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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 Real Estate by Richard Siken. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Maggie writes… “Today’s poem unpacks some of what happens when families change, because of death or divorce or other upheavals. I admire the way it looks not only at the variables—what must necessarily change—but also at the constants.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp

1350: Real Estate by Richard Siken

Today’s poem is Sati by Vandana Khanna. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Maggie writes… “Today’s poem is a persona poem from the point of view of a Hindu goddess, Sati. The practice of a widow throwing herself on her husband’s funeral pyre is named after Sati, who, in this poem, gets to speak. I think you’ll be moved by what she has to say.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp

1349: Sati by Vandana Khanna

Today’s poem is Valentine for Ernest Mann by Naomi Shihab Nye. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Maggie writes… “Today’s poem speaks to how subjective gifts, like poems, can be. Sometimes all we need to do is see the gift through the giver’s eyes. We need to appreciate that person’s care and intention. Come to think of it, perspective is a gift all its own.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp

1348: Valentine for Ernest Mann by Naomi Shihab Nye

Today’s poem is Animal Prudence by Kathy Fagan. 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.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp

1347: Animal Prudence by Kathy Fagan

Today’s poem is The Difficult Countryside by John Gallaher. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. 

In this episode, Maggie writes… “Moving through the world with a personal soundtrack in my ears makes me feel somehow insulated from the world AND more a part of the world. Clouds, birds, buildings, people—I see all of them differently with my favorite songs as the backdrop.” 

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

1346: The Difficult Countryside by John Gallaher

Today’s poem is Arrangements by Adrienne Chung. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. 

In this episode, Maggie writes… “Today’s poem speaks to the things we are drawn to, and to the compromises that must happen when we share space with others, and when there just isn’t room for everything.” 

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

1345: Arrangements by Adrienne Chung

Today’s poem is Cento Between the Ending and the End by Cameron Awkward-Rich. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. 

In this episode, Maggie writes… “In times that feel divisive and fragmented, today’s poem is a reminder of what we can do and BE together. It’s a reminder of the whole that is greater than the sum of its parts.” 

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

1344: Cento Between the Ending and the End by Cameron Awkward-Rich

Transcript

I’m Maggie Smith and this is The Slowdown. 

One of my favorite things about words is their history. As a writer, I’m curious about the words I choose for my poems. When I look up the origin of a word, it’s like unfolding a map, and seeing the journey that word has taken to reach me. Suddenly I know it better. It feels special to me, like a friend. 

Let’s take the word migrant, for example—a word I’ve used in a poem. Migrant comes from the Latin migrans, meaning "changing place." So a migrant is one who moves from place to place. The adjective migratory is related to migrant. As in migratory birds. The verb migrate is related, too. 

On any given day, reading or watching or listening to the news, I’m confronted with divisive arguments about where people belong. All over the world, there are violent conflicts over land: invasions and occupations. In the US, there is so much talk about our borders, and about immigrants, and particularly alarming lately, talk about citizenship. Many of those arguments seem so focused on difference that they ignore our common humanity. 

The words we use matter. The language we choose can strip a person’s dignity from them, or restore that dignity. When undocumented immigrants are called “illegals,” or “illegal aliens,” those words carry meaning. They also carry a heavy negative connotation. Those terms are dehumanizing, and I think that’s the point. 

I’ve been listening to the words being used for immigrants, for refugees, and for asylum-seekers in this country, and I have been watching their mistreatment. I have friends who work at elementary schools, and who are afraid that ICE will come and take their students, or their students’ parents. From SCHOOL. I have friends who are afraid for their loved ones, their neighbors, their coworkers. 

This country does not feel like a place of freedom and possibility for those seeking a better life. It feels like an increasingly hostile place.

Today’s poem looks at the word migrant and its meaning apart from the current political climate. Movement from place to place, after all, suggests possibility, opportunity, and AGENCY. To migrate, whether you can fly or not, is to be free.

/’mīgrent/ 
by Tiana Nobile

Of an animal, especially a bird. A wandering species
whom no seas nor places limit. A seed who survives despite
the depths of hard winter. The ripple of a herring 
steering her band from seas of ice to warmer strands. 

To find the usual watering-places despite the gauze
of death that shrouds our eyes
is a breathtaking feat. Do you ever wonder why
we felt like happy birds brushing our feathers

on the tips of leaves? How we lifted our toes
from one bank of sand and landed—fingertips first—
on another? Why we clutched the dumb and tiny creatures
of flower and blade and sod between our budding fists?

From an origin of buried seeds emerge
these many-banded dagger wings.
We, of the sky, the dirt, and the sea. We,
the seven-league-booters and the little-by-littlers.

We, transmigrated souls, will prevail.
We will carry ourselves into the realms of light.

“/’mīgrent/” by Tiana Nobile from CLEAVE © 2021 Tiana Nobile. Used by permission of Hub City Press.

1343: /’mīgrent/ by Tiana Nobile

Today’s poem is And Then It Was Less Bleak Because We Said So by Wendy Xu. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. 

In this episode, Maggie writes… “When the world is on fire, it can feel frivolous to go dancing, to go to concerts, to host parties, to take vacations. Today’s poem so beautifully addresses the importance of holding onto joy—and onto one another—when the world feels dismal.” 

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

1342: And Then It Was Less Bleak Because We Said So by Wendy Xu

Today’s poem is Lake by Noah Falck. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. 

In this episode, Maggie writes, “Today’s poem acknowledges the beauty we have—the view we have. It also mourns the beauty that would exist without our interference. Holding space for both is a feat of empathy and imagination.” 

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

1341: Lake by Noah Falck

Today’s poem is Wake Up by Carl Phillips. The Slowdown is currently taking a break. We’ll be back soon with new episodes. 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 January 24, 2020. 

In this episode, former host Tracy K. Smith writes… “That's how it feels sometimes listening to news of our daily catastrophes, like all of us, no matter who we are, are lost together. And the old signs, the old facts even are gone, insufficient to the new task we, together, must face. Why does that idea, the idea that together, we must find a new means of putting things back in order — why does it somehow comfort me?” 

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

[encore] 305: Wake Up by Carl Phillips

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