Today’s poem is The Leaving by Brigit Pegeen Kelly. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual.

In this episode, guest host Victoria Chang writes… “This is a poem that seems so easy to describe, yet it’s so hard to pin down–my favorite kind of poem–both clear and mysterious. It’s dreamlike, mystical, biblical, and so much more. It magically depicts what it’s like to be a child on the cusp of something, in the face of the largeness of the world.”

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Today’s poem is Dream Song 14 by John Berryman.

The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “I miss being bored. I miss idly sitting in a chair, looking out a window, wondering what next to do with myself. I want the feeling of time as an endless desert — nothing in sight, nothing on the horizon.”

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 Cassandra by Sasha West.

The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “The speaker in today’s poem, taken from Greek mythology, has sight beyond the veil. Their relationship to objects points to the kind of clairvoyance that artists exercise, connecting our physical, emotional, and spiritual worlds.”

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 Ferment by Monica Rico.

The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “As a person who sticks to the recipe, step by step, exact measurements and all, I appreciate how today’s poem lifts up the magic of feeling and improvisation, of putting one’s whole body into a task.”

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

The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “Why is it so hard to write a love poem? Well, I think sentimentality is often the culprit. Today’s poem, by contrast, avoids sentimentality by showing how our perceptions change when we fall in love, how the inner and outer worlds come to reflect each other.”

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 story from the eighties by Debra Marquart.

The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “Occasionally, I pretend to resist feelings of nostalgia. Somehow, I got it in my mind that remembrances of things past prevented me from standing fully in the here and now — that musings about foregone events would eclipse any potential value I placed in the present."

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 Translation by Anne Spencer.

The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “The last time I camped, a wolf’s howl gave me chills; it brought me closer to some primitive ancestor. I fell asleep to fantasies of leading a pack through boreal forest. The last time I camped, I gazed on evening stars blinking their wondrous code, jeweling the dark sky.”

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 Father and I Drive to St. Louis for His Mother's Funeral and the Wildflowers by Chaun Ballard.

The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “Current global conflicts and discussions of borders spotlight the privilege of mobility. An American passport admits entry into 184 countries. Yet, even movement within the United States, for some people, is unsafe. Race and other identity markers, even today, circumscribe where people can travel and live with ease.”

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 Great Question by Lisa Olstein.

The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “Why do we lean on love so much for sustenance? When passion dwindles to a set of burned twigs, where once there was a raging fire; it’s as though a theft has occurred, the result of which makes us homesick for ourselves.”

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 Under the Bed by Kirun Kapur.

The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “While not the equivalent of glimpsing the spirit world cleave the air, the insight of poets amounts to a kind of clairvoyance. They make connections that close the gap between the known and the unknown.”

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