The Slowdown: Poetry & Reflection Daily

Today’s poem is Closing Time; Iskandariya by Brigit Pegeen Kelly. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, guest host Samiya Bashir writes… “Today’s poem, in ways that I aspire to in my own writing life, manages to take a deep breath in and collapse two thousand years of danger into a single moment of misunderstanding.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown tod...

Today’s poem is A Backstory Beyond My Recounting by Paulann Petersen. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, guest host Samiya Bashir writes… “Today’s poem asks who we think we are. That existential question can feel like judgment or threat, but the poet turns it back toward the daily realities of our own agency.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today....

Today’s poem is Diving into the Wreck by Adrienne Rich. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, guest host Samiya Bashir writes… “Our most important journeys often take us through vistas that we hadn’t, couldn’t, even imagine when we took our first steps. Leaning into adventure forces us to embrace uncertainty.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Eve...

Today’s poem is Home by Warsan Shire. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, guest host Samiya Bashir writes… “Immigration, which built the United States—for better and for worse—is again on trial not just here, but in much of the West. The crackdowns are beyond devastating, yet the potential for complete societal collapse seems unable to trigger our better natures to see each...

Today’s poem is Nightline: September 20, 1982 by June Jordan. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, guest host Samiya Bashir writes… “Today’s poem reminds me of the power of poetry to comment, to respond, to shed light and offer us space to form our own impressions of what the facts may mean. To decide, then, with the knowledge provided by our very own bodies, what we mean to...

Today’s poem is Orchestra by Russell Brakefield. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, guest host Samiya Bashir writes… “Restoration, like most things worthwhile, is far from simple. But we know, and this poet shows us, that by taking such deliberate steps toward doing recovery, repair, and renewal, in our poetry as well as in our environmental stewardship, we re-establish our...

Today’s poem is Gratitude by Cornelius Eady. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, guest host Samiya Bashir writes… “Today’s poem makes a promise of its title, dresses it in flesh and bone, and tracks it across time. It’s a clear, bold promise that might actively change the future not only for its speaker, but for the world we all share.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gi...

Today’s poem is Mistake by Heather Christle. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Maggie writes… “As humans, we're hardwired to see faces. How many of us have come upon a discarded item of clothing or a balled up blanket on the side of the road and shuddered to think it might be a dog or a deer? There’s a sense of relief when we realize we’re looking at an object, not a dead...

Today’s poem is Hackberry by Cecily Parks. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Maggie writes… “Today’s poem is a kind of love poem—to a beloved tree, and to the sense of home it created.” 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 Congratulations! Your Grief Is About to Stop Being Relevant! by Bridget Bell. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Maggie writes… “Today’s poem captures a time of grief in the speaker’s life, when life goes a little quiet after a flurry of support and care.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: http...

Today’s poem is Come Back! by Camille Guthrie. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Maggie writes… “One of the poets I discovered in college was H.D.. Born Hilda Doolittle, she published under her initials. I remember being wowed by her poems, which were experimental and strange, unlike anything I’d read before—and unlike anything I’ve read since.” Celebrate the power of poem...

Today’s poem is Apocatastasis by G.C. Waldrep. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Maggie writes… “When a poet, or a child, plays with figurative language, they explore the possibilities and the boundaries of the words we use to describe the world around us. Life will throw at us things that are hard or impossible to describe, both beautiful and awful things. So I think that...

Today’s poem is Birthday Wish by David Groff. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Maggie writes… “Today’s poem muses on different kinds of knowing without privileging one over the other. What we know vs. what animals know vs. what plants know, for instance. I think of us humans as being on a need-to-know basis, and this poem reminds me that we don’t need to know—or be—everyt...

Today’s poem is New Year by Kate Baer. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Maggie writes… “Is it too late to wish you all a Happy New Year? I don’t think so. I don’t think there’s ever an expiration date on well wishes, and frankly, we need all the well wishes we can get for 2026!” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a differe...

Today’s poem is I Have Lost It by Monica Ferrell. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Maggie writes… “I’ve misplaced—or lost—many things in my life, but a few come to mind because losing them pained me. A few Polaroid pictures of a loved one who’s gone now. Some vintage clothes I was attached to. A long handwritten letter. At first, losing those irreplaceable items felt like...

Today’s poem is The Long Now by Robin Beth Schaer. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Maggie writes… “Today’s poem addresses a child—a child full of questions about the world. It reminds me that as parents, we don’t need to have the answers, and we don’t need to pretend to have them. Instead we can listen, stay open, and honor our kids’ curiosity and wonder. Honor the poets...

Today’s poem is Now that we’ve been married all these years, by Keetje Kuipers. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Maggie writes… "I can remember a few “beforetimes” in my own life, though some are foggier than others. It’s hard for me to clearly imagine the life I had before my kids. It’s also hard for me to conjure the life I had with my ex-husband, and the life I had bef...

Today’s poem is Vacation by Sara Moore Wagner. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Maggie writes… “It feels like a quintessential American experience, taking your kids to the beach. I remember trips to Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, and Ocean City, Maryland, when I was young — road trips in the family minivan, because it was more affordable to get a family of five to the coas...

Today’s poem is ars poetica, 2019 by Airea D. Matthews. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Maggie writes… “I love poetry. Of course I do—I’m hosting this show every weekday! And you’re here, listening, so I think we have this love of poetry in common. But I also know people who are a little uneasy with poetry. I’ve met plenty of people who’ve confessed to me, ‘I love to rea...

Today’s poem is Waiting for the Call I Am by Wyatt Townley. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Maggie writes… “Waiting is a kind of purgatory, a middle ground. In that liminal, in-between space, we alternate between hope and fear. Some despair might creep in, too. Everything will be okay, we tell ourselves one minute. The worst has happened, we tell ourselves the next. Even...

Today’s poem is Given to Rust by Vievee Francis. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Maggie writes… “Today’s poem touched me in how it explores the intimacy of sound, and especially the human voice. How, too, the silence between us can be so loud.” 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 The Good Guy by Blas Falconer. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Maggie writes… “Today’s poem touched me because it acknowledges the patience and tenderness we need to have as spouses and as parents. Relationships are a lot of work, and when you have children it adds another layer of love and another layer of work. Another level of consideration.” Celebrate...

Today’s poem is Going Home by Joan Kwon Glass. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Maggie writes… “When my children tell me about their dreams, it's not uncommon for them to say, “We were at home, but it wasn’t our house,” or “I was with my friends, but they weren’t my real-life friends.” Sometimes I play a cameo role as myself, but sometimes the role of their mother is play...

Today’s poem is Earth Shovel by Dan Albergotti. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Maggie writes… “Today’s poem, which looks at the fragility of our planet, begins with two epigraphs. One is from American astronomer Carl Sagan, from his book Pale Blue Dot. The other is the famous line from politician Michael Steele.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown...

Today’s poem is Midlife Crisis by Jane Zwart. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Maggie writes… “Midlife has upended everything I thought about aging. It’s not at all what I expected. Certainly, when I was a child, I thought of people in their forties as old, and now that I’m closer to 50 than 40, I laugh at that. I feel … young! I feel younger, in many ways, than I did ten...