Today’s poem is The Presence in Absence by Linda Gregg. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “As poet Elizabeth Alexander asks in one of my favorite poems, “Ars Poetica #100”: “and are we not of interest to each other?” While not its only function, for poetry also thrives beyond the affairs of societies, poetry deepens our appreciation for people. Their perspectives and life events take central stage. It’s as if they are with us, though not with us.” Celebrate...
Dec 06, 2024•5 min
Today’s poem is That's My Heart Right There by Willie Perdomo. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “I did not appreciate the depth of emotions behind the songs my grandfather sang, until one morning when I arrived early to high school for track practice to see my crush holding hands with my best friend. Whew! I could have sung a hundred blues songs, and would have felt none the better. But I came to understand something about love; we are creatures with wild ...
Dec 05, 2024•4 min
Today’s poem is On the Death of a Young Lady Five Years of Age, a reinscription by Aracelis Girmay. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “Last year, a group of poets celebrated the 250th anniversary book publication of Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral (1773) by Phillis Wheatley Peters. In honor of this important milestone editors Danielle Legros Georges and Artress Bethany White solicited Black female poets to write in the manner of Phillis Wheat...
Dec 04, 2024•5 min
Today’s poem is The Canonization by John Donne. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “Today’s classic poem knows that loving hearts create possibilities for us to exist as full and whole human beings. We need as many examples as possible of sweet passion and friendship. It might be the key to our survival.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp...
Dec 03, 2024•6 min
Today’s poem is On Living by Nazim Hikmet, translated by Randy Blasing and Mutlu Konuk. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “My walk that morning brought forth the world in technicolor, piercing green trees, a blue sky screeching loud as a free jazz concert, a jogger’s passing smile, soft, otherworldly. The earth hummed and throbbed. At a stoplight, I was suddenly filled with an inexplicable joy. My day of explosive happiness was counterintuitive. My inner wo...
Dec 02, 2024•6 min
Today’s poem is 52 Blue by Sappho Stanley. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “Today's poem probes into the ocean within the self — the mysteries of love.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp
Nov 29, 2024•6 min
Today’s poem is Farmers’ Market by Molly Fisk. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “When I was younger, as an introverted kid, I did not value large family gatherings during holidays, especially not Thanksgiving. Now, I appreciate what I once shunned. Gather me among kinfolks. Let’s talk loudly with drinks in our hands. Let’s enjoy the bounty of family and rituals that fill us with connection and the purpose of loving each other. And when we sit down to dinne...
Nov 28, 2024•5 min
Today’s poem is Listening to Monk's Misterioso I Remember Braiding My Sisters' Hair by Christopher Gilbert. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “The phrase “take me away” sounds passive. But music requires work, requires paying attention to changes, knowing a passage is an improvisational homage to some legendary artist. I love keeping up with the fast thinking behind the notes like little sunbursts. The nuances, say, of a Thelonious Monk off-chord is an inte...
Nov 27, 2024•6 min
Today’s poem is A Garden and a Street by Teresa Cader. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “Poetry holds that place of both awakening and frustration, of perseverance against unimaginable violence and the flight away from the pains of our fragile world. Someday the bombs will stop falling. Someday the rhetoric of hatred will not have an audience. Isn’t this something that we all should work toward? Until then, so says the speaker in today’s poem, we must find...
Nov 26, 2024•5 min
Today’s poem is Big Purple Peonies by Margaret Ross. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “Today’s deeply satisfying poem arrives from an exacting eye. The poet’s kinetic imagination and mental roaming feel gorgeously reportorial and cinematic, mapping self-reflection through their portrayal of vibrant landscapes.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp...
Nov 25, 2024•6 min
Today’s poem is Telescope by Louise Glück. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, guest host Myka Kielbon writes… “I live on a hill on the edge of a valley. I look out my window and watch cars creep by on the interstate that could take me a thousand miles to my birthplace if I so choose. This slice of Los Angeles – the one I look out over everyday – is odd to reconcile with the map that I see on my phone. So now, as I live in it, I try to find my own authentic knowledge of th...
Nov 22, 2024•6 min
Today’s poem is Poem (“Instant coffee with…”) by Frank O'Hara. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, guest host Myka Kielbon writes… “Loren was the person I knew in New York who was the same kind of lost as me. There is a magic to how we find each other when we need each other. It seems like our souls sort of… orbit until they reach out. They land. They find ground and we find a friend, even if it’s temporary.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. ...
Nov 21, 2024•5 min
Today’s poem is Waiting for the Annular Eclipse by Rhoni Blankenhorn. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, guest host Myka Kielbon writes… “Rock bottom is a funny place. If anyone has been there, then I suppose we all end up in our own rock bottom at some point. The truth about nothing ever ending, nothing ever being final, is that things will be the same again, too. Just not all at the same time, in the same way. You’ll find a new rock bottom. And, a new way out.” Celebrat...
Nov 20, 2024•6 min
Today’s poem is Aleppo by Hala Alyan. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, guest host Myka Kielbon writes… “Recently, I dreamt that my friend and I were moving into a big, old apartment. Once we got the couch in the living room, my grandmother appeared, sitting on it. I haven’t seen her in a decade. She died in 2015. I think my grandmother, a woman who witnessed and bore great suffering, a woman who was courageous and loving, came to me to remind me of the strength we need ...
Nov 19, 2024•6 min
Today’s poem is Brooklyn is for Breakups by Chen Chen. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, guest host Myka Kielbon writes… “I have experienced a whole lot of life, and romance only forms threads of that life, woven into all the other moments. The threads are often short. They have loose ends. What I struggle with – what I’ve struggled with for years – is naming the importance of the relationships I’ve had with people that don’t fit neatly into a category.” Celebrate the po...
Nov 18, 2024•6 min
Today’s poem is Mother of the English Language by Nicole Arocho Hernández. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, guest host Myka Kielbon writes… “Today’s poem has that kind of intimacy you only achieve by deciding to be weird together. When we forgo a tight grip on meaning, sometimes we get a little closer to the truth of feeling.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp...
Nov 15, 2024•5 min
Today’s poem is My Father Flying by Jan Beatty. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, guest host Myka Kielbon writes… “Grief feels, sometimes, like a burden. A heavy one. But it is also a practice. People we love leave this earth, but they don’t leave us. We can find lightness in small rituals, small memorials to share with the world the version of the person that we have folded up inside of ourselves.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every do...
Nov 14, 2024•6 min
Today’s poem is Forgiveness Rock Record by Tawanda Mulalu. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, guest host Myka Kielbon writes… “Today’s poem excavates the hard route to self-love, but it also shows us the trick: that self-love doesn’t happen all alone.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp
Nov 13, 2024•6 min
Today’s poem is Shadow Play by Jessica Fisher. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, guest host Myka Kielbon writes… “Today’s poem speaks to someone who left marks on this earth hundreds of years ago. It asks what elemental — and metaphysical — forces moved through them, like wind playing the chimes. Just like those forces did then, and do today, and will tomorrow.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tin...
Nov 12, 2024•6 min
Today’s poem is Letter to a Young Poet by Megan Fernandes. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, guest host Myka Kielbon writes… “Today’s poem holds its epiphanies close. It lives in that space which grows from wholehearted obsession, specificity, and the knowledge that the act of returning is the kind of love that keeps us going.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp...
Nov 11, 2024•6 min
Today’s poem is On Being by Ruben Quesada. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “Today’s poem captures our complex relationship with nature, how we experience the sublime of the seasons, but also, the way it is often mediated through our modern and mechanized era.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp
Nov 08, 2024•5 min
Today’s poem is Mami Told Me to Put Water under the Bed by Peggy Robles-Alvarado. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “Today’s poem professes the healing properties of water and the restorative powers of language to renew our connection to each other.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp
Nov 07, 2024•6 min
Today’s poem is Trans Loneliness by Rickey Laurentiis. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “Society’s debates around gender identity boils down to this simple fact: people want others to see them as they see themselves. This is a pure, human need for affirmation from friends, parents, and peers. It builds self-esteem and mental stability.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rj...
Nov 06, 2024•5 min
Today’s poem is A House Called Tomorrow by Alberto Ríos. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “I loved watching the volunteers at my polling place. They were cheerful. They lovingly bantered, though they certainly could have belonged to different political parties. They gave me a vision of selfless coexistence that felt like this defined us more than our public debates. I thought of legions of people who volunteer to combat all manner of challenges to society,...
Nov 05, 2024•6 min
Today’s poem is Gala Noise by Diane Mehta. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “Today’s poem invites us to contemplate how language is not just what is heard, but what is conveyed beneath the surface. Underneath, it sees that we are interconnected with nature, linked to an existential restlessness which leads us to the act of making sounds.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/...
Nov 04, 2024•6 min
Today’s poem is Second Paradise by Chard deNiord. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “Today’s shrewd poem ardently shows how time shreds memories into a dreamlike sequence of events, yet we are preserved in our stories.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp
Nov 01, 2024•6 min
Today’s poem is Refugia by Traci Brimhall. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “Today’s poem knows some environments awaken us daily to the wonders. Maybe that is paradise, a place of first permission to go on loving the world.” ' Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp
Oct 31, 2024•6 min
Today’s poem is Shelf Life by Nathan Xavier Osorio. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “There’s something sad, sometimes, about taking in all of the country from the fringes. I used to view the highway as a symbol of escape and possibility. Now, I view the road as a complex portal to our great melancholy. Today’s poem exposes a thin veil of desolation on the surface of life. It’s as if we are all waiting for something magical to happen, to lift us out of our...
Oct 30, 2024•6 min
Today’s poem is Genetics by Sinead Morrissey. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “The speaker in today’s poem professes an emotional and physical connection to parents who chose to go separate ways. Understanding the power of sacred love, the speaker in the poem invites a beloved to embark on a shared life together.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp...
Oct 29, 2024•6 min
Today’s poem is The Devouring Economy of Nature by Daniel Borzutzky. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “I know there is no easy solution to economic inequality. I do wish that we channeled greater energy into figuring out the wealth gap, how to provide sustainable wages to working people. One of the corrupting aspects of our economic system is that it forces us to accept conditions that reduce people and nature.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to ...
Oct 28, 2024•6 min
