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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 Waiting for the Call I Am by Wyatt Townley. 

The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Maggie writes… “Waiting is a kind of purgatory, a middle ground. In that liminal, in-between space, we alternate between hope and fear. Some despair might creep in, too. Everything will be okay, we tell ourselves one minute. The worst has happened, we tell ourselves the next. Even the metaphors for waiting are deeply uncomfortable. Treading water. Being on pins and needles, or on tenterhooks. Waiting is hard on the body because it’s hard on the mind.” 

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

1434: Waiting for the Call I Am by Wyatt Townley

Today’s poem is Given to Rust by Vievee Francis. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Maggie writes… “Today’s poem touched me in how it explores the intimacy of sound, and especially the human voice. How, too, the silence between us can be so loud.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp

1433: Given to Rust by Vievee Francis

Today’s poem is The Good Guy by Blas Falconer. 

The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Maggie writes… “Today’s poem touched me because it acknowledges the patience and tenderness we need to have as spouses and as parents. Relationships are a lot of work, and when you have children it adds another layer of love and another layer of work. Another level of consideration.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. 

Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp

1432: The Good Guy by Blas Falconer

Today’s poem is Going Home by Joan Kwon Glass. 

The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Maggie writes… “When my children tell me about their dreams, it's not uncommon for them to say, “We were at home, but it wasn’t our house,” or “I was with my friends, but they weren’t my real-life friends.” Sometimes I play a cameo role as myself, but sometimes the role of their mother is played by someone else. Dreams are strange like that. Our sleeping brains sometimes offer us alternate versions of familiar people and places.”

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

1431: Going Home by Joan Kwon Glass

Today’s poem is Earth Shovel by Dan Albergotti. 

The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Maggie writes… “Today’s poem, which looks at the fragility of our planet, begins with two epigraphs. One is from American astronomer Carl Sagan, from his book Pale Blue Dot. The other is the famous line from politician Michael Steele.” 

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

1430: Earth Shovel by Dan Albergotti

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

Today’s poem is In Defense of “Candelabra with Heads” by Nicole Sealey. 

The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Maggie writes… “Today’s poem pulls back the curtain on the revision process, showing us how it’s about more than just the text on the page. The poet refers to an earlier poem of theirs, an ekphrastic poem based on a sculpture by Thomas Hirschhorn. His work “Candelabra with Heads” features mannequins bandaged in brown duct tape and hung from a wood frame. This poet revised her poem of the same name to remove the last line, but later went back and reinstated it.”

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

1428: In Defense of “Candelabra with Heads” by Nicole Sealey

Today’s poem is A toast to something beautiful flapping in the wind by J. Hope Stein. 

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.” 

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

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

Today’s poem is One-Way Gate by Jenny George.

The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Maggie writes… “Sometimes I swear I can feel a life-changing moment as it’s happening. Some moments in life feel like walking through a doorway from one place or time into another. Like crossing a threshold. It’s often easier to see these thresholds from the other side, looking back. Retrospect is clearer than present perspective. But as I get older, I think I’m getting better at seeing significant moments as they’re happening: seeing the train doors slide open or closed. I think I’m getting better at noticing that my life is changing in real time, even if I don’t know how it will turn out.” 

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

1426: One-Way Gate by Jenny George

Today’s poem is The Ship by Bianca Stone.

The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Maggie writes… “Today’s poem feels right for today because it’s a “new year, same you” poem. Because being who you are, and nothing more, is exactly what you need to be doing—this year, next year, every year.” 

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

1425: The Ship by Bianca Stone

Today’s poem is Polaroid Ode by Cori Winrock.

The Slowdown is currently taking a break. We’ll be back soon with new episodes from a new host. This week, we’re going back into the archive to revisit Tracy K. Smith’s time as host. Today’s episode was originally released on October 21, 2019. 

In this episode, Tracy writes… “Today’s poem captures the look and feel and ceremony—with all its hope and disappointment—of taking instant pictures. And it makes me wistful both for the past and the present.” 

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

[encore] 236: Polaroid Ode by Cori Winrock

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