh, insightful poem. Just try to ignore what the host has gleaned from it and you’ll be better off.
That’s my DJ!
Major takes me back to the 1980s when I was a teenager and when I was judged, and when I judged, based on the radio station I listened to. The voices of my favorite DJs are recorded in my memory like a beloved mixtape. I counted on them to wake me up, introduce me to the latest songs, and lull me to sleep. I listen to Major every morning. He is my current day DJ. I count on him for inspiration, wisdom, and messages so beautiful I am dazzled all day long.
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