The Slowdown: Poetry & Reflection Daily – Details, episodes & analysis

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.”

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Today’s poem is Theories of Influence by Anselm Berrigan

The 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?”

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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

Today’s poem is Nameless Places by Tony Petrosky.

The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… "This summer, I get to write in a castle in Italy at an artist retreat. I am hoping my assigned room is in a dungeon. Otherwise, I am afraid high ceilings will mean high windows, which will mean a room flooded with light. I wish to arrive at light like a burst that suddenly suffuses my eyelids; I want the page to contain inexpressible awe at our existence, to enact a calamitous and beautiful journey. Today’s short poem honors the unseen, formidable spaces that define us as much as our existence in the light."

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 00000000 by Erin Marie Lynch.

The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… "Today’s poem disentangles the quest for money, transactional desire, and lyric subjectivity. Its teasing interplay of language brings into close proximity art, social class, and manners of currency.”

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 When Your Month is Lonely… by Christine Kwon. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual.

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

Today’s poem is Eid Mubarak by Fady Joudah.

The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… "Today’s poem makes a profound commitment to carry the living and the dead in language forward into time, to record our presence, to meld the collectivity and richness of humanity into a singular vision that feels like love.”

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 To Find Stars in Another Language by Elizabeth Bradfield.

The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… "Sometimes it is necessary to create our own stories and poems that account for our reality, for who we are, presently, in the 21st century. Our dreams and imagination serve as a bridge in expanding conceptions of the self. One of my favorite poets once declared “The dream of every poem is to be a myth.” I like this idea, that poems can order our world, give agency and permission, cultivate, and open our collective unconscious.”

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 My Life by Water by Lorine Niedecker.

The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, guest host Victoria Chang writes… "I admit, I spent much of my childhood imagining my future away from Michigan. But now, I only have positive memories of my childhood landscape. The Michigan landscape is my country. We are all always living and writing from somewhere, and thus we are being defined by our landscapes. We wouldn’t be someone without a somewhere."

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 The Loquat Trees & The Boy Next Door by Saúl Hernández.

The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, guest host Victoria Chang writes… "Today’s poem reminds me of how, under every tree that bears fruit, there are secret stories of desire, of loss, and of love."

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