The Slowdown: Poetry & Reflection Daily

Today’s poem is Six for Gold by Kate Hanson Foster. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. We're currently taking a break and will be back soon with new episodes. This week, we’re revisiting some favorites from Major’s time as host. Today’s episode was originally released on April 4, 2023. In this episode, Major writes… “Confession: As a young parent, when my children barraged me with questions...

Today’s poem is Some Madness There by Charlotte Pence. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. We're currently taking a break and will be back soon with new episodes. This week, we’re revisiting some favorites from Major’s time as host. Today’s episode was originally released on March 31, 2023. In this episode, Major writes… “When I arrived in Eugene, Oregon after an arduous yet stunning road tr...

Today’s poem is The Party is Downstairs by Didi Jackson. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “Today’s poem honors the family dog whose imperfections are all the more reason to love. The Slowdown was more than a labor of love. Each episode was an invitation to dream how we might come to love our imperfect world.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The S...

Today’s poem is Playback by Lauren Camp. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “I used to believe great art emerged from intense passion, a committed discipline driven by a purity of purpose. Of late, I use the word hunger as a measure of art, as an aesthetic value. Hunger as that inexplicable quality that conveys the artist’s works as their unique form of living...

Today’s poem is Mantle by Kevin Young. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “Today’s minimalist poem makes a poignant observation about the images of those who silently populate our homes, offices, museums, and walls. Their presence is our eventual destination.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: ht...

Today’s poem is Forge by Ethel Rackin. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “Today’s poem reminds me, in the midst of rapid changes and the assault on freedoms, that we must find ways to protect our health and each other, to harness our capacity for joy, to shore up our hearts, minds, and bodies.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. E...

Today’s poem is Gertrude: In the Rooms by Kate Daniels. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “Given the challenges we face on the daily, it is human for us to seek out those who seem to have it figured out, be they mentors or people who we think of in the face of some crisis. When faced with any crucial decision, my friend Salvatore frequently utters, ‘What woul...

Today’s episode was recorded live onstage at The Crawford in Pasadena, in partnership with our friends at LAist. Listen to hear conversation, poems, and some fun and games with our host Major Jackson and our guests Pádraig ÓTuama, Samiya Bashir, and Jason Schneiderman. The full episode transcript is available on our website at slowdownshow.org. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. Celebrate t...

Today’s poem is Flame by C.D. Wright. Last week, our team attended the 2025 AWP Conference in Los Angeles. AWP is the Association of Writers and Writing Programs — the conference is an annual moment to gather together colleagues across the writer world. This week’s episodes include audio we recorded onsite, bringing together many voices, Slowdown style. Today’s poem catalogs the chaos of disaster,...

Today’s poem is Why I Write Poetry by Major Jackson. In this episode, Major shares an important announcement. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. 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 Ways of Remembering Women by Lynne Thompson. Last week, our team attended the 2025 AWP Conference in Los Angeles. AWP is the Association of Writers and Writing Programs — the conference is an annual moment to gather together colleagues across the writer world. This week’s episodes include audio we recorded onsite, bringing together many voices, Slowdown style. Today’s poem, by...

Today’s poem is [as freedom is a breakfastfood] by E.E. Cummings. Last week, our team attended the 2025 AWP Conference in Los Angeles. AWP is the Association of Writers and Writing Programs — the conference is an annual moment to gather together colleagues across the writer world. This week’s episodes include audio we recorded onsite, bringing together many voices, Slowdown style. Today’s poem exp...

Today’s poem is The Running of Several Simulations at Once May Lead to Murky Data by Heather Christle. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “Some might call it fantastical, but in fact, for many, magic is our orientation, or the place where we began as children and never experienced the rupture that befalls most when they become adults.” Celebrate the power of p...

Today’s poem is mulberry fields by Lucille Clifton. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “American poetry gently mediates our rich and complicated history. It points the way to healing and affirms timeless values that secure all Americans' freedoms.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyur...

Our episode today is one of many from the archives. We’ll be back tomorrow with more new poetry and reflection! Today’s poem is Morning in a City by J. Mae Barizo. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “Today’s poem, an homage to poet Robert Hass, suggests one possible way of retaining is to live in the music of our existence, where memories though fleeting and a...

Today’s poem is The Rain, Life, and Other Things by Leah Umansky. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “I hear in today’s poem a spirit of riffing and casting forward in expressive notes. The speaker progresses by way of shifts and variations that ultimately arrives like a jazz solo. It’s where I find solace in movement and truth, in an embrace of simplicity.” C...

Today’s poem is Desert Sayings by Donovan McAbee. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “Today’s uproarious poem makes me want to abandon our life of chatter. To throw off our overly scheduled existence. I want to wake up to truths that can only be gleaned when I fade-out sequentially every duty that impresses upon me as needing to get done.” Celebrate the power...

Today’s poem is Grinning in Sardinia by Tomás Q. Morín. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “Writing is mining. That’s what I tell students or anyone that aspires to give expression to their lives. It’s probably why the Greek goddess of memory, Mnemosyne, is credited with inventing language. So much of writing is digging into the past, is going in further to fi...

Today’s poem is Portrait of My Mother Studying for Her Citizenship Exam by Eduardo Martínez-Leyva. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “With watery eyes, Mrs. Kumar shared the feelings of being in a room full of people with different histories and cultures, all raising their hands together, in unison, giving voice to a shared belief in the freedoms espoused by...

Our episode today is one of many from the archives. We’ll be back tomorrow with more new poetry and reflection! Today’s poem is Here We Are by Lauren K. Watel. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “Today’s poem begins from the idea that we yearn for connection and healing, but that our conflicts feel irreconcilable — to the point that we do not trust a future fr...

Today’s poem is Milestone 2 (We Laugh About the Weather, Its Impermanence) by Divya Victor. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “I wish us not to slide over each other’s lives, but there are limits to becoming too familiar. What if the conversation is not well-intentioned, but packed with assumptions, or worse? I thought as much reading today’s poem, one where...

Today’s poem is If we had known, by Marissa Davis. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “I love how nature disrupts the important goings-on of humans, how it forces us to grind to a halt and makes us one with our environs. We are smart to heed its signs.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://t...

Today’s poem is A Little Slice of Heaven by Jaswinder Bolina. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “What breaks through the impenetrable folly of it all? What lends itself as miraculous in the dailiness of our lives? The magic sprouting of a bed of daffodils in spring time, a sculpture made from black twizzlers that the artist intricately wove together into a fo...

Today’s poem is small comment by Sonia Sanchez. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “Today’s sharp poem was written by one of our most revered living poets. Its analysis could not be more pertinent to our political reality today.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp

Our episode today is one of many from the archives. We’ll be back tomorrow with more new poetry and reflection! Today’s poem is Ferment by Monica Rico. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “When writing poems and essays, I saturate my brain, when in fact, I should instead let intuition and a meandering knowing take over. There is something in the old-time folk w...