The Slowdown: Poetry & Reflection Daily

Today’s poem is Why I Write Poetry by Major Jackson. In this episode, Major shares an important announcement. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. 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 The Ways of Remembering Women by Lynne Thompson. Last week, our team attended the 2025 AWP Conference in Los Angeles. AWP is the Association of Writers and Writing Programs — the conference is an annual moment to gather together colleagues across the writer world. This week’s episodes include audio we recorded onsite, bringing together many voices, Slowdown style. Today’s poem, by...

Today’s poem is [as freedom is a breakfastfood] by E.E. Cummings. Last week, our team attended the 2025 AWP Conference in Los Angeles. AWP is the Association of Writers and Writing Programs — the conference is an annual moment to gather together colleagues across the writer world. This week’s episodes include audio we recorded onsite, bringing together many voices, Slowdown style. Today’s poem exp...

Today’s poem is The Running of Several Simulations at Once May Lead to Murky Data by Heather Christle. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “Some might call it fantastical, but in fact, for many, magic is our orientation, or the place where we began as children and never experienced the rupture that befalls most when they become adults.” Celebrate the power of p...

Today’s poem is mulberry fields by Lucille Clifton. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “American poetry gently mediates our rich and complicated history. It points the way to healing and affirms timeless values that secure all Americans' freedoms.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyur...

Our episode today is one of many from the archives. We’ll be back tomorrow with more new poetry and reflection! Today’s poem is Morning in a City by J. Mae Barizo. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “Today’s poem, an homage to poet Robert Hass, suggests one possible way of retaining is to live in the music of our existence, where memories though fleeting and a...

Today’s poem is The Rain, Life, and Other Things by Leah Umansky. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “I hear in today’s poem a spirit of riffing and casting forward in expressive notes. The speaker progresses by way of shifts and variations that ultimately arrives like a jazz solo. It’s where I find solace in movement and truth, in an embrace of simplicity.” C...

Today’s poem is Desert Sayings by Donovan McAbee. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “Today’s uproarious poem makes me want to abandon our life of chatter. To throw off our overly scheduled existence. I want to wake up to truths that can only be gleaned when I fade-out sequentially every duty that impresses upon me as needing to get done.” Celebrate the power...

Today’s poem is Grinning in Sardinia by Tomás Q. Morín. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “Writing is mining. That’s what I tell students or anyone that aspires to give expression to their lives. It’s probably why the Greek goddess of memory, Mnemosyne, is credited with inventing language. So much of writing is digging into the past, is going in further to fi...

Today’s poem is Portrait of My Mother Studying for Her Citizenship Exam by Eduardo Martínez-Leyva. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “With watery eyes, Mrs. Kumar shared the feelings of being in a room full of people with different histories and cultures, all raising their hands together, in unison, giving voice to a shared belief in the freedoms espoused by...

Our episode today is one of many from the archives. We’ll be back tomorrow with more new poetry and reflection! Today’s poem is Here We Are by Lauren K. Watel. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “Today’s poem begins from the idea that we yearn for connection and healing, but that our conflicts feel irreconcilable — to the point that we do not trust a future fr...

Today’s poem is Milestone 2 (We Laugh About the Weather, Its Impermanence) by Divya Victor. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “I wish us not to slide over each other’s lives, but there are limits to becoming too familiar. What if the conversation is not well-intentioned, but packed with assumptions, or worse? I thought as much reading today’s poem, one where...

Today’s poem is If we had known, by Marissa Davis. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “I love how nature disrupts the important goings-on of humans, how it forces us to grind to a halt and makes us one with our environs. We are smart to heed its signs.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://t...

Today’s poem is A Little Slice of Heaven by Jaswinder Bolina. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “What breaks through the impenetrable folly of it all? What lends itself as miraculous in the dailiness of our lives? The magic sprouting of a bed of daffodils in spring time, a sculpture made from black twizzlers that the artist intricately wove together into a fo...

Today’s poem is small comment by Sonia Sanchez. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “Today’s sharp poem was written by one of our most revered living poets. Its analysis could not be more pertinent to our political reality today.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp

Our episode today is one of many from the archives. We’ll be back tomorrow with more new poetry and reflection! Today’s poem is Ferment by Monica Rico. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “When writing poems and essays, I saturate my brain, when in fact, I should instead let intuition and a meandering knowing take over. There is something in the old-time folk w...

Today’s poem is Gratitude by Patrick Dundon. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “Today’s poem puts us in touch with what it means to experience unadulterated joy, one that is owed to an exquisite contentment.” 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 Divinity School by Ariana Reines. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “Some people visit the Caribbean and other warmer climes. I drove to a lamp store. Some people dine by a fireside hearth at their favorite restaurant. I drove to a lamp store. Some people . . . you get my point. Reading the headlines, I thought recently, of those seeking refug...

Today’s poem is 5 A.M. by Michael Ondaatje. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “The nature of my youth was one in which my passion for art lived out in my passion for life. At times, there was a recklessness about it. Like Greg, Quraysh, and me spilling out of a Soho bar at first light, having debated literature and writers with a seriousness that felt like li...

Today’s poem is Mother's Rules by Yalie Saweda Kamara. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “Today’s poem shows how we impossibly carry our parents’ voices well into our adulthood, a measure by which to shape our lives independent of their nurturance and instructions.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a differe...

Today’s poem is What Good Is Silence by Phuong T. Vuong. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. Our episode today is one of many from the archives. We’ll be back tomorrow with more new poetry and reflection! In this episode, Major writes… “Today’s poem illustrates returning to listening as a ventilation of the soul, sublimating the ego in the interest of interacting with more than just our thou...

Today’s poem is Field Guide as Sonnet by A. D. Lauren-Abunassar. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “Today’s poem honors the spirit of courageous women who humbly persist, who do not hold back on love.” 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 Ode to the Pink Cowboy Hat by Quinn Carver Johnson. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “Today’s poem honors how popular culture made room for a different kind of masculinity in the most unlikely of shows, the World Wrestling Federation with Chief Jay Strongbow, André the Giant, Hulk Hogan, Ric Flair and “Adorable” Adrian Adonis.” Celebrate the...

Today’s poem is An Apology for Trashing Magazines in Which You Appear by Nicole Sealey. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. Around what has become known as “awards season,” casual conversations are abuzz with talk of the year’s movies. This week’s episodes explore how poets take up movies as subjects — how the two art forms intertwine to make us feel more closely this life we share. In this...

Today’s poem is Cinema Paradiso by Claire Booker. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. Around what has become known as “awards season,” casual conversations are abuzz with talk of the year’s movies. This week’s episodes explore how poets take up movies as subjects — how the two art forms intertwine to make us feel more closely this life we share. In this episode, Major writes… “One of my favo...