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

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.”

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