The Slowdown: Poetry & Reflection Daily

Today’s poem is Sal, 1950 by Paula Colangelo. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Maggie writes… “Today’s poem explores PTSD as experienced by a POW, or prisoner of war. I admire this poem for the way it speaks to the resilience of the human spirit. I sometimes find myself in awe of what humans can survive, and what trauma survivors can keep intact inside themselves, and wha...

Today’s poem is Noah's Nameless Wife Takes Inventory by C.T. Salazar. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Maggie writes… “In many of the stories I grew up with, the men are named but their wives and daughters are not. That makes it pretty clear who the main characters are, doesn’t it? For example, in the story of Noah’s Ark, in the book of Genesis in the Christian bible, the...

Today’s poem is At the Base of the Mountain by Amanda Hawkins. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Maggie writes… “I’m not a religious person, but I think everyone has places that are sacred to them—places we might return to as pilgrims, as seekers. I think of how people visit the graves of their ancestors, or the places where they once lived. When we stand where our loved o...

Today’s poem is Paperweight by Ryan Teitman. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Maggie writes… “Today’s poem charmed me immediately with its imagination and its restraint. It’s a poem that makes me ask, “What if?” It’s also a poem I want to read again as soon as I finish it.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference:...

Today’s poem is Entry by Chet'la Sebree. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Maggie writes… “It's human nature to want to know for oneself, not only to trust in the knowledge of others. It’s human nature to want to make decisions for oneself, not only to trust in the decisions of others. It’s human nature to want to see for oneself, firsthand, not mediated by others.” Celebr...

Today’s poem is Before Lunar New Year, Our Mothers Go Missing by Uyen Phuong Dang. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Maggie writes… “Today’s poem references the Lunar New Year, which happens in February, but it’s a timeless, seasonless poem. It has me thinking about the relationship between mothers and daughters, and between one generation and the next.” Celebrate the powe...

Today’s poem is Echo by Pura López-Colomé, translated by Forrest Gander. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Maggie writes… “I also think that all literature is translation, in a sense. We are taking what is in our minds and translating that into language—and that’s true in any language. I think there is always a gap between what we want to express and what we can articulate...

Today’s poem is Gloria Mundi by Michael Kleber-Diggs. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Maggie writes… “I have sort of an odd confession: I have a funeral playlist—a list of songs I want played at whatever my memorial service turns out to be. Occasionally I add to it, and now and then I remove songs once they’ve lost their shine. My kids have laughed about this—“Mom, you’r...

Today’s poem is LeaveTaking by Rita Dove. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Maggie writes… “Today’s poem dreams its way into an imagined scenario: finding oneself on this planet, an alien, a stranger, and doing one’s best to be seen as belonging, so as to stay.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyu...

Today’s poem is The Eulogy I Didn’t Give (I) by Bob Hicok. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Maggie writes … “I’m here, and you’re here, so I’d call us “poetry people.” But even people who don’t think of themselves as “poetry people,” people who don’t spend time with poetry each day, do turn to poems when they’re grieving or celebrating: at weddings, funerals, and other oc...

Today’s poem is Alarm Clock by Jennifer Maier. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Maggie writes … “When I travel away from my kids, I have to coordinate our calls, which means demystifying the difference between my time and their time. “I’m three hours behind you in California” or “I’m seven hours ahead of you in Greece.” All of this talk about “my time” and “your time” is...

Today’s poem is A dead whale can feed an entire ecosystem by Rachel Dillon. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Maggie writes… “To ask, “What can a poem do to help?” is to gesture toward a bigger question: “What can art do?” What can literature, or music, or film, or performance, or visual art do for us, particularly when we are struggling, individually and collectively? I t...

Today’s poem is Palinode by Lisa Low. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Maggie writes … “Today’s poem is a kind of poem called a palinode. In a palinode, a writer changes her mind by retracting a viewpoint expressed in one of their earlier pieces of writing. Today’s poem makes us consider how we write about other people. It “flip-flops,” in a sense, but it certainly does s...

Today’s poem is Panama by Sarah Green. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Maggie writes… “There's a distinct disenchantment when the spell of the relationship has broken, and the magic’s gone. You’re not seeing the world through love’s rosy lens anymore. You wonder about what you might have overlooked, or misinterpreted, or just got wrong. I mean, I’ve been there. Most of u...

Today’s poem is The Night Angler by Geffrey Davis. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Maggie writes… “My name is Maggie—not Margaret, just Maggie—but the name I hear most often on a daily basis might be Mom. I have my children to thank for that name, because they made me a mother. In this way, we birthed each other. And we continue to shape each other, over the years. Surel...

Today’s poem is Puerto Rico Goes Dark by Juan J. Morales. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Maggie writes… “Given the misinformation that circulates on the internet, often unchecked, I’d like to preface today’s poem with a fact: Puerto Ricans are U.S. citizens. Our struggles are bound because we are citizens, together, of this nation.” Celebrate the power of poems with a g...

Today’s poem is The Night Where You No Longer Live by Meghan O’Rourke. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Maggie writes… “The speaker of today’s poem addresses her late mother, asking questions that are devastating and relatable. While we don’t have access to the answers, this poem is a beautiful place for the questions to live.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to...

Today’s poem is Local Mission by Kai Carlson-Wee. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Maggie writes… “I’m someone who likes to read a book without having read any reviews or think pieces about the book or the author. Sometimes I prefer to engage with art—to listen to a record or see a film—without expectations. With a relatively clean slate. I want you to have that experienc...

Today’s poem is Never-ending Birds by David Baker. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Maggie writes… “Today’s poem is one I’ve carried around in my mind for years, one whose language I flash to instinctively when I see a flock of birds, especially a murmuration of starlings. I think of the phrase “never-ending birds”—a phrase coined not by the speaker of this poem, but by t...

Today’s poem is The Poem Climbs the Scaffold and Tells You What It Sees by Natasha Oladokun. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Maggie writes… “There is power in naming, as today’s poem reminds us. Once you’ve seen the violence tucked inside the place name Lynchburg, barely hidden at all—hidden in plain sight—I don’t think you’ll be able to see or say the word the same way...

Today’s poem is Sehnsucht by Michael Dumanis. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Maggie writes… “Today’s poem introduced me to a new word for longing or yearning—and it showed me a way to use that expansive desire as a frame for the magic of everyday life.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com...

Today’s poem is When I Learn Catastrophically by Martha Silano. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Maggie writes… “Today’s poem unexpectedly merges the playfulness of anagrams with the gravitas of a terminal diagnosis—the weight of reckoning with the end of one’s life. But when you think about it, an anagram isn’t just play. It’s a way of making a thing out of something els...

Today’s poem is Different Kinds of Sadness by Jenny Molberg. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Maggie writes… “When I lost my joy, my generous friends were there. It can be so hard to accept help from others, especially if you pride yourself on being self-sufficient, but I took them up on their offers of meals, and company, and advice. And I’m so glad I did, because these...

Today’s poem is Night of the Living, Night of the Dead by Kim Addonizio. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Maggie writes… “It might surprise you to know that one of my favorite genres is the zombie movie. I like my zombies fast, like in ‘Train to Busan’ and ‘28 Days Later,’ and I like my zombies slow, like in the old classics directed by George Romero. In ‘Night of the Liv...

Today’s poem is At Night by Stanley Plumly. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Maggie writes, “Today’s poem is by one of my favorite poets, the late Stanley Plumly. Maybe more than anyone else in my life, Stan understood the double bind of deep solitude: that for the poet, for the artist, it’s as lonely as it is necessary. It’s both.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gif...