[encore] 645: It’s 9:30am, I’ve ran four miles, cried four times, & eaten two chicken sandwiches
Today’s poem is It’s 9:30am, I’ve ran four miles, cried four times, & eaten two chicken sandwiches by Christian Aldana.The Slowdown is currently taking a break. We’ll be back soon with new episodes from a new host. This week, we’re going back into the archive to revisit Ada Limón’s time as host. Today’s episode was originally released on April 4, 2022.In this episode, former host Ada Limón writes… “Annie Dillard once wrote, “How we spend our days is of course how we spend our lives. What we do with this hour and that one is what we are doing.” I think about this a lot when I’m planning my day and what sort of pleasure I might suck out of its marrow during these tumultuous times of constant upheaval and war. Sometimes that means noticing even the most mundane of tasks in order to know we are alive, that we are living.” 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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[encore] 510: Let Me
Today’s poem is Let Me by Camille T. Dungy.The Slowdown is currently taking a break. We’ll be back soon with new episodes from a new host. This week, we’re going back into the archive to revisit Ada Limón’s time as host. Today’s episode was originally released on September 27, 2021. In this episode, former host Ada Limón writes… “The thing that makes me break down in tears the most often is not grief, but human resilience. To watch someone dress their kids and get them to school, ship them off with backpacks and N95 masks knowing how hard the world is. To watch someone keep going with some sort of unfathomable fortitude, no matter how rough the human waters, that is what astounds me. And still we go on, the world seems to say.” 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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[encore] 788: John Muir, A Dream, A Waterfall, A Mountain Ash
Today’s poem is John Muir, A Dream, A Waterfall, A Mountain Ash by Robert Hass. The Slowdown is currently taking a break. We’ll be back soon with new episodes from a new host. This week, we’re going back into the archive to revisit Ada Limón’s time as host. Today’s episode was originally released on October 20, 2022. In this episode, former host Ada Limón writes… “Today’s poem by former U.S. Poet Laureate Robert Hass, is a poem that balances the worrisome long threads of our lives against the large wonder of mountains. The poem’s title also asks us to question who gets to name, or claim, nature at all.” 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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[encore] 382: Another Night at Sea Level by Meg Day
Today’s poem is Another Night at Sea Level by Meg Day.The Slowdown is currently taking a break. We’ll be back soon with new episodes from a new host. This week, we’re going back into the archive to revisit Tracy K. Smith’s time as host. Today’s episode was originally released on May 12, 2020. In this episode, Tracy writes… “Written in letter form, today's poem captures and seeks to describe that feeling of the sublime for someone who is far away.” 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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[encore] 442: Climbing China's Great Wall by Afaa M. Weaver
Today’s poem is Climbing China's Great Wall by Afaa M. Weaver.The Slowdown is currently taking a break. We’ll be back soon with new episodes from a new host. This week, we’re going back into the archive to revisit Tracy K. Smith’s time as host. Today’s episode was originally released on August 4, 2020. In this episode, Tracy writes… “I visited China for the first time in the spring of 2017. It was a visit to the great poet Yi Lei, whose poems I had been working to translate. It was my second time meeting Yi Lei in person. The first had been three years earlier, over lunch in Manhattan. That was the trip when we visited the Mutianyu section of the Great Wall. It was a bright, clear, warm day. There were plenty of visitors all around, but our climb up and down the thousand steep steps felt spacious somehow, as if we had the site to ourselves. I gawked happily at trees and mountains, stones and birds. I wanted to feel history under my feet, but really it was the living moment that enraptured me.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp
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.
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