The Slowdown: Poetry & Reflection Daily

Today’s poem is from “Take Me Back, Burden Hill” by L. Lamar Wilson. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “Humans, it seems, are bound to feel adrift. So many times in my life, I have worked to muster a belief that all of it matters. I have made great efforts to not be lulled into amnesia nor medicate myself blind to the forces that harm — and to those that trul...

Today’s poem is Enlightenment by Vijay Seshadri. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “Today’s poem points to how people’s sense of desolation and lack of meaning sometimes fuel a desire to save the world, work they go about with patronizing superiority and condescension.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a dif...

Today’s poem is The Gardener 85 by Rabindranath Tagore. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “Poetry has a way of collapsing time, and by working the senses, having us experience an era. In the blues rhythms of Langston Hughes’ poetry, I hear early twentieth century New York, and going back, I hear the plurality of America and its citizens in the poetry of Walt...

Today’s poem is Nude by James Kelly Quigley. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “I long to write poems of a mystical nature, where the wisdom of the ages is carried forth in new forms and phrases. Today’s brief poem, in its associative leaps, could be the seed to a new way of seeing, if we just let its words work their magic.” Celebrate the power of poems with...

Today’s poem is America by Claude McKay, with special guest Tonya Mosley. Tonya is the host and creator of Truth Be Told and founder of TMI Productions. She is also a co-host of Fresh Air, and a correspondent and former host of Here & Now, the midday radio show co-produced by NPR and WBUR. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Tonya shares… “The Harlem Renaissance feels so...

Today’s poem is Machete: Look by Jasminne Mendez. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “Today’s poem reminds us of the tools that break the bonds of human connection and life, how we must go against rhetoric that strips us of our power to feel empathy and exercise grace.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a diff...

Today’s poem is Fowl at Large by Sarah Giragosian. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “Courage is at the heart of writing, and as today’s poem suggests, a wildness of being, that fires away from timidity and into realms of the self as glamorous and unpredictable, as if you had the whole world shook.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown tod...

Today’s poem is Hunger by Kelli Russell Agodon. This spring, we asked our community to submit poems that have helped you slow down in your lives. Thank you to the nearly 300 of you who sent us poems to read and enjoy. This week we’re featuring the team’s selections. Today’s selection was submitted by Jeannine from Washington. In this episode, Major writes… “What is it about this stage of dating th...

Today’s poem is Separation Wall by Naomi Shihab Nye. This spring, we asked our community to submit poems that have helped you slow down in your lives. Thank you to the nearly 300 of you who sent us poems to read and enjoy. This week we’re featuring the team’s selections. Today’s selection was submitted by Meital from Washington, D.C. In this episode, Major writes… “Coexistence on the planet demand...

Today’s poem is Sono by Suji Kwock Kim. This spring, we asked our community to submit poems that have helped you slow down in your lives. Thank you to the nearly 300 of you who sent us poems to read and enjoy. This week we’re featuring the team’s selections. In this episode, Major writes… “Today’s poem coordinates a masterful flow of language, simulating the journey of a child crossing into our ti...

Today’s poem is From Blossoms by Li-Young Lee. This spring, we asked our community to submit poems that have helped you slow down in your lives. Thank you to the nearly 300 of you who sent us poems to read and enjoy. Today’s selection was submitted by Candace from North Carolina. This week we’re featuring the team’s selections. In this episode, Major writes… “Today’s poem exults in that bounty of...

Today’s poem is One Art by Elizabeth Bishop. This spring, we asked our community to submit poems that have helped you slow down in your lives. Thank you to the nearly 300 of you who sent us poems to read and enjoy. This week we’re featuring the team’s selections. Today’s selection was submitted by Doug from Minnesota. In this episode, Major writes… “Today’s iconic poem inflects so much psychologic...

Today’s poem is The Way by Cynthia Cruz. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “This past spring like every spring many of my students graduated into the uncertainty of their futures. Their lives can take so many directions. I am curious as to what ultimately launches us as human beings with a purpose, or not. If ever we meet as new friends, I will likely ask wha...

Today’s poem is from "American Analects" by Gary Young. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “I find that poems emerge out of dialogues that I have either with myself, other works of art, or my friends. In this way, my poems are a collaboration of silences.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https:...

Today’s poem is Refusing Rilke's “You must change your life” by Remica Bingham-Risher. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “I live with Rilke’s famous line, “You must change your life,” in my ear on repeat, an earworm, as if something is less than stellar about who I am today. I move instinctively towards myself as though I were a massive project, believing I w...

Today’s poem is Transfusion by Shara Lessley. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “Today’s fine poem creates the feeling of a medically induced slumber, but, by working layers of sound, a gorgeous aesthetic tension enlivens my ears.” 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 Wind Poem by Song Yu, translated by Chloe Garcia Roberts. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “During moments of political crises, I think of wind, how conflicts arise and unfold. Today’s poem, written some 17 centuries ago, effectuates a storm. In the very structure of its sentences, the poem enacts the motion of a mighty gust and its aftermath...

Today’s poem is Pando Aspen Clone by Jacqueline Balderrama. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “When lost, truth is, someone always rescued me from my disorientation. Today’s poem reminds me that we are a single body, reliant on each other to find our way.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https...

Today’s poem is Act of Gratitude by Cyrus Cassells. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “Reading poems that strike big-hearted notes of the ecstatic have me celebrate my own victories and joys, small things in life that are meaningful, yet unnoticeable to the distracted eye: a child’s hug at the end of bedtime, first sip of steaming soup on a frigid day that fo...

Today’s poem is Voice Clear As by Kemi Alabi. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “Long ago, I knew I needed a new conception of heaven. The one with pearly white gates and winged angels from my youth in church just wasn’t working for me. I mean, I get clouds and blue skies as symbols of ascension from earthly plains. And it wasn’t just in church — heaven was e...

Today’s poem is But Beautiful by Rodney Terich Leonard. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “Some poets aim for meaning and clarity of emotion. And then, the best does that and more. They also play language as though words were comprised of tones and notes, as though the poem were a musical composition. They treat language as a resource by creating echoes throu...

Today’s poem is Each Morning Again by Rose McLarney. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “My daily routines present no surprises; they keep the beat of my life. The foreseeable brings me comfort. I typically stick to the script of the previous day. But writing poetry is something that disrupts my set pattern. Composing language into a meaningful act of artful f...

Today’s poem is Naïve by Tim Seibles. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “Today’s deeply reflective poem encourages a return to ourselves as open and loving, even at the risk of seeming dewy-eyed and idealistic.” 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 We Never Stop Talking About Our Mothers by Diannely Antigua. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “I treasure the elder women in my life for their conscious, yet easy-going transference of soul-nourishing values. Matriarchs mediated conflicts among family members. They put into play care and cohesion. They lovingly told stories, recalled importan...

Today’s poem is A Blessing by Samyak Shertok. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “Today’s remarkable poem exalts in the cultural rite of eating a meal prepared by an elder. Its sumptuous language and lush syntax are markers of the summer’s abundance.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tin...