Today’s poem is We Wear the Mask by Paul Laurence Dunbar

800: We Wear the Mask

Poet Major Jackson is your guide on the pathways to feel and understand our common journey – through poetry. In sharing poems, we take a moment to pause and acknowledge the world’s magnitude, and how poets illuminate that mystery. Join The Slowdown for a poem and a moment of reflection in one short episode, every weekday. Produced by APM Studios in partnership with The Poetry Foundation and supported in part by the National Endowment for the Arts.



The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. Make us a part of your routine as you drink coffee in the morning, as you take a walk in nature, or as you wind down to go to sleep in the evening. With host Major Jackson, we collectively take a moment to calm, to inspire, to learn, and to engage with the best emerging poets and established writers of our time and generations past, from Emily Dickinson to Danez Smith, from Amanda Gorman to Mary Oliver.



Listen to our back catalog for episodes by our previous hosts, Tracy K. Smith and Ada Limón,  as well as guest hosts Jenny Xie, Brenda Shaughnessy, Tina Chang, Nate Marshall, Shira Erlichiman, and Jason Schneiderman. Our hosts and production team select poems that move them, and we hope they move you, too.

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Today’s poem is Chaos Theory by Clint Smith.
The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. 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

1103: Chaos Theory by Clint Smith

Today’s poem is How to Be a Good Savage by Mikeas Sánchez, translated by Wendy Call and Shook.
The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… "Today’s poem ironizes the lens through which the colonizer sees Indigenous peoples as uncivilized. It is a horrible term that diminishes a people’s humanity and ascribes assimilation as the cure of a presumed inferiority. It is an example of a poem that my friend Willie Perdomo describes as a poetry of “decolonial practice.”"
Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp

1102: How to Be a Good Savage by Mikeas Sánchez, translated by Wendy Call and Shook

Today’s poem is 1971 Pontiac LeMans by Thomas Bolt. 
The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… "Today’s poem reminds me how, in some instances, automobiles are charged with a certain kind of masculinity that can be beautiful and destructive at the same time." 
Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp

1101: 1971 Pontiac LeMans by Thomas Bolt

Today’s poem is Ode to The Lone Star State by Jubi Arriola-Headley.
The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… "On a flight to Kansas City just before the most recent Super Bowl, the pilot taunted Chiefs football fans. Just before takeoff, he donned his Dallas Cowboys baseball cap. In jest, he claimed, despite not having made it to the Superbowl, his team still carried the banner as “America’s Team.” Half the plane booed. He announced those who booed could remove their seat cushions and sit on iron the entire flight. The whole cabin laughed. Texas often takes it on the chin. I, too, once decried the second largest American state maybe because my Eagles often lost big games to the Cowboys. Yet, my appreciation for Texas has grown over the years.” 
Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp

1100: Ode to The Lone Star State by Jubi Arriola-Headley

Today’s poem is Something by Andrea Cohen.
The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… "On a long drive through upstate New York, I ran out of podcasts, six hours in. So, I asked Siri to tell me a joke. She said, “Why did the meatball tell the spaghetti to go to sleep,” then answered, “It was pasta bedtime.” I thanked Siri for keeping me company… then became self-conscious about speaking to an artificial being.” 
Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp

800: We Wear the Mask

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