Today’s poem is Try to Praise the Mutilated World by Adam Zagajewski, translated by Clare CavanaghThe Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “One of the great paradoxes in life is the presence of human suffering on the planet amidst prosperity. No religion can explain this other than point to some large cosmic plan. Sometimes it’s tough bearing witness and walking in a world where one feels debilitated, and silence around other people’s suffering feels like gaslighting.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp

Today’s poem is Leaving by Madeleine Cravens. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “Today’s poem knows the world is enticing, seductive, full of possibilities. The hack is to consciously curate our pleasures — the slow, intentional cherishing of a life well-lived.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp

1205: Leaving by Madeleine Cravens

Today’s poem is The Joseph Cornell App by David Roderick. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “The great actor James Earl Jones departed this earth. His passing reminded me of a hilarious app idea I devised at a party. I called it the God App, where the great actor would simply recite the ten commandments. When I imagined a deity speaking, I thought of James Earl Jones, the rich baritone voice that gave us Darth Vader.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp

1204: The Joseph Cornell App by David Roderick

Today’s poem is This Living by Amber Tamblyn. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “In my mere five decades on earth, I’ve faced many challenges — thwarted dreams, failed friendships, career disappointments — that often left me feeling alone, stranded in the dry badlands, searing heat bearing down. And yet, of course, I wasn’t. A three-hour telephone conversation with a friend, an unexpected consoling note from a colleague, even a passing smile from that stranger who read signs of stress in my gait, all these could break down my self-involved isolation. Through a rich panoply of difficult moments, today’s poem names and confronts life’s consuming dramas.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp

1203: This Living by Amber Tamblyn

Today’s poem is If only by Dawn Lundy Martin. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “Today’s poem unapologetically claims psychic space. In order to be at peace and clear-eyed, the speaker forgoes decorative language that would obscure what their heart and mind believe is ethically true.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp

1202: If only by Dawn Lundy Martin

1201: Try to Praise the Mutilated World by Adam Zagajewski, translated by Clare Cavanagh

Today’s poem is Lying My Head Off by Cate Marvin. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “One of the great feelings of aging is coming clean about my shortcomings. That honesty is an illuminating relief, because, as today’s surrealist poem suggests, the masks we take on eventually make us an imposter to ourselves.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp

1200: Lying My Head Off by Cate Marvin

Today’s poem is Homo naledi by Sara Borjas.The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “I see poems functioning in the way stones function, as protection, as foundation, even as weaponry. Today’s poem asserts those simple objects that manifest as testament of our durable existence in the face of opposing forces.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp

1199: Homo naledi by Sara Borjas

Today’s poem is The Big People by César Vallejo, translated by James Wright. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “Today’s poem strikes that note of fear of being cut off from the world and the impending feelings of abandonment.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp

1198: The Big People by César Vallejo, translated by James Wright

Today’s poem is March, the Garden by Chera HammonsThe Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “People often ask me: can poetry be taught? As if there is a playbook for writing poetry, guidelines, and steps. I believe writing poetry, like gardening, is a gradual accumulation of instinctive habits: observing, tending, and nourishing one’s talent and imagination. Today’s poem sees the garden as a barometer of our changing climate and of our inner lives.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp

1197: March, the Garden by Chera Hammons

Today’s poem is A Conversation between Women by Jennifer Chang. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “On any given day, I can call up one of a handful of friends to have tough conversations. Occasionally, I need someone who will challenge my assumptions, who will help me work through matters that are pressing, who will quickly go past the small talk to a deeper exchange, who will call me on my BS and earnest seriousness.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp

1196: A Conversation between Women by Jennifer Chang

Today’s poem is Pando Aspen Clone by Jacqueline Balderrama.The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. We’re taking a break this week, so we’re sharing some of our favorite episodes from the archive. This episode was originally released on July 19, 2024. In this episode, Major writes… “When lost, truth is, someone always rescued me from my disorientation. Today’s poem reminds me that we are a single body, reliant on each other to find our way.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp

[encore] 1165: Pando Aspen Clone by Jacqueline Balderrama

Today’s poem is Love Poem by Sophie Cabot Black.The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. We’re taking a break this week, so we’re sharing some of our favorite episodes from the archive. This episode was originally released on February 28, 2024. In this episode, Major writes… “Today’s poem reminds me of the daunting and ongoing and heartrending work of preparing ourselves to love and to dare to receive it, if we can.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp

[encore] 1063: Love Poem by Sophie Cabot Black

Today’s poem is Orientation by Cindy Juyoung Ok.The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. We’re taking a break this week, so we’re sharing some of our favorite episodes from the archive. This episode was originally released on June 12, 2024. In this episode, Major writes… “Every poem is a bridge between nature and us, in that what lies hidden, what is below, is somehow familiar, and brought to consciousness.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp

[encore] 1138: Orientation by Cindy Juyoung Ok

Today’s poem is from "The Garden of Limbs" by Cristina Pérez Díaz.The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. We’re taking a break this week, so we’re sharing some of our favorite episodes from the archive. This episode was originally released on July 21, 2023. In this episode, Major writes… “Today’s poem, which alludes to the biblical story of Adam and Eve and the first garden, celebrates the carnal sweetness of those chill days with a beloved. The poem brazenly proclaims the power (and maybe even recklessness) of sensuous mating that is its own form of world-building, voyage, and cultivation.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp

