The Slowdown: Poetry & Reflection Daily

Today’s poem is Cheap Magic by Arielle Hebert. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Maggie writes… “When we wear a costume, or even an uncharacteristic outfit, it’s possible to let go of the expectations other people set for us. Sometimes disappearing into another identity makes you more of yourself, not less. Being inside a persona might make you freer, not more constrained....

Today’s poem is At the End of a Good Week, the Van Broke Down by Mary Ardery. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Maggie writes… “Poetry, instead of asking questions like How did I get here? or What should I do? often deals more with the senses. Questions like What did it look like? How does it sound, taste, feel? Questions that ask us to witness. Much of the advice we recei...

Today’s poem is Prayer for My Unborn Niece or Nephew by Ross Gay. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Maggie writes… “Hope — earnest hope — is something we all need more to combat the cruelty and cynicism of these times we’re enduring. Today’s poem is filled to the brim with it.” This show is supported by gifts from listeners. Support The Slowdown with a donation and get acc...

Today’s poem is Isobutyl Nitrite by Kieron Walquist. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Maggie writes… “In today’s poem, the speaker feels something awaken in him while watching the film “Remember the Titans.” The poem weaves together the pain and the beauty of desire, which can become so knotted in our teen years. It leaves the reader a little breathless, like only a crush...

Today’s poem is Native Grasses by Lynnell Edwards. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Maggie writes… “When my son was younger, he loved to collect what he called “nature treasures” — pinecones, acorns, stones, seashells. I’d find them when I emptied his pockets, doing the laundry. I’d find them in my purses and coat pockets, where he’d slipped them for me to discover myself...

Today’s poem is Missing by Mary Morris. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Maggie writes… “Maybe it’s possible to have a welcome haunting. To open ourselves up to visitors, and to seek their company, however they are able to make themselves known. Seeing — or even seeking out — signs from deceased loved ones helps people who are grieving feel more connected and less alone.”...

Today’s poem is The Burning Kite by Ouyang Jianghe, translated by Austin Woerner. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Maggie writes… “Every once in a while, a poem comes along with imagery so startling, phrasing so original, I have to read it several times in a row to be sure I’m taking it all in. Today’s poem is one of them.” This show is supported by gifts from listeners....

Today’s poem is Coral, Again by Juliana Spahr. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Maggie writes… “When we talk about the health of ocean ecosystems, I often hear the phrase “existential threat.” It’s a phrase that sounds massive. Because it is! It’s something so big that it’s hard to know what to do, how to make the right choices, as just one person. Today’s poem probes tho...

Today’s poem is The Village by Marc Harshman. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Maggie writes… “A decade or so ago, I had the privilege of co-teaching a couple of workshops with the poet Stanley Plumly. He’d always say, in workshops, “exploit your territory.” He encouraged writers to lean into the regional instead of running from it. I now tell my students the same thing:...

Today’s poem is The Long Run by Linda Gregerson. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Maggie writes… “I have to remain optimistic — cautiously optimistic, because these are difficult days — that as we know better, we will do better. That we will learn from our mistakes and the mistakes of our forebearers, and that we will repair what we can, despite the harm we humans continu...

Today we’re excited to share a bonus episode: the first episode of "PASSAGES: On Morrison," produced by our friends at Random House Publishing Group. This new podcast takes reading on the road, as Namwali Serpell — novelist, critic, and Harvard professor — joins fellow writers and skilled readers in conversation to pore over excerpts of Toni Morrison’s prose. The show is the record of a traveling...

Today’s poem is You Try To Fix It by Liz Ahl. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Maggie writes… “As a child watching Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, I remember being amazed by the Everlasting Gobstopper — a candy that a child could suck on forever, and it would never get any smaller. One of them would last a lifetime! In real life, manufacturers seem to do the opposi...

