The Slowdown: Poetry & Reflection Daily

Today’s poem is Feeding the Koi by Rosanna Young Oh. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “Today’s poem exemplifies those moments when sometimes we cannot speak or act on our truth because of debilitating fears. And on occasion, art is what provides clarity when we seek signs beyond the surface of our worlds.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slow...

Today’s poem is Signs, Music by Raymond Antrobus. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “I believe life, even the cosmos, is saturated with sound. I’m not alone. The ancient mathematician Pythagoras and his followers discovered that a harmony of sounds exists in our solar system, based on each planet’s orbit around the sun.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gi...

Today’s poem is Hillwood by Mark Jarman. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “Today’s poem calls us to the sounds of the earth and its creatures, where the imagination takes over as we doze off. Mind and body are primed for that somnambulant journey that is the unconscious.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a...

Today’s poem is Totalitarian by Tyler Mills. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “Today’s poem makes the case that there are occasions in which I cannot let apathy rule, that the assaults on human dignity are so large, I must speak through my stunned witnessing.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference:...

Today’s poem is EGGSHELLS by Michael Kleber-Diggs. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, guest host Shira Erlichman writes… “This poem makes me consider the great tension between one’s vision and one’s reality. I feel profundity in that the assertion of I will has lead to landing on distant moons.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation...

Today’s poem is Might Kindred by Mónica Gomery. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, guest host Shira Erlichman writes… “Today’s poem is a seeking of belonging. My favorite part about it is how shyness and a longing for friendship coexist.” 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 Poem at the Top of a Mountain by Angel Nafis. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, guest host Shira Erlichman writes… “Today’s poem is about a prayerful space which offers not just withdrawal, but perspective. I see in this poem what it was that I found on my walk to my high school art room sanctuary. What appears to be aloneness is actually a deepening camara...

Today’s poem is Things Haunt by Joshua Jennifer Espinoza. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, guest host Shira Erlichman writes… “To meet one’s eyes in the mirror while grieving is to meet parts of the self that are unbearable, raw, jagged, self-judging and perhaps even unforgiving. Today’s poem reckons with one’s own gaze, but also with the warped gaze of others.” Celebrate...

Today’s poem is Rain by Adrian Keith Smith. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, guest host Shira Erlichman writes… “Today’s short poem is by an extraordinary young monk, four year old Adrian Keith Smith. He may not be ordained, but he is a tremendously wise noticer. Like the Buddha, by simply observing the world around him, he grasps a mammoth truth that most adults struggle...

Today’s poem is Through a closed mouth the flies enter by Pablo Neruda. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, guest host Shira Erlichman writes… “Knowing is often heralded as more valuable than not knowing. So questions become an underground currency for those of us that appreciate a different way of being. Today’s poem understands that if a question is a jawbreaker you turn o...

Today’s poem is Villanelle by Michelle Lin. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, guest host Shira Erlichman writes… “Today’s poem centers around the defining relationship of a mother and child. To bring obsession into language, Lin masterfully uses the repetitive poetic form of the villanelle. They fling open doors only to quickly shut them. I know this dance well. The dance...

Today’s poem is The Listening World by Hannah Emerson. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, guest host Shira Erlichman writes… “I turn to poetry to be among deep feelers and open-hearted world-experiencers––to feel connected. But I think I also turn to poetry because, at its best, it teaches me the rigorous, risky, and stunning craft of listening.” Celebrate the power of poem...

Today’s poem is And the Beautiful by Paul Celan. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, guest host Shira Erlichman writes… “The work of today’s poet, Paul Celan, was marked by genocide. This small poem by Celan reckons with what is brutally taken, what is lost. He doesn’t offer us superficial answers to endless grief. He offers only questions. And I sense, inside the questions,...

Today’s poem is sights and sounds on my way to you by Geleisa George. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, guest host Shira Erlichman writes… “There are things we come to see only by slowing down. Today’s poem is an ode to observation. As the speaker makes moves to meet her beloved, we get lost in her quiet noticing, which is, in and of itself, an arrival.” Celebrate the powe...

Today’s poem is Wonder Wheel by Wo Chan. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “Late spring, I attended a brilliant performance of Pretend It’s a Boat Poetry Tour, featuring comedian/poet Derrick C. Brown and actress/poet Amber Tamblyn at Coop Gallery. They stood behind a makeshift boat fashioned from a card table turned on its side and invited everyone to imagin...

Today’s poem is Love After Love by Derek Walcott. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “Today’s poem dramatizes the important act of rediscovering and intimately coming to love who one is, in all our complexities. It’s a famous poem that teaches devotion of self before we make ourselves available to others.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdo...

Today’s poem is Did you want to come in? by Temperance Aghamohammadi. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “Is there any situation more vulnerable for potential, amorous partners than that moment ending an evening of performative first impressions? Personally, I’ve experienced everything from a soft kiss to awkward hugs to clammy handshakes to goodbyes from the...

Today’s poem is Sword Swallowing Lessons by Judy Kaber. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “There is no shortcut to virtuosity. Today’s visceral poem points to the all important fact that with any artistic activity or pursued talent, the quest is the reward.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: htt...

Today’s poem is Light Upon The Body by Alison Braid. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “Today’s poem speaks a truth about bodies. Illness, occasionally, makes them seem like their own entities; they speak the languages of pain and discomfort that need translation into a music. Music that ushers us back to familiarity and recovery.” Celebrate the power of poem...

Today’s poem is Voyeuristic Intentions by Adele Elise Williams. This episode was originally released on August 4, 2023. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “If the Yoruba proverb, character is beauty, is true, then, given the hostilities in the world and mass indifference, a bright spirit, full of warmth and compassion, is likely forged over time out of sufferi...

Today’s poem is this is a library by Asiya Wadud. This episode was originally released on July 26, 2023. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “Today’s empathetic poem, which takes the tone of an elementary school primer, encourages a greater noticing of those who are leastwise among us, who fall outside the social fabric of our care. In doing so, hopefully, we m...

Today’s poem is My Dearest Black-Billed Streamertail by Michelle Whittaker. This episode was originally released on June 28, 2023. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “The speaker in today’s epistolary poem turns to the hummingbird as an avatar of their own wish to soar.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a dif...

Today’s poem is Happy Campus by Rodrigo Toscano. This episode was originally released on August 3, 2023. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “Today’s poem of self-mocking irony makes the connection between our daily routines and the natural and artificial environments that we navigate—how we negotiate a dissonance that complicates our sense of what’s real and w...

Today’s poem is The Statues and Us by Yannis Ritsos, translated by Martin McKinsey. This episode was originally released on June 21, 2023. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “My life is a constant stream of deadlines, such that I am forever trying to fit in what I love most — writing poetry. When I worked in the corporate finance office of a popular clothing r...

Today’s poem is On Mars by Ariana Benson. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “I’ve come to believe our galaxy serves as a destination for our imaginations; it inspires our conjecture about the universe; it is where we land all of our queries about the meaning and origins of life, where we construct narratives that give us solace.” Celebrate the power of poems...