The Slowdown: Poetry & Reflection Daily

Today’s poem is Post- by Corey Van Landingham. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “Today’s poem reminds me that life shapes us into authentic beings. Looking behind at our own journey can sometimes cause pain — but it can also liberate us.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rj...

Today’s poem is Home Movies: A Sort of Ode by Mary Jo Salter. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “With so much of our treasured moments digitized on servers, it seems we’ve lost physical evidence of our lives. Yet, we own thousands more photos of ourselves than our parents and grandparents. Like many, I wonder what will happen to the virtual record of our exis...

Today’s poem is Taking Stock by Elaine Equi. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “Today’s poem invites us to find the balance between deepening our self-awareness and actually living life. Sometimes our journey means not letting that journey inhibit our sense of fun.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a differe...

Today’s poem is from "Elegy for the Times" by Adonis, translated by Robyn Creswell. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “For stateless people, writing poems, taking pictures, composing songs is precarious, but making art happens, nonetheless. Often, it is a counter insistence of one’s presence on earth. Today’s poem is a humanizing statement of profound sorrow...

Today’s poem is Vulture by Ted Kooser. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “Today’s poem invites us to attune, to notice, to hear what’s communicated beneath our words and bodies, to read the signs, even if what is heard or seen or felt bears an ominous message.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference:...

Today’s poem is Abide by Jake Adam York. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “Today’s poem sees existence as a fleeting encounter of sublime immensity — one where we intertwine with the natural world, such that we have no other choice, but to awaken to all life around us.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a di...

Today’s poem is oracle by Duriel E. Harris. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “Today’s poem intrigues me for how it upholds the possibility of poetry as a terse, sacred voicing that emerges from within, where the inexpressible finds its way to the world as transcendent music, something far more compelling than the language of machines.” Celebrate the power of...

Today’s poem is The Clearing by Jane Kenyon. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “Dogs have a lot to teach us. Learning to care about the land and people is to live daily in the fullness of existence, such that we come to cherish and love those close to us and beyond.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a differ...

Today’s poem is Grading Rubric by Antonio de Jesús López. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “Today’s brilliant poem speaks to the ordeal of enduring racial abuse and microaggressions in educational institutions. It slyly appropriates an academic assessment tool to point out that we are clearly failing in treating each other like whole humans.” Celebrate the p...

Today’s poem is Pacific Power & Light by Michael Dickman. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “The beauty of poetry is its diversity and how it gives us an opportunity to feel language, rather than the poem acting only as a substitute for a Hallmark card or occasion for a punchline.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every dona...

Today’s poem is Eureka! by Jessica Abughattas. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “To borrow a phrase, love calls us to the things of this world. But as today’s brilliant poem reminds us, in our search for happiness, we find our worth in relation to our freedom and societal expectations. We learn to self-affirm in our search for joy.” Celebrate the power of po...

Today’s poem is The Forgotten Dialect of the Heart by Jack Gilbert. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “Inadequacy is built into the enterprise of speaking; we struggle to say exactly what we need to say — if we even know what we need to say.“ Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com...

Today’s poem is Negro Hero (to Suggest Dorie Miller) by Gwendolyn Brooks. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. It’s fall, and that means “back-to-school”. We put together this week’s episodes for the educators in our audience — especially those of you who may be looking for a little Slowdown treatment on those classroom classics, from Shakespeare to Frost. We hope you all enjoy these selectio...

Today’s poem is Sonnet 130 by William Shakespeare. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. It’s fall, and that means “back-to-school”. We put together this week’s episodes for the educators in our audience — especially those of you who may be looking for a little Slowdown treatment on those classroom classics, from Shakespeare to Frost. We hope you all enjoy these selections, as learners of any...

Today’s poem is Gravelly Run by A. R. Ammons. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. It’s fall, and that means “back-to-school”. We put together this week’s episodes for the educators in our audience — especially those of you who may be looking for a little Slowdown treatment on those classroom classics, from Shakespeare to Frost. We hope you all enjoy these selections, as learners of any age....

Today’s poem is from "Spring and All" by William Carlos Williams. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. It’s fall, and that means “back-to-school”. We put together this week’s episodes for the educators in our audience — especially those of you who may be looking for a little Slowdown treatment on those classroom classics, from Shakespeare to Frost. We hope you all enjoy these selections, as l...

Today’s poem is Birches by Robert Frost. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. It’s fall, and that means “back-to-school”. We put together this week’s episodes for the educators in our audience — especially those of you who may be looking for a little Slowdown treatment on those classroom classics, from Shakespeare to Frost. We hope you all enjoy these selections, as learners of any age. \In t...

Today’s poem is Leaving by Madeleine Cravens. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “Today’s poem knows the world is enticing, seductive, full of possibilities. The hack is to consciously curate our pleasures — the slow, intentional cherishing of a life well-lived.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference:...

Today’s poem is The Joseph Cornell App by David Roderick. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “The great actor James Earl Jones departed this earth. His passing reminded me of a hilarious app idea I devised at a party. I called it the God App, where the great actor would simply recite the ten commandments. When I imagined a deity speaking, I thought of James Ea...

Today’s poem is This Living by Amber Tamblyn. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “In my mere five decades on earth, I’ve faced many challenges — thwarted dreams, failed friendships, career disappointments — that often left me feeling alone, stranded in the dry badlands, searing heat bearing down. And yet, of course, I wasn’t. A three-hour telephone conversatio...

Today’s poem is If only by Dawn Lundy Martin. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “Today’s poem unapologetically claims psychic space. In order to be at peace and clear-eyed, the speaker forgoes decorative language that would obscure what their heart and mind believe is ethically true.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donat...

Today’s poem is Try to Praise the Mutilated World by Adam Zagajewski, translated by Clare Cavanagh The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “One of the great paradoxes in life is the presence of human suffering on the planet amidst prosperity. No religion can explain this other than point to some large cosmic plan. Sometimes it’s tough bearing witness and walking in...

Today’s poem is Lying My Head Off by Cate Marvin. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “One of the great feelings of aging is coming clean about my shortcomings. That honesty is an illuminating relief, because, as today’s surrealist poem suggests, the masks we take on eventually make us an imposter to ourselves.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The S...

Today’s poem is Homo naledi by Sara Borjas. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “I see poems functioning in the way stones function, as protection, as foundation, even as weaponry. Today’s poem asserts those simple objects that manifest as testament of our durable existence in the face of opposing forces.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdow...

Today’s poem is The Big People by César Vallejo, translated by James Wright. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “Today’s poem strikes that note of fear of being cut off from the world and the impending feelings of abandonment.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp