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American Public Media

Poet Major Jackson is your guide on the pathways to feel and understand our common journey – through poetry. In sharing poems, we take a moment to pause and acknowledge the world’s magnitude, and how poets illuminate that mystery. Join The Slowdown for a poem and a moment of reflection in one short episode, every weekday. Produced by APM Studios in partnership with The Poetry Foundation and supported in part by the National Endowment for the Arts.

The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. Make us a part of your routine as you drink coffee in the morning, as you take a walk in nature, or as you wind down to go to sleep in the evening. With host Major Jackson, we collectively take a moment to calm, to inspire, to learn, and to engage with the best emerging poets and established writers of our time and generations past, from Emily Dickinson to Danez Smith, from Amanda Gorman to Mary Oliver.

Listen to our back catalog for episodes by our previous hosts, Tracy K. Smith and Ada Limón,  as well as guest hosts Jenny Xie, Brenda Shaughnessy, Tina Chang, Nate Marshall, Shira Erlichiman, and Jason Schneiderman. Our hosts and production team select poems that move them, and we hope they move you, too.

The Slowdown: Poetry & Reflection Daily

Today’s poem is A Dominican Poem by Danielle Legros Georges. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. I

n this episode, Major writes… “Today’s poem problematizes easy notions of citizenship and arbitrary boundaries. It powerfully implores us to reflect on our advantages, to find a way to humility — and to connect with those whose freedom is not a given.” 

Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp

1256: A Dominican Poem by Danielle Legros Georges

Today’s poem is Time || Immemorial by Daniel Simon. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. 

In this episode, Major writes… “Poems about public events offer reflection. They counter political and media rhetoric that aims to simplify. Writing poems gives citizens in a democracy a place at the table of ideas and grants us a way to engage that promotes justice and civic dialogue.” 

Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp

1257: Time || Immemorial by Daniel Simon

Today’s poem is The Trees by Jericho Brown. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. 

In this episode, Major writes… “I love the calls and trills of warblers and rose-breasted grosbeaks, the rushing sound of a brook over stone, the irrational belief, some might say, of connecting with something larger. I start off sometimes in a spiritual crisis, but walk out spiritually cleansed. For this reason, the natural world over the years has become my lifesaving talisman.” 

Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp

1258: The Trees by Jericho Brown

Today’s poem is When you have to kill everybody in the room by Niki Herd. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. 

In this episode, Major writes… “Today’s poem presents a psychological portrait of a gun owner and the looming senses of danger and potential to harm that accompanies him.” 

Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp

1259: When you have to kill everybody in the room by Niki Herd

Today’s poem is Fade Away by Amorak Huey. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. 

In this episode, Major writes… “I cannot fully explain my renewed love for vinyl. All I know is that for eight weekends straight, I have found myself randomly walking into a record store. Although you might know me to be nostalgic, I do not uphold the golden days of analog and denigrate all things digital. Today’s poem insists our lives, like so many analog recordings, are raw, unadorned, layered, full of disruptions and distortions.” 

Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp

1260: Fade Away by Amorak Huey

Today’s poem is Immersive by Joseph Millar. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. 

In this episode, Major writes… “Poetry reorients me, does the work of humanizing, of not letting me devolve to despair. Its insistence on staying present, on paying attention, on speaking to the beauty in nature and the beauty in us, renews my faith.” 

Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp

1261: Immersive by Joseph Millar

Today’s poem is The Future of Terror / 1 by Matthea Harvey. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. 

In this episode, Major writes… “Today’s haunting poem, an embedded abecedarian, gets at the bizarre alter-reality of violence, how it distorts and impacts everything.” 

Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp

1262: The Future of Terror / 1 by Matthea Harvey

Today’s poem is Burnt Plastic by Sean Singer. 

The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, guest host Jason Schneiderman writes… “Today’s poem is by Sean Singer, who, like me, is a teacher, but at a certain point he became a cab driver to support himself. In his poems about driving a cab, he experiences not a lilting relational arc of guiding students through a semester, but a staccato chord of intense contact, a brief and unguarded glimpse into a life, one in which he is equal parts service provider and witness.” 

Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp

895: Burnt Plastic

Today’s poem is Portrait of My Father With the Letter V by Bill Hollands. 

The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “Who we are today, and eventually, who we are in memory, grants our loved one’s access to modes of living. We can connect in remembrance of traditions of existence that affirm who we fundamentally are and what we could possibly become.” 

Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp

896: Portrait of My Father With the Letter V

Today’s poem is Emptying by Aaron Zhang. 

The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “I know that when I cannot write, when the words fail to arrive, something intangible is obstructing passage to the areas of my brain and heart. It hijacks my ability to imagine, to really hear the poetry of the world around me.” 

Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp

1259: When you have to kill everybody in the room by Niki Herd

1259: When you have to kill everybody in the room by Niki Herd

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