Today’s poem is Film Theory by Xan Forest Phillips. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual.

In this episode, Major writes… “Today’s poem reminds me that artists exist in a culture of rejection. And over time, the little illusory nicks to your ego, and the weight of commitment to your art, either extinguishes your fire or has you recommit even more, driven by that sheer love of making.”

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Today’s poem is The Future of Terror / 1 by Matthea Harvey. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual.

In this episode, Major writes… “Today’s haunting poem, an embedded abecedarian, gets at the bizarre alter-reality of violence, how it distorts and impacts everything.”

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Today’s poem is Immersive by Joseph Millar. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual.

In this episode, Major writes… “Poetry reorients me, does the work of humanizing, of not letting me devolve to despair. Its insistence on staying present, on paying attention, on speaking to the beauty in nature and the beauty in us, renews my faith.”

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Today’s poem is Fade Away by Amorak Huey. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual.

In this episode, Major writes… “I cannot fully explain my renewed love for vinyl. All I know is that for eight weekends straight, I have found myself randomly walking into a record store. Although you might know me to be nostalgic, I do not uphold the golden days of analog and denigrate all things digital. Today’s poem insists our lives, like so many analog recordings, are raw, unadorned, layered, full of disruptions and distortions.”

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Today’s poem is When you have to kill everybody in the room by Niki Herd. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual.

In this episode, Major writes… “Today’s poem presents a psychological portrait of a gun owner and the looming senses of danger and potential to harm that accompanies him.”

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 Trees by Jericho Brown. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual.

In this episode, Major writes… “I love the calls and trills of warblers and rose-breasted grosbeaks, the rushing sound of a brook over stone, the irrational belief, some might say, of connecting with something larger. I start off sometimes in a spiritual crisis, but walk out spiritually cleansed. For this reason, the natural world over the years has become my lifesaving talisman.”

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Today’s poem is Time || Immemorial by Daniel Simon. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual.

In this episode, Major writes… “Poems about public events offer reflection. They counter political and media rhetoric that aims to simplify. Writing poems gives citizens in a democracy a place at the table of ideas and grants us a way to engage that promotes justice and civic dialogue.”

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Today’s poem is A Dominican Poem by Danielle Legros Georges. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. I

n this episode, Major writes… “Today’s poem problematizes easy notions of citizenship and arbitrary boundaries. It powerfully implores us to reflect on our advantages, to find a way to humility — and to connect with those whose freedom is not a given.”

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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.”

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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 hearts.”

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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 Wheatley, or creatively reinscribe what is found in the text as some of her abiding images and important themes. The anthology, Wheatley at 250, from which today’s poem is taken, honors and celebrates the immense legacy of Phillis Wheatley Peters, whose work matters to all of us who cherish the possibilities of poems and poets to represent the highest ideals of literacy, and the miracle of language to free us.”

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