Live from Butterfly Town, USA. We’re talking about butterflies today, in honor of their incredible desire and ability to migrate thousands of miles—straight here. The haven Monarch butterflies come home to is Pacific Grove, where I’m Poet in … Continue reading →

Greetings, fellow harvesters of earth’s bounty in mental and literal fields, psychic soil which nourishes and sustains us. I am thrilled to return to you, at this time of traditional harvest celebration, following our recent full moon, the time of … Continue reading →

Notes to our producers: I don’t know if I am going to get through this show without crying. . . thinking about 9-11 and the ways people use words in our times of greatest calamity is so moving to me—how the … Continue reading →

Whoa! What’s happened to your knees? You are dripping with mud! There’s grass all over you!    Well, yeah, I was listening to The Poetry Slow Down,  a program discussing amazing poetry of what we see when we get down with … Continue reading →

Dr. B, with all due respect, what if we are slowed down . . . way slowed down . . . TOO slowed down . . . stuck in traffic, waiting for a storm, waiting out a storm . . … Continue reading →

This is my letter to the world who never wrote to me– That’s Emily Dickinson, posting from her Amherst bedroom, and this is your host of post, Professor Barbara Mossberg, welcoming you to The Poetry Slow Down. We’re featuring bloggers … Continue reading →

O something pernicious and dread! Something far away from a puny and pious life—Walt Whitman, “Song of Myself” (The Joys, 196)   Walt Whitman–he’s escaped what afflicts you and me, “something escaped from the anchorage, and driving free.” Now, Poetry … Continue reading →

I have been thinking a lot about the word “let” in our language. The past two weeks, we heard Linda Gregg’s poem “Let Birds”–Let birds . . . do what? You can see Poetry Slow Down how this has slowed … Continue reading →

We DO move too fast! What’s wrong with that, Professor B? The early bird gets the worm! Well, if we’re going sixty miles an hour and it’s all a blur, or we’re so overscheduled and stressed and harried we can’t … Continue reading →

Thanking you, Poetry Slow Down, for joining me on this summer day, for an hour away, a way, as we go on vacation, for more poetry of the tourist kind, the tourist mind, perhaps disoriented, as Billy Collins wants to … Continue reading →