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Lyt når som helst, hvor som helst 

American Public Media

Host Maggie Smith is your daily poetry companion. Poetry is one of the greatest tools we have to wield our own attention — to consider our own lives and the lives of others, to help us live creatively and compassionately, to use that attention to lean into wonder, and joy, and truth, and to find hope — to keep hoping. The Slowdown community knows that reflecting on a poem, every weekday, can connect us to our inner world and the world around us. Listen as you make your morning coffee, as you go on a walk in your neighborhood, as you pull away from the to-do list, as you resist the dismal, endless scroll to share five minutes of perspective through the lens of poetry, from poets old and new, well-loved and emerging onto the scene. Brought to you by American Public Media, in partnership with the Poetry Foundation.

The Slowdown: Poetry & Reflection Daily

Today’s poem is Hackberry by Cecily Parks. This episode was originally released on January 29, 2026.

The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Maggie writes… “Today’s poem is a kind of love poem—to a beloved tree, and to the sense of home it created.” 

This show is supported by gifts from listeners. Support The Slowdown with a donation today. Slowdownshow.org/donate

[encore] 1445: Hackberry by Cecily Parks

Today’s poem is Panegyric by Leila Farjami. This episode was originally released on July 28, 2026.

The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Maggie writes… “Poems that engage with war and grief are texts that communicate to us in ways that news articles about war, and loss, and grief cannot. An article might tell us what happened, who died, how many casualties there were. It should provide facts as to who, what, where, when, and how. It might even attempt the why. But a poem sings to us. A poem sits with us. Holds us, even.” 

This show is supported by gifts from listeners. Support The Slowdown with a donation today. Slowdownshow.org/donate

[encore] 1568: Panegyric by Leila Farjami

Today’s poem is How to Dress a Star by Nicholas Goodly. This episode was originally released on May 4, 2026.

The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Maggie writes… “Today’s poem reminds me to feel tenderness toward the earlier versions of me. It reminds me that we should acknowledge our past selves more. Just think of what earlier versions of you were able to endure. Bless them for that.” 

This show is supported by gifts from listeners. Support The Slowdown with a donation today. Slowdownshow.org/donate

[encore] 1507: How to Dress a Star by Nicholas Goodly

Today’s poem is Animal Prudence by Kathy Fagan. This episode was originally released on September 8, 2025.

The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Maggie writes… “Today’s poem is a favorite of mine for its associative leaps—the way it carries us from image to image, memory to memory. I admire the way it uses the language we encounter in our lives to make those leaps: road signs, the names of streets and flowers, the lists we find in our pockets.” 

This show is supported by gifts from listeners. Support The Slowdown with a donation today. Slowdownshow.org/donate

[encore] 1347: Animal Prudence by Kathy Fagan

Today’s poem is I Find Myself Defending Pigeons by Keith S. Wilson. This episode was originally released on August 22, 2025. 

The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Maggie writes… “One thing I love about poems is how they give us the opportunity to take our time, to dial in, to look and listen closely. Not everything screams to be noticed. Some things barely whisper! Or they might just squawk or coo now and then.”

 This show is supported by gifts from listeners. Support The Slowdown with a donation today. Slowdownshow.org/donate

[encore] 1336: I Find Myself Defending Pigeons by Keith S. Wilson

Today’s poem is Six Hours Lost, Land Between the Lakes by Kathleen Driskell. This episode was originally released on October 8, 2025. 

The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Maggie writes… “Today’s poem tells a story about a tense encounter in the woods. I so admire how this poet unfolds the narrative, then leaves me sighing deeply at the end.” 

This show is supported by gifts from listeners. Support The Slowdown with a donation today. Slowdownshow.org/donate

[encore] 1369: Six Hours Lost, Land Between the Lakes by Kathleen Driskell

Today’s poem is The New City by Hieu Minh Nguyen. This episode was originally released on May 21, 2026.

The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Maggie writes… “There’s a very specific pleasure in doing things alone. Going to the movies by yourself, sitting in the dark with your own drink and popcorn or candy that you don’t have to share, and sitting anywhere you want in the theatre without asking a companion where they want to sit. Or having a meal on your own, party of one, just people watching and enjoying the ambience without the need to make conversation.” 

This show is supported by gifts from listeners. Support The Slowdown with a donation today. Slowdownshow.org/donate

[encore] 1520: The New City by Hieu Minh Nguyen

Today’s poem is Ledge (ars poetica) (love poem) (true story) by Amorak Huey. This episode was originally released on December 15, 2025. 

The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Maggie writes… “Today’s poem calls itself an ars poetica, a love poem, and a true story. That’s a lot of work for one poem to do — a lot of layers of meaning! But this poet does speak to the precarity of it all: writing, and loving, and living.” 

This show is supported by gifts from listeners. Support The Slowdown with a donation today. Slowdownshow.org/donate

[encore] 1412: Ledge (ars poetica) (love poem) (true story) by Amorak Huey

Today’s poem is A toast to something beautiful flapping in the wind by J. Hope Stein. This episode was originally released on January 5, 2026. 

The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Maggie writes… “Once upon a time, I was a new mother with a baby girl in my arms, and I was her whole world. It was seventeen years ago, but sometimes I swear I can transport myself back there just by closing my eyes and taking a deep breath. I remember reading that a baby’s first three months of life are called the fourth trimester. Three trimesters are spent in the mother’s body, bobbing around like a little fish, but the "fourth trimester" is when everyone is adapting to life in the outside world. The babies seem bewildered, trying to adjust to nursing and sleeping, but I think parents are just as bewildered.” 

This show is supported by gifts from listeners. Support The Slowdown with a donation today. Slowdownshow.org/donate

[encore] 1427: A toast to something beautiful flapping in the wind by J. Hope Stein

Today’s poem is The Plum You're Going to Eat Next Summer by Gayle Brandeis. This episode was originally released on April 10, 2026. 

The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Maggie writes… “I know optimism can be a tough sell when there’s so much suffering, so much difficulty, in the world. But this brokenness is exactly why we need more poems, more paintings, more films, more plays. More art. To make things that don’t exist yet — and don’t need to exist, because that is the very definition of art — and to send them out into the world is wildly, impractically, gorgeously hopeful.” 

This show is supported by gifts from listeners. Support The Slowdown with a donation today. Slowdownshow.org/donate

[encore] 1491: The Plum You're Going to Eat Next Summer by Gayle Brandeis

Today’s poem is Midlife Crisis by Jane Zwart. 

The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Maggie writes… “Midlife has upended everything I thought about aging. It’s not at all what I expected. Certainly, when I was a child, I thought of people in their forties as old, and now that I’m closer to 50 than 40, I laugh at that. I feel … young! I feel younger, in many ways, than I did ten years ago. I admire how today’s poem describes time, and what it feels like to reach the middle of one’s life only to be surprised at what you find.” 

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

1429: Midlife Crisis by Jane Zwart

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