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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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 & 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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Today’s poem is Oh, y’know, just your standard Q&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

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 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

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

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

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

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

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

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 & 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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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