The Slowdown: Poetry & Reflection Daily

By: American Public Media
  • Summary

  • Poet Major Jackson is your guide on the pathways to feel and understand our common journey – through poetry. In sharing poems, we take a moment to pause and acknowledge the world’s magnitude, and how poets illuminate that mystery. Join The Slowdown for a poem and a moment of reflection in one short episode, every weekday. Produced by APM Studios in partnership with The Poetry Foundation and supported in part by the National Endowment for the Arts.

    The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. Make us a part of your routine as you drink coffee in the morning, as you take a walk in nature, or as you wind down to go to sleep in the evening. With host Major Jackson, we collectively take a moment to calm, to inspire, to learn, and to engage with the best emerging poets and established writers of our time and generations past, from Emily Dickinson to Danez Smith, from Amanda Gorman to Mary Oliver.

    Listen to our back catalog for episodes by our previous hosts, Tracy K. Smith and Ada Limón, as well as guest hosts Jenny Xie, Brenda Shaughnessy, Tina Chang, Nate Marshall, Shira Erlichiman, and Jason Schneiderman. Our hosts and production team select poems that move them, and we hope they move you, too.
    Copyright 2024 Minnesota Public Radio
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Episodes
  • 1245: Telescope by Louise Glück
    Nov 22 2024

    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 the earth I see and the earth I feel, some melding of technologies and body.”


    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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    6 mins
  • 1244: Poem by Frank O'Hara
    Nov 21 2024

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

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    5 mins
  • 1243: Waiting for the Annular Eclipse by Rhoni Blankenhorn
    Nov 20 2024

    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.”


    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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    6 mins

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