The Slowdown: Poetry & Reflection Daily
American Public Media
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.
Location:
United States
Genres:
Arts & Culture Podcasts
Networks:
American Public Media
Description:
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.
Language:
English
Episodes
[encore] 961: Nocturne by Oliver Baez Bendorf
8/1/2025
Today’s poem is Nocturne by Oliver Baez Bendorf.
The Slowdown is currently taking a break. We’ll be back soon with new episodes from a new host. This week, we’re revisiting some favorites from Major Jackson’s time as host. Today’s episode was originally released on September 8, 2023.
The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “In young adulthood, long before children, jobs, home ownership, my evenings felt like a blank canvas of cultural and spiritual possibility. I felt a joyous connection to all around me, artists and writers and musicians, thinkers and believers, both living and departed, alive in their pursuit of beauty and knowledge. I was starving and knew it. On South Street, one bookstore stayed open till midnight. Many nights I closed it down, sitting in a corner reading a paperback, a beer in my pocket or a cup of coffee in my hand. At some point, I knew I needed to make art, to move to celebrating the world’s loveliness. I was perpetually hungry to do so.”
Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp
Duration:00:06:46
[encore] 1107: Accessory to War by Kim Stafford
7/31/2025
Today’s poem is Accessory to War by Kim Stafford.
The Slowdown is currently taking a break. We’ll be back soon with new episodes from a new host. This week, we’re revisiting some favorites from Major Jackson’s time as host. Today’s episode was originally released on April 30, 2024.
The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “Today’s sobering poem lands a powerful reminder: that even when we adhere to a belief against war, even when we wish not to collude in acts of aggression, in a powerful nation as ours, mere citizenship implicates us.”
Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp
Duration:00:06:01
[encore] 1156: In Love by Chloe Martinez
7/30/2025
Today’s poem is In Love by Chloe Martinez.
The Slowdown is currently taking a break. We’ll be back soon with new episodes from a new host. This week, we’re revisiting some favorites from Major Jackson’s time as host. Today’s episode was originally released on July 8, 2024.
The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “The first time I was in love, I started missing baseball practice. Instead, I went to the library. Cherie spent afternoons doing her homework there. I could barely think about anything but her. What an immense feeling, to live with a perennial lump in my chest!”
Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp
Duration:00:06:10
[encore] 1094: 00000000 by Erin Marie Lynch
7/29/2025
Today’s poem is 00000000 by Erin Marie Lynch.
The Slowdown is currently taking a break. We’ll be back soon with new episodes from a new host. This week, we’re revisiting some favorites from Major Jackson’s time as host. Today’s episode was originally released on April 11, 2024.
The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “Today’s poem disentangles the quest for money, transactional desire, and lyric subjectivity. Its teasing interplay of language brings into close proximity art, social class, and manners of currency.”
Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp
Duration:00:07:21
[encore] 1005: eco-hood by Melania Luisa Marte
7/28/2025
Today’s poem is eco-hood by Melania Luisa Marte.
The Slowdown is currently taking a break. We’ll be back soon with new episodes from a new host. This week, we’re revisiting some favorites from Major Jackson’s time as host. Today’s episode was originally released on November 23, 2023.
The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “Today’s poem dignifies the lives of people in low-income neighborhoods whose early practices of thrift and ingenuity created intrinsic values of sustainability, personal style, and care for human habitats.”
Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp
Duration:00:05:09
[encore] 624: Sunflowers in the Median
7/25/2025
Today’s poem is Sunflowers in the Median by Natalie Homer.
The Slowdown is currently taking a break. We’ll be back soon with new episodes from a new host. This week, we’re going back into the archive to revisit Ada Limón’s time as host. Today’s episode was originally released on March 4, 2022.
In this episode, former host Ada Limón writes… “What is it about noticing beauty that brings you out of yourself and returns you to yourself? I love rooting for beauty, for awe, for those unexpected visions that make life a little easier to manage. In today’s vibrant poem, we see how the image of sunflowers can allow for a sort of grace. I love this poem for its appreciation of unexpected beauty.”
Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp
Duration:00:06:32
[encore] 526: Saudade
7/24/2025
Today’s poem is Saudade by Silvia Bonilla.
The Slowdown is currently taking a break. We’ll be back soon with new episodes from a new host. This week, we’re going back into the archive to revisit Ada Limón’s time as host. Today’s episode was originally released on October 19, 2021.
In this episode, former host Ada Limón writes… “There are days I’m prone to see the nostalgia in things, the ache of the moment. Most days, I try to focus on the bright edges, those little seams of joy that vibrate in the world. One of the many reasons I love today’s poem is that it is full of that cantaloupe-colored longing and makes no apologies.”
Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp
Duration:00:05:14
[encore] 645: It’s 9:30am, I’ve ran four miles, cried four times, & eaten two chicken sandwiches
7/23/2025
Today’s poem is It’s 9:30am, I’ve ran four miles, cried four times, & eaten two chicken sandwiches by Christian Aldana.
The Slowdown is currently taking a break. We’ll be back soon with new episodes from a new host. This week, we’re going back into the archive to revisit Ada Limón’s time as host. Today’s episode was originally released on April 4, 2022.
In this episode, former host Ada Limón writes… “Annie Dillard once wrote, “How we spend our days is of course how we spend our lives. What we do with this hour and that one is what we are doing.” I think about this a lot when I’m planning my day and what sort of pleasure I might suck out of its marrow during these tumultuous times of constant upheaval and war. Sometimes that means noticing even the most mundane of tasks in order to know we are alive, that we are living.”
Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp
Duration:00:05:34
[encore] 510: Let Me
7/22/2025
Today’s poem is Let Me by Camille T. Dungy.
The Slowdown is currently taking a break. We’ll be back soon with new episodes from a new host. This week, we’re going back into the archive to revisit Ada Limón’s time as host. Today’s episode was originally released on September 27, 2021.
In this episode, former host Ada Limón writes… “The thing that makes me break down in tears the most often is not grief, but human resilience. To watch someone dress their kids and get them to school, ship them off with backpacks and N95 masks knowing how hard the world is. To watch someone keep going with some sort of unfathomable fortitude, no matter how rough the human waters, that is what astounds me. And still we go on, the world seems to say.”
Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp
Duration:00:05:38
[encore] 788: John Muir, A Dream, A Waterfall, A Mountain Ash
7/21/2025
Today’s poem is John Muir, A Dream, A Waterfall, A Mountain Ash by Robert Hass.
The Slowdown is currