The Slowdown: Poetry & Reflection Daily

Today’s poem is Ungendered 2 by Kwame Sound Daniels. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “Today’s poem rightly resists labels that limit our lived experiences, and rallies for us setting our own terms for how we are viewed in society.” 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 Us by Zaffar Kunial. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “Since moving to the quaint village of Rochester, I come to expect visible signs of welcome everywhere. What matters in life is that space between us, formulated by philosopher Martin Buber as I-Thou. It’s a sacred space of shared existence where we feel each other’s uniqueness and feel ou...

Today’s poem is The Long Goodbye by Diana Whitney. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “Today’s poem spotlights a multigenerational family, where the daily demands of domestic and long-term care are challenging enough, but at the center is the familial promise of unconditional love.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation...

Today’s poem is Ode to Purple Summer by Sabrina Benaim. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “For me, the pendulum swing that is emotional health deprives me of the world’s splendor. The hummingbird flitting about the garden is no longer enchanting to me, a bite of a perfect brick oven pizza is just food, mere nourishment, not a crispy, aromatic experience of ba...

Today’s poem is Polycardial by James Hoch. This episode was originally released on February 3, 2023. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “Today’s poem, is a sort of sentimental journey which ponders that tenderness of our youth, when it seems like our hunger for love and touch and connection peak. The poem realizes, too, that perhaps we eventually lose the abil...

Today’s poem is Cricket Song by George Kalogeris. This episode was originally released on February 27, 2023. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “At times, no words exist to capture our rapid, forward-marching world. Life outpaces language. It is then we attempt to create fresh language or rinse cycle words until we have a new purchase on old concepts. For exam...

Today’s poem is Foxglove by Ambalila Hemsell. This episode was originally released on February 1, 2023. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “In today’s brilliant poem, the speaker wrestles with the self-perception of how our hungers as humans nascently contribute to the disruption of the natural world, and whether or not we have proprietary rights to those natu...

Today’s poem is Hymn to Church Basements by Joan Kwon Glass. This episode was originally released on May 4, 2023. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “Today’s poem exalts the unadorned spaces where those on the journey to recovery find acceptance and community.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: h...

Today’s poem is September by Nathaniel Perry. This episode was originally released on February 13, 2023. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “Today’s gorgeous poem invokes the enigmatic energy of an impending storm, the kind that mesmerizes, that beckons us to read the symbolism of nature, that points to both destruction and life.” Celebrate the power of poems...

Love Poem, with Birds by Barbara Kingsolver. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “Today’s poem gives voice to the intimidating feeling of competing with a partner’s personal passion. However begrudgingly we come around to their idiosyncratic awarenesses, such an intense engagement is exactly what attracts us in the end.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift...

Today’s poem is from "Excess Sonnets" by Isabel Prioleau. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “Today’s poem dramatizes the vulnerability of our most extreme emotions as revealed on various platforms, such that no layered extravagance of mystery exists between us.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference:...

Today’s poem is abundance of light by erica lewis. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “I hear in today’s poem a haunting, reckoning, and nostalgia – dominant themes among poets on the road. On stages and podiums, we traded poems about heartbreak, childhood memories, and personal loss. What emerges is a triumphant questioning spirit that overcomes grief and unc...

Today’s poem is Frederick Douglass by Robert Hayden. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “Today’s monumental poem keeps alive the fighting spirit of one of the great minds of the 19th century, whose eloquent speeches and books brought into focus freedoms we sometimes take for granted.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donati...

Today’s poem is Afternoon in Andalusia by Sahar Romani. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “Today’s poem also provides us with a sense of how the mind and heart make from symbols and patterns a space beyond our reach, where we fleetingly glimpse, if not encounter, the divine.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes...

Today’s poem is Nocturne by Oliver Baez Bendorf. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “In young adulthood, long before children, jobs, home ownership, my evenings felt like a blank canvas of cultural and spiritual possibility. I felt a joyous connection to all around me, artists and writers and musicians, thinkers and believers, both living and departed, alive i...

Today’s poem is I’m Nobody! Who are you? (260) by Emily Dickinson. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “Today’s popular poem encourages a kind of disappearance from life rather than a need for attention. Cosmologically speaking, there’s a virtue in acknowledging one’s insignificance, maybe, too, in instigating others to enjoy the pause of anonymity and quietnes...

Today’s poem is On Earth by Andrew McFadyen-Ketchum. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “After my last heartbreak, before I even tried to enter into a new relationship, my friend Victoria noted how she and I never give up on love, which we both know is not found in any one person, but an aspirational state two people can achieve when they partner on an authent...

Today’s poem is Alain Locke in Stoughton Hall by John Keene. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “Today’s dramatic monologue reminds me that poets are also archivists, storytellers who celebrate the past. We go beyond our self as subject matter to become humanity’s finest chroniclers.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donati...

Today’s poem is Rooms by the Sea by Lauren Aliza Green. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “My early adult years were a stream of impulsive decisions. Some worked out and many did not — for example, the used car with the too-good-to-be-true price tag, as well as my brief career as an accountant. The speaker in today’s poem also realizes our best laid plans are...

Today’s poem is Hair by Clarence Major. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “Today’s poem reminds me of what my mother, who knew our heads to be sacred and mystical, told me years ago: you don't just let anyone in your hair.” 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 Love Sits by My Father by Qutouf Elobaid. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “People in love are complicated; no one knows this more than the children, who get a front row seat to how affection plays itself out in the home, or not. Which influences how they interact and understand intimacy operating, or not, around them. Many psychological expe...

Today’s poem is In Praise of Mystery: A Poem for Europa by Ada Limón. This June, the US Poet Laureate and former host of The Slowdown, Ada Limón, unveiled a poem that she wrote for NASA's Europa Clipper, a poem that will be inscribed in her own hand on the side of the spacecraft set for Jupiter's water moon, 1.8 billion miles away. Her work is partnered with the Message in a Bottle project, which...

Today’s poem is Two Photographs by Theresa Lola. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “Susan Sontag, writing about Robert Mapplethorpe, once wrote, “a [photograph] convey[s] a truth about the subject, a truth that would not be known were it not captured. . . All such claims, however contradictory, are claims of power over the subject.” The speaker in today’s poe...

Today’s poem is Failed Essay on Privilege by Elisa Gonzalez. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “We are in the midst of an attack on perceived advantages. Earlier this year, the U.S. Supreme Court ended race conscious admissions in higher education. The decision is sure to have a domino effect in our society. The ruling closed one of the proven means to econom...

Today’s poem is I wanted music by Sarah Ruhl. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, guest host Shira Erlichman writes… “The doorbell rings. It’s my childhood friend, Jake. Where any two friends would exchange hellos, he and I say nothing. We get in his car without a word. There are only 3 rules at a Silence Party: 1) no talking 2) hang out 3) listen. Because we aren’t trying t...