Today’s poem is The New City by Hieu Minh Nguyen. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Maggie writes… “There’s a very specific pleasure in doing things alone. Going to the movies by yourself, sitting in the dark with your own drink and popcorn or candy that you don’t have to share, and sitting anywhere you want in the theatre without asking a companion where they want to sit....

Today’s poem is At the Entrance of a Love Poem, I Hesitate by Maya C. Popa. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Maggie writes… “Love poems are maybe the hardest poems to write. I speak only for myself here, but I have a feeling plenty of poets agree with me.” This show is supported by gifts from listeners. Support The Slowdown with a donation and get access to the sponsor-fr...

Today’s poem is On Being Told I Should Write A Memoir by Jan-Henry Gray. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Maggie writes… “Today’s poem excavates childhood memories in a way only a poem can — and it enacts the fragmentation, the piece-iness, of memory. I should also mention that the poem uses lines from one of my favorite bands, Built to Spill, as an epigraph. Because in o...

Today’s poem is Liquefying by Chloe Yelena Miller. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Maggie writes… “Poets use language the way an artist uses paint, the way sculptors use clay. It’s our material. We have to use it wisely, not only as craftspeople but as humans who care about others. The way today’s poem talks about vision — and vision problems — is original, and vulnerabl...

Today’s poem is Citrus Paradisi by Arah Ko. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Maggie writes… “Today’s poem takes as its inspiration the grapefruit, which is fleshy and juicy and as bitter as it is sweet. I was drawn to this poem because it is so packed with sensory detail: smells, sights, and textures. The poem itself is delicious.” This show is supported by gifts from lis...

Today’s poem is True Story by Camille T. Dungy. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Maggie writes… “Today’s poem examines the many possibilities of giving love in a temporary world.” This show is supported by gifts from listeners. Support The Slowdown with a donation and get access to the sponsor-free version of The Slowdown today. Slowdownshow.org/donate

Today’s poem is A Love Poem Will Not Save the World by C. Russell Price. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Maggie writes… “We read and share poems in times of tragedy because they say something we need to say, or need to hear. That is certainly true of today’s poem. It speaks to something that feels unspeakable. It sings to us in the dark.” This show is supported by gifts...

Today’s poem is Climacteric by Kelly Gray. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Maggie writes… “Midlife is a strange season. I find myself both embracing the changes to my life and also grieving a little. Some doors are closing as others open. My kids are almost grown. I’m nearing the end of a long and much-loved era.” This show is supported by gifts from listeners. Support T...

Today’s poem is Terra Vita by Lisa Hiton. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Maggie writes… “It’s such a strange and dreamlike thing, the memory. Strange and dreamlike in the way it operates — what it picks up and what it leaves lying there, what it holds onto and what it eventually lets go of. I don’t know why I remember the dress I wore on my eighth birthday (ruffled and...

Today’s poem is Dispatch as Prologue or Epilogue by Megan Gannon. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Maggie writes… “I once heard the comedian Pete Holmes say, about his past, something along the lines of: “That life was the weird horse I rode to get to this life.” I think the speaker of today’s poem would like that imagery as much as I do. Here’s to weird horses, and to do...

Today’s poem is The Magicians at Work by Nicky Beer. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Maggie writes… “Today’s poem reminds me of the trick that poetry performs, time after time. We can vanish into a poem and emerge whole, but changed. It’s magic.” We’re asking you, our community of listeners, to help us select poems to share on the show in an upcoming week of special prog...

Today’s poem is Something there is that doesn’t love by Armen Davoudian. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Maggie writes… “Fences and walls are human-made structures, and they are inevitably eroded by the landscape itself: the rocks fall or are worn down by wind and rain; the wood rots or topples. And what happens when the boundary between what one person owns and what ano...

Today’s poem is Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by Wayne Miller. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Maggie writes… “Today’s poem shows us that even when we can escape the physical location of a painful situation, our mind can still try to free itself from what the body remembers.” We’re asking you, our community of listeners, to help us select poems to share on the sh...