[encore] 926: from "The Garden of Limbs" by Cristina Pérez Díaz

Today’s poem is Chaos Theory by Clint Smith.The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. We’re taking a break this week, so we’re sharing some of our favorite episodes from the archive. This episode was originally released on April 24, 2024. In this episode, Major writes… “Occasionally, I try to follow the series of decisions that led me to this present, however triumphant or painful. My life wavers between fate and destiny. But then again, poetry brings me to the belief that some mysterious force is at work, below, that unveils a spiritually deeper meaning to it all.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp

[encore] 1103: Chaos Theory by Clint Smith

Today’s poem is English by Janel Pineda. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. We’re taking a break this week, so we’re sharing some of our favorite episodes from the archive. This episode was originally released on May 24, 2024.In this episode, Major writes… “Today’s poem brilliantly figures the psychological complexities of adopting a new language, and a way of thinking, while losing another.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp

[encore] 1125: English by Janel Pineda

Today’s poem is Mercy, Mercy Me by Olatunde Osinaike. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. We’re taking a break this week, so we’re sharing some of our favorite episodes from the archive. This episode was originally released on April 16, 2024.In this episode, Major writes… “The speaker in today’s poem survives by an adherence to their values — but also by a willingness to adopt new codes, to risk new experiences, to take on new attitudes.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp

[encore] 1097: Mercy, Mercy Me by Olatunde Osinaike

Today’s poem is Letter to my sister by Trapeta B. Mayson. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. We’re taking a break this week, so we’re sharing some of our favorite episodes from the archive. This episode was originally released on July 31, 2023.In this episode, Major writes… “My mother did not live long enough to read my poems about her. I like to think that she would have appreciated how I processed our shared history and relationships, even the difficult moments. I like to think she’d have granted me the latitude to craft the poems I needed to write, and possibly understood that the practice of poetry is one of imagining and composing rather than simply reporting what happened.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp

[encore] 932: Letter to my sister by Trapeta B. Mayson

Today’s poem is When Your Month is Lonely… by Christine Kwon. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. We’re taking a break this week, so we’re sharing some of our favorite episodes from the archive. This episode was originally released on April 10, 2024.In this episode, Major writes… “I read all those articles that proclaim how lonely we are becoming; I believe there’s some truth to it. Here’s my fear: all my work is making me alien to myself and others. I’m happy people are in my life. I wish not to skirt over their humanity, nor my own. I do not want our relationship to devolve to obligation, or come off as transactional. But we naturally negotiate that space of difference between ourselves and others; how rewarding when we can really connect to others.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp

[encore] 1093: When Your Month is Lonely… by Christine Kwon

Today’s poem is  I Am Waiting by Lawrence Ferlinghetti.The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. We’re taking a break this week, so we’re sharing some of our favorite episodes from the archive. This episode was originally released on May 14, 2024.In this episode, Major writes… “On a Saturday morning group Zoom call, I wore my Philadelphia Phillies cap. A friend almost choked on his coffee, confusing my red hat for a MAGA hat. It made for a funny exchange, where I unapologetically claimed my belief in the ideals of America, but, no . . . I am a different kind of patriot. America is defined by its belief in equality, freedom, liberty, opportunity, and justice, but maybe even more by its betrayal of those principles and then its struggle to recommit to values we hold self-evident.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp

[encore] 1117: I Am Waiting by Lawrence Ferlinghetti

Today’s poem is First Kiss by Rooja Mohassessy. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “Today’s poem reminds us that kissing is universal, but also something that is not taught, and so, we fumble our way through until we get it right.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp

1195: First Kiss by Rooja Mohassessy

Today’s poem is Theories of Influence by Anselm BerriganThe Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “Reading is like wandering through our dreams where the details blur once we awaken yet we are still changed throughout our day. Sometimes, we want to be lost, but what is to be gained when we find where we’re going? When we see what our subconsciouses are processing?” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp

1194: Theories of Influence by Anselm Berrigan

Today’s poem is Chanson d’automne by Paul Verlaine, with special guest Jacques Pépin. He is a French chef, author, culinary educator, television personality, and artist who has appeared on American television, has written for The New York Times and Food &amp; Wine and has authored more than 30 cookbooks. He has been honored with 24 James Beard Foundation Awards, five honorary doctoral degrees, the American Public Television's lifetime achievement award, the Emmy Award for Lifetime Achievement in 2019 and the Légion d'honneur, France's highest order of merit, in 2004. In 2016, with his daughter, Claudine Pépin and his son-in-law, Rollie Wesen, Pépin created the Jacques Pépin Foundation to support culinary education for adults with barriers to employment.The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Jacques shares… “After the hot summer and before the hard winter, there is a certain — plenitude, you know, a certain tranquility to the fall which leads yourself to remembering and to thinking about the past and so forth.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp

1193: Chanson d’automne by Paul Verlaine, with special guest Jacques Pépin

Today’s poem is Narcissus and the Namesake River by Reginald Shepherd. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “Today’s poem takes up the myth of Narcissus, the nymph who falls in love with his own image.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp

1192: Narcissus and the Namesake River by Reginald Shepherd

Today’s poem is For Mac Miller and 2009 by Kayleb Rae Candrilli.The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “Because of my family’s addiction issues, I spoke out of fear to my children, and often rather harshly. I worried particularly that they would fall prey to the opioid epidemic that hit the state of Vermont, a fentanyl crisis as severe as the rest of the country. Several friends grieved the loss of children to overdose. I wish I had told my children of my casual experiment with drugs, moments that scared me so much I knew if I went further I would not survive. But it turns out I did not need to reference my journey. The music they listened to, and the rappers they admired spoke about a life they could only picture in their heads, which was ironic and a blessing. The music did not merely glorify drugs but mourned the demise of artists, storytellers, friends, and collaborators.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp

1191: For Mac Miller and 2009 by Kayleb Rae Candrilli

Today’s poem is At the Museum of Empress Livia’s Garden Room by Pimone Triplett. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “Today’s lyric poem walks us through a villa garden painted on a fresco. Reading the poem, it is as though we eavesdrop on the speaker’s awe, but also how a rich, imagined replica of fruit, birds, trees leads us to thoughts about our own relationship to natural spaces.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp

1190: At the Museum of Empress Livia’s Garden Room by Pimone Triplett

Today’s poem is Nature Poem About Flowers by Matthew Rohrer. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “They say clothes make the man. Frequently though, clothes hide the person, particularly a person’s depth of feeling.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp

1189: Nature Poem About Flowers by Matthew Rohrer

Today’s poem is In Jerusalem by Mahmoud Darwish, translated by Fady Joudah, with special guest adrienne maree brown. Through her writing, which includes short- and long-form fiction, nonfiction, spells, tarot decks and poetry; her music, which includes songwriting, singing and immersive musical rituals; and her podcasts, including How to Survive the End of the World, Octavia’s Parables and The Emergent Strategy Podcast, adrienne has nurtured Emergent Strategy, Pleasure Activism, Radical Imagination and Transformative Justice as ideas, frameworks, networks and practices for transformation. Her work is informed by 25 years of social and environmental justice facilitation primarily supporting Black liberation, her path of teaching somatics, her love of Octavia E. Butler and visionary fiction, and her work as a doula. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, adrienne shares… “For me, poetry is how I get to be my whole human self in a given moment, and really, connect to that river — I always talk about [how] there's this river of love and justice that's flowing from the beginning of time to the end and it flows through us to different degrees. We're supposed to do that kind of work, but it has to be able to hold the whole complexity of a given moment. It has to be able to hold life and death — really life and death — over and over again in a variety of ways.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp

1188: In Jerusalem by Mahmoud Darwish, translated by Fady Joudah, with special guest adrienne maree brown

Today’s poem is Picking Favorites by George Franklin. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “Today’s poem finds a capacious way of existing that honors an entire life and everyone in it.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp

1187: Picking Favorites by George Franklin

Today’s poem is Oh, y’know, just your standard Q&amp;A by Alex Z. Salinas.The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “Today’s poem is the kind of interview that I long to give, one full of non sequiturs and expansive evasions.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp

1186: Oh, y’know, just your standard Q&A by Alex Z. Salinas

Today’s poem is Fragment 31 by Sappho, translated by Christopher Childers.The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “If you listen close enough to a poem, especially to the very best of them, you can hear on their surface, the poet’s breathing and silences shaped by the pace and noise of their age. You can hear a voice fastened to the page, the speech of the era in which the poem was written, along with images that float into our mind’s eye which are also of a period like red wheelbarrows, pool players, frigates, and 8-track cassettes.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp

1185: Fragment 31 by Sappho, translated by Christopher Childers

Today’s poem is End of December by Ashjan Hendi, translated by Moneera Al-Ghadeer.The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “Tests to long-term commitments are bound to happen. Expending too much affection can lead to exhaustion and the bruise of eventual disappointment. As today’s poem suggests, one of the secrets to a successful marriage is moderation and restraint.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp

1184: End of December by Ashjan Hendi, translated by Moneera Al-Ghadeer

Today’s poem is maggie and milly and molly and may by E.E. Cummings, with special guest Eric Whitacre. Whitacre is a Grammy Award-winning composer, conductor, and speaker. A graduate of The Juilliard School, his works are programmed worldwide, and his ground-breaking Virtual Choirs have united well over 100,000 singers from more than 145 countries. Upcoming premieres include a new major work for choir, instrumentalists and electronics, Eternity in an Hour, at the Royal Albert Hall as part of the BBC Proms. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Eric shares… “I could sit for hours and just look at sunlight reflecting off the top of the water. I'm not a religious person, but I'm convinced that if there's a God, that's the language that he speaks — light on the surface of the water. I'm mesmerized by it. And my wife even notices that every time I go swimming in the ocean, I come out a different person.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp

1183: maggie and milly and molly and may by E.E. Cummings, with special guest Eric Whitacre

Today’s poem is from “Take Me Back, Burden Hill” by L. Lamar Wilson.The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “Humans, it seems, are bound to feel adrift. So many times in my life, I have worked to muster a belief that all of it matters. I have made great efforts to not be lulled into amnesia nor medicate myself blind to the forces that harm — and to those that truly heal. Living a spiritual existence means developing strategies that keep us in possession of ourselves, ever aware that we share this fragile world.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp

1182: from “Take Me Back, Burden Hill” by L. Lamar Wilson

Today’s poem is Enlightenment by Vijay Seshadri.The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “Today’s poem points to how people’s sense of desolation and lack of meaning sometimes fuel a desire to save the world, work they go about with patronizing superiority and condescension.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp

1181: Enlightenment by Vijay Seshadri

Today’s poem is The Gardener 85 by Rabindranath Tagore.The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “Poetry has a way of collapsing time, and by working the senses, having us experience an era. In the blues rhythms of Langston Hughes’ poetry, I hear early twentieth century New York, and going back, I hear the plurality of America and its citizens in the poetry of Walt Whitman who explicitly said he heard singing. In a way, poems are capsules from the past that open whenever we read them.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp

1180: The Gardener 85 by Rabindranath Tagore

Today’s poem is Nude by James Kelly Quigley.The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “I long to write poems of a mystical nature, where the wisdom of the ages is carried forth in new forms and phrases. Today’s brief poem, in its associative leaps, could be the seed to a new way of seeing, if we just let its words work their magic.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp

1179: Nude by James Kelly Quigley

Today’s poem is America by Claude McKay, with special guest Tonya Mosley. Tonya is the host and creator of Truth Be Told and founder of TMI Productions. She is also a co-host of Fresh Air, and a correspondent and former host of Here &amp; Now, the midday radio show co-produced by NPR and WBUR. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Tonya shares… “The Harlem Renaissance feels so current and so now, and the thing about it is it always has for me. From the time I was a little girl, it didn't feel historical, in fact, it felt like that is the place I want to be, and I yearned for it all of my life. I understand what that yearning is. What it is, is to be a part of something that is a freedom movement. But it's not just a movement. a collective freedom movement. It's an individual movement too, through the creation of art. Those artists were, through expressing themselves, understanding themselves, and learning about themselves, and their contribution to the world allowed us to see ourselves in their art.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp

1178: America by Claude McKay, with special guest Tonya Mosley

Today’s poem is Machete: Look by Jasminne Mendez.The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “Today’s poem reminds us of the tools that break the bonds of human connection and life, how we must go against rhetoric that strips us of our power to feel empathy and exercise grace.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp

1177: Machete: Look by Jasminne Mendez

Today’s poem is Fowl at Large by Sarah Giragosian.The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “Courage is at the heart of writing, and as today’s poem suggests, a wildness of being, that fires away from timidity and into realms of the self as glamorous and unpredictable, as if you had the whole world shook.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp

1176: Fowl at Large by Sarah Giragosian

Today’s poem is Hunger by Kelli Russell Agodon.This spring, we asked our community to submit poems that have helped you slow down in your lives. Thank you to the nearly 300 of you who sent us poems to read and enjoy. This week we’re featuring the team’s selections. Today’s selection was submitted by Jeannine from Washington. In this episode, Major writes… “What is it about this stage of dating that has us turn off the radar, render us blind to the red flags, to what we hope our instincts should catch? We become wild in our desperation to present ourselves as worthy of love. Our passionate hearts render us prey to the lost souls who present facades of well-being.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp

1175: Hunger by Kelli Russell Agodon

Today’s poem is Separation Wall by Naomi Shihab Nye.This spring, we asked our community to submit poems that have helped you slow down in your lives. Thank you to the nearly 300 of you who sent us poems to read and enjoy. This week we’re featuring the team’s selections. Today’s selection was submitted by Meital from Washington, D.C. In this episode, Major writes… “Coexistence on the planet demands that we transcend reactionary treatment of each other. For this reason, we need poems to tease out our innocence, that part of us untouched by the callousness of the world, to bring us to a sanity beyond inherited hurts and old fears, away from the logic of ‘an eye for an eye.’ Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said that this kind of violence ‘destroys communities and makes humanity impossible. It creates bitterness in the survivors and brutality in the destroyers.’” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp

1174: Separation Wall by Naomi Shihab Nye

Today’s poem is Sono by Suji Kwock Kim.This spring, we asked our community to submit poems that have helped you slow down in your lives. Thank you to the nearly 300 of you who sent us poems to read and enjoy. This week we’re featuring the team’s selections. In this episode, Major writes… “Today’s poem coordinates a masterful flow of language, simulating the journey of a child crossing into our time through another’s body. The poem reminds us, with sound and texture, to not lose our sense of marvel.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp

1173: Sono by Suji Kwock Kim

Today’s poem is From Blossoms by Li-Young Lee.This spring, we asked our community to submit poems that have helped you slow down in your lives. Thank you to the nearly 300 of you who sent us poems to read and enjoy. Today’s selection was submitted by Candace from North Carolina. This week we’re featuring the team’s selections. In this episode, Major writes… “Today’s poem exults in that bounty of spiritual abundance and celebrates the joy inside us yielded from the land.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp

1172: From Blossoms by Li-Young Lee

Today’s poem is One Art by Elizabeth Bishop. This spring, we asked our community to submit poems that have helped you slow down in your lives. Thank you to the nearly 300 of you who sent us poems to read and enjoy. This week we’re featuring the team’s selections. Today’s selection was submitted by Doug from Minnesota. In this episode, Major writes… “Today’s iconic poem inflects so much psychological truth and honest emotion in the wake of a parting; the hard pain must be worked through.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp

1171: One Art by Elizabeth Bishop

Today’s poem is The Way by Cynthia Cruz. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “This past spring like every spring many of my students graduated into the uncertainty of their futures. Their lives can take so many directions. I am curious as to what ultimately launches us as human beings with a purpose, or not. If ever we meet as new friends, I will likely ask what you do for a living. In some scenarios, my inquisitiveness can sound like prying. But what I am really asking is what makes you happy — to really live.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp

1170: The Way by Cynthia Cruz

Today’s poem is from "American Analects" by Gary Young. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “I find that poems emerge out of dialogues that I have either with myself, other works of art, or my friends. In this way, my poems are a collaboration of silences.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp

1169: from "American Analects" by Gary Young

Today’s poem is Refusing Rilke's “You must change your life” by Remica Bingham-Risher. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “I live with Rilke’s famous line, “You must change your life,” in my ear on repeat, an earworm, as if something is less than stellar about who I am today. I move instinctively towards myself as though I were a massive project, believing I will someday, again in Rilke’s words, “burst like a star.” That this is how to be seen, to be loved, to be cherished. This quest has distorted my sense of what is important, sown constant dissatisfaction, and emotional states of being that pose health risks. Pursuing perfection has, at times, alienated me from those I hold dear. Not that I don’t love them or they me —- but that I get tunnel vision in seeking some heroic terminus.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp

1168: Refusing Rilke's “You must change your life” by Remica Bingham-Risher

Today’s poem is Transfusion by Shara Lessley. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “Today’s fine poem creates the feeling of a medically induced slumber, but, by working layers of sound, a gorgeous aesthetic tension enlivens my ears.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp

1167: Transfusion by Shara Lessley

Today’s poem is Wind Poem by Song Yu, translated by Chloe Garcia Roberts.The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “During moments of political crises, I think of wind, how conflicts arise and unfold. Today’s poem, written some 17 centuries ago, effectuates a storm. In the very structure of its sentences, the poem enacts the motion of a mighty gust and its aftermath — a murmuring calm and quiet that claims our being.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp

1166: Wind Poem by Song Yu, translated by Chloe Garcia Roberts

Today’s poem is Pando Aspen Clone by Jacqueline Balderrama. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “When lost, truth is, someone always rescued me from my disorientation. Today’s poem reminds me that we are a single body, reliant on each other to find our way.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp

1165: Pando Aspen Clone by Jacqueline Balderrama

Today’s poem is Act of Gratitude by Cyrus Cassells. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “Reading poems that strike big-hearted notes of the ecstatic have me celebrate my own victories and joys, small things in life that are meaningful, yet unnoticeable to the distracted eye: a child’s hug at the end of bedtime, first sip of steaming soup on a frigid day that fogs your face, the way a friend smiles at a corny joke. Today’s poem deftly catalogs those unexpected moments and still advances positivity as a social emotion that is beneficial to all.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp

1164: Act of Gratitude by Cyrus Cassells

Today’s poem is Voice Clear As by Kemi Alabi. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “Long ago, I knew I needed a new conception of heaven. The one with pearly white gates and winged angels from my youth in church just wasn’t working for me. I mean, I get clouds and blue skies as symbols of ascension from earthly plains. And it wasn’t just in church — heaven was everywhere, in museums and in movies, too. But those early images, lodged into my subconscious, weren’t inclusive or realistic, except for the 1936 Hollywood classic Green Pastures.”Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp

1163: Voice Clear As by Kemi Alabi

Today’s poem is But Beautiful by Rodney Terich Leonard.The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “Some poets aim for meaning and clarity of emotion. And then, the best does that and more. They also play language as though words were comprised of tones and notes, as though the poem were a musical composition. They treat language as a resource by creating echoes through rhyme or cadence or incantation. Others give language a skin by utilizing words that have a roughness to them. Then other poets map a route to individuality by capturing words, and phrases and heard speech only particular to a region or group of people. I like language that is connected to family and kin, idiomatic and vernacular speech.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp

1162: But Beautiful by Rodney Terich Leonard

Today’s poem is Each Morning Again by Rose McLarney.The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “My daily routines present no surprises; they keep the beat of my life. The foreseeable brings me comfort. I typically stick to the script of the previous day. But writing poetry is something that disrupts my set pattern. Composing language into a meaningful act of artful feeling provides necessary pause to meditate on the purpose of my life and its possibilities.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp

1161: Each Morning Again by Rose McLarney

Today’s poem is Naïve by Tim Seibles. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “Today’s deeply reflective poem encourages a return to ourselves as open and loving, even at the risk of seeming dewy-eyed and idealistic.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp

1160: Naïve by Tim Seibles

Today’s poem is We Never Stop Talking About Our Mothers by Diannely Antigua. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “I treasure the elder women in my life for their conscious, yet easy-going transference of soul-nourishing values. Matriarchs mediated conflicts among family members. They put into play care and cohesion. They lovingly told stories, recalled important family members, and carried on cultural traditions, passed down like charms.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp

1159: We Never Stop Talking About Our Mothers by Diannely Antigua

Today’s poem is A Blessing by Samyak Shertok. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “Today’s remarkable poem exalts in the cultural rite of eating a meal prepared by an elder. Its sumptuous language and lush syntax are markers of the summer’s abundance.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp

1158: A Blessing by Samyak Shertok

Today’s poem is from “Requiem 1935-1940” by Anna Akhmatova, translated by Stanley Kunitz and Max Hayward. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “What is the role of poetry during war? Does it have a function? Then and now, poets and readers of poetry see language as the terrain where we find ourselves heard and affirmed in our beliefs. Poets protest, bear witness, and mourn.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp

1157: from “Requiem 1935-1940” by Anna Akhmatova, translated by Stanley Kunitz and Max Hayward

Today’s poem is In Love by Chloe Martinez. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “The first time I was in love, I started missing baseball practice. Instead, I went to the library. Cherie spent afternoons doing her homework there. I could barely think about anything but her. What an immense feeling, to live with a perennial lump in my chest!” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp

1156: In Love by Chloe Martinez

Today’s poem is A Toast by Oksana Zabuzhko.The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “Today’s poem honors the immense feelings of connection art and poetry offer us. It notes what care is possible when we listen to each other and co-create a world where decency and regard are the order of the day.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp

1155: A Toast by Oksana Zabuzhko

Today’s poem is Selfsame River Thrice by Alicia Mountain.The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “Writing poems can be a lot like shopping in a thrift store where all the forgotten items are yours, and the act of finding language is a form of discovery and recovery. Today’s poem reminds me how emotionally difficult it is to retrieve the past, even for the purpose of art.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp

1154: Selfsame River Thrice by Alicia Mountain

Today’s poem is Illumination by Natasha Trethewey. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “Today’s elegant poem reads like a manifesto for those who rigorously annotate. For those who know that marking a book renders visible silent conversations.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp

1153: Illumination by Natasha Trethewey

Today’s poem is from "The Crystal Text" by Clark Coolidge. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “Poetry negotiates that space between our inner life and the relational world we share with others. Magically, we make plain what we feel and observe to convey what some might call a soul. I often describe poetry as a mirror that reflects back our interiority. But today’s poem wonders if such perspective is even possible, given that we barely know who we are — making the enterprise of connection through art deeply indeterminate and delicate.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp

1152: from "The Crystal Text" by Clark Coolidge

Today’s poem is I Tune My Body and My Brain to the Music of the Land by Natalie Shapero.The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “I wonder how much of our authentic selves are lost in the belief that we are stronger collectively, when we adhere this way, to a set of civic virtues that may not fully align with our worldview. Is there a part of us that wishes to express something different? How might we look within, and no longer seek social affirmation?” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp

1151: I Tune My Body and My Brain to the Music of the Land by Natalie Shapero

Today’s poem is Fuji, Ararat by Legna Rodríguez Iglesias, translated by Eduardo Aparicio. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, guest host Leslie Sainz writes…  “Today’s exquisite poem infuses the Petrarchan sonnet with playful existentialism and self-soothing. It’s Nietzsche meets Anti-Eat, Pray, Love—and as a work of translation, it defies impossibility.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp

1150: Fuji, Ararat by Legna Rodríguez Iglesias, translated by Eduardo Aparicio

Today’s poem is Agony's Rasp by Garous Abdolmalekian, translated by Ahmad Nadalizadeh and Idra Novey. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, guest host Leslie Sainz writes…  “Today’s poem simultaneously inhabits the planes of presence and absence, conveying the suffering of avoidance from multiple perspectives. With restraint and disorienting beauty, we are at the mercy of the dying voice, the reviving voice, and the surviving voice.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp

1149: Agony's Rasp by Garous Abdolmalekian, translated by Ahmad Nadalizadeh and Idra Novey

Today’s poem is Urine Season by Niina Pollari. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, guest host Leslie Sainz writes…  “When someone in my life—an acquaintance, a coworker, a friend or beloved—experiences a tremendous loss, I am acutely reminded of how language fails us. We give out heartfelt condolences such as “I’m sorry for your loss,” “My deepest sympathy,” or “Thinking of you during these difficult times.” But they do not resurrect the dead and rarely comfort the living.”Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp

1148: Urine Season by Niina Pollari

Today’s poem is A Book of Music by Jack Spicer. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, guest host Leslie Sainz writes… “Today’s nimble poem inspires me to think about rope idioms in the context of romantic relationships. When did you show your lover the ropes? Have you given your lover enough rope from which to dangle?”Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp

1147: A Book of Music by Jack Spicer

Today’s poem is Lonely Women by Choi Seungja, translated by Won-Chung Kim and Cathy Park Hong. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, guest host Leslie Sainz writes… "I learned how to enjoy my own company while living in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania. One evening, I decided to enter the Campus Theatre, an art-deco movie house known for showing a captivating mix of new releases, classics, and indie films. And it was there, sitting comfortably in a dark room, while staring at an anachronistically large screen, that my loneliness peeled off me in layers, alongside strangers coupled and lonely all the same."Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp

1146: Lonely Women by Choi Seungja, translated by Won-Chung Kim and Cathy Park Hong

Today’s poem is Love Poem by the Light of the Refrigerator by Alisha Dietzman. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, guest host Leslie Sainz writes… “Today’s poem, with its phantom-like repetition and delicate renderings of stereotypically gendered décor, demands our aesthetic attention. It is at once domestic and elemental, modest and suggestive, buoyant and exacting.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp

1145: Love Poem by the Light of the Refrigerator by Alisha Dietzman

Today’s poem is Horse by TR Brady. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, guest host Leslie Sainz writes… “Today’s deceptively simple poem is as provoking as it is spare. With parallel syntax and capacious anticipation, we witness the unbridgeable silences that exist between man and beast, man and earth, and, most immediately, between each other.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp

1144: Horse by TR Brady

Today’s poem is Screenplay by Harryette Mullen. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, guest host Leslie Sainz writes… “Today’s poem performs the mundane in cinematic fashion. Through sharp auditory imagery, deliberate juxtaposition, and the suggestion of ritual, it reminds us that, though the musical scores of our lives are never not playing and not always pleasant, our job is, always, to listen.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp

1143: Screenplay by Harryette Mullen

Today’s poem is Hyperacusis by Santee Frazier.The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, guest host Leslie Sainz writes… “I find that I’m especially sensitive to sound. I also find that sonics drive my poetics. In my role as an editor, I gravitate towards writing that prioritizes rhythm, be it harmonious or unsettling, and I believe phonetics alone has the power to both eschew narrative meaning and dictate it.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp

1142: Hyperacusis by Santee Frazier

Today’s poem is When I Was in My Early Thirties I Saw Elton John in a Nightclub in Atlanta Called Tongue and Groove by Khadijah Queen.The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, guest host Leslie Sainz writes… “Today’s poem transports us to a night out worth remembering, not for its intoxicating music or the surprise of a celebrity sighting, but because our response to disappointment can function as a measure of individual growth.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp

1141: When I Was in My Early Thirties I Saw Elton John in a Nightclub in Atlanta Called Tongue and Groove by Khadijah Queen

Today’s poem is Fish, Serpent, Egg, Scorpion by Kwame Dawes. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “Today’s poem highlights that cycle of hard truths and compassion passed between fathers and sons.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp

1140: Fish, Serpent, Egg, Scorpion by Kwame Dawes

Today’s poem is Dolly Would by Julie E. Bloemeke. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “To build an image and reputation from dreams requires herculean efforts that often involve doubts, failures, and sacrifices, but as we hear in today’s poem, a devotedness to one’s art that transforms a passion into a stratospheric journey into the self. ” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp

1139: Dolly Would by Julie E. Bloemeke

Today’s poem is Orientation by Cindy Juyoung Ok.The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “Every poem is a bridge between nature and us, in that what lies hidden, what is below, is somehow familiar, and brought to consciousness.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp

1138: Orientation by Cindy Juyoung Ok

Today’s poem is i have an irrational fear of spiders by Charlie Getter.The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “Today’s poem smartly interrogates the role of fears and how they might unreasonably control our lives.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp

1137: i have an irrational fear of spiders by Charlie Getter

Today’s poem is Visible Light by Heidi Seaborn.The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “As a child, on summer evenings, my friends and I ran through the neighborhood collecting lightning bugs. They were most visible in vacant lots, but we feared those dark places we sometimes entered. So, the hunt for them as ten-year-olds also felt like an adventure. We gently coaxed them into glass mason jars then sat on the stoop counting their lights to see who had the most. Their underbellies lit up and cast a glow onto our faces. Later, beneath a sheet in bed, I stared into the jar as the fireflies crawled the glass and emitted their light.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp

1136: Visible Light by Heidi Seaborn

Today’s poem is At the Rainbow Cattle Company by Bruce Snider. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “Today’s poem names the silent syncopated talk of the body that occurs when two people are in sync, in graceful movements, when they let each other lead.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp

1135: At the Rainbow Cattle Company by Bruce Snider

Today’s poem is Americans by Katie Peterson. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “Whenever I hear a person refer to people by their geographic or cultural or national association, I wince. In doing so, we falsely implicate everything from intelligence levels to physical appearances. This strikes me as crude, reductive, unintentionally demeaning.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp

1134: Americans by Katie Peterson

Today’s poem is The Alien by Greg Delanty. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “However tight the team of parents, and family and community beyond that, supporting a child in utero, that baby is carried by one body alone. Their body is not only one of creation, of labor, of internal mystery, but one of a singular emotional gravity.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp

1133: The Alien by Greg Delanty

Today’s poem is Felonious States of Adjectival Excess Featuring Comparative and Superlative Forms by A. H. Jerriod Avant. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “I am drawn to poets who, like the author of today’s poem, bring imagination and attention to sonic idioms of a poem. They make reading aloud fun.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp

1132: Felonious States of Adjectival Excess Featuring Comparative and Superlative Forms by A. H. Jerriod Avant

Today’s poem is How It Will End by Denise Duhamel. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “Today’s poem illustrates how difficult it is to plot the fate of a couple, especially one whose ups and downs are played out publicly.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp

1131: How It Will End by Denise Duhamel

Today’s poem is Cy Twombly's Untitled (Say Goodbye Catullus, to the shores of Asia Minor) by Javier O. Huerta. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “This week’s episodes are a special feature on ekphrasis – poems which engage with works of art. Ekphrastic poetry sometimes pushes back against the idea of simple art made complicated in idea, born from an eccentric personality. Inspired by another famous Twombly painting, one that itself is inspired partly by a poem, today’s poem realizes the frenetic sense of the artist’s canvas is a conceptual product of a sophisticated and sometimes frustrating mind.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp

1130: Cy Twombly's Untitled (Say Goodbye Catullus, to the shores of Asia Minor) by Javier O. Huerta

Today’s poem is Hagar in the Wilderness by Tyehimba Jess.The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “This week’s episodes are a special feature on ekphrasis – poems which engage with works of art. Today’s poet pays homage to an artist who, with her own hands, made art out of heroic, mythical, and biblical figures, whose visions were worthy of the substance of stone.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp

1129: Hagar in the Wilderness by Tyehimba Jess

Today’s poem is Post-Industrial Society Has Arrived by Vidhu Aggarwal.The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “This week’s episodes are a special feature on ekphrasis – poems which engage with works of art. Poets possess an expansive intuition, a proclivity towards image-making that meets head-on the most difficult of artists. In responding to works of art, poets perform the gift of interpretation. By turning language into a critical practice, they find pathways into paintings and teach us how to see what they see. They make the paintings speak.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp

1128: Post-Industrial Society Has Arrived by Vidhu Aggarwal

Today’s poem is Two Paintings Seen Again by Rachel Hadas.The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “This week’s episodes are a special feature on ekphrasis – poems which engage with works of art. Today’s ekphrastic poem makes a compelling assertion that to fully register the power of art, we must take our time to take it in.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp

1127: Two Paintings Seen Again by Rachel Hadas

Today’s poem is Not So Much an End as an Entangling by Linda Gregerson.The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “This week’s episodes are a special feature on ekphrasis – poems which engage with works of art. The vision of birds stilled in motion at the center of Tom Uttech’s paintings invite similar speculations. Today’s poem reads an exodus of earth’s species as an ominous commentary, I surmise, on the decimation of the environment.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp

1126: Not So Much an End as an Entangling by Linda Gregerson

Today’s poem is English by Janel Pineda. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “Today’s poem brilliantly figures the psychological complexities of adopting a new language, and a way of thinking, while losing another.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp

1125: English by Janel Pineda

Today’s poem is What Good Is A Castle by Linda Susan Jackson.The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “Those signs are back; a favorite restaurant near campus suddenly closed. My network news show has a new host; my local bagel shop removed the best breakfast sandwich this side of cream cheese from its menu board. These are reminders that nothing is permanent. Is anything sacred? Of course not. The only constant in life is change.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp

1124: What Good Is A Castle by Linda Susan Jackson

Today’s poem is In the House With No Doors by Sarah Kay.The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “Today’s poem speaks to the intimacy roommates share, how sometimes we start off as strangers then, as we enter into each other’s routines, become the best of friends.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp

1123: In the House With No Doors by Sarah Kay

Today’s poem is Childhood by David Baker.The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “I enjoy today’s poem immensely for how it makes its opening comparison, then leads us to the sweet conclusion, one about an experience we all share. Yet, it individualizes through the power of metaphor.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp

1122: Childhood by David Baker

Today’s poem is The Empire of Light by Michael Dumanis.The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “Today’s poem reveals how poets distinctly process the world. A fragmented mix of images might reflect how we naturally think. Spontaneity defines our lyricism, and its pleasure is its speed.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp

1121: The Empire of Light by Michael Dumanis

Today’s poem is Monet Refuses the Operation by Lisel Mueller.The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “Poets and visual artists work to give representation to the world which shimmers and blurs. Sometimes only impressions are available. Rather than a fidelity to things as they are, we desire to represent those very distortions. Today’s dramatic monologue is a gem of a poem, one that reminds how everything around us is divined with light, even our imperfections.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp

1120: Monet Refuses the Operation by Lisel Mueller

Today’s poem is A Black Doe in the Anthropocene by Artress Bethany White.The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “Here is my ignorance; I thought we settled the matter of the “Anthropocene” a long time ago. Isn’t there enough conclusive evidence? Wars, loss of biodiversity, overpopulation, endangered species, deforestation, earth warming, greenhouse gasses, the production of nonbiodegradable materials, nuclear waste that further threatens wildlife, human beings, and agricultural lands. But, as one scientist noted, “Human impact goes much deeper into geological time.”” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp

1119: A Black Doe in the Anthropocene by Artress Bethany White

Today’s poem is At My Funeral by Hélène Cardona.The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “Ultimately, we do not know the experience of dying. We can only imagine. Artists, though, have fun playing with the mystery of what happens when we transition to no longer walking the earth in the flesh. From the Jerry Zucker movie “Ghost” to Dylan Thomas’s poem “Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night,” I have found special comfort in works that find a boldness in facing the inevitable.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp

1118: At My Funeral by Hélène Cardona

Today’s poem is I Am Waiting by Lawrence Ferlinghetti.The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “On a Saturday morning group Zoom call, I wore my Philadelphia Phillies cap. A friend almost choked on his coffee, confusing my red hat for a MAGA hat. It made for a funny exchange, where I unapologetically claimed my belief in the ideals of America, but, no . . . I am a different kind of patriot. America is defined by its belief in equality, freedom, liberty, opportunity, and justice, but maybe even more by its betrayal of those principles and then its struggle to recommit to values we hold self-evident.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp

1117: I Am Waiting by Lawrence Ferlinghetti

Today’s poem is Mercy by Dessa.The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “I never took to the attitude of I’ll show them. It concedes that those people, people who did not think enough of me to take care of my feelings, are still in my life, in an unhealthy manner, subconsciously controlling my actions. My success is not going to suddenly prove me worthy of love in their eyes. Will they have thought better of that moment when they scarred me? Maybe. Will they think me more intelligent than they initially granted? Possibly. But, truth is, I am healed when I no longer care to have their acceptance or validation.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp

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1201: Try to Praise the Mutilated World by Adam Zagajewski, translated by Clare Cavanagh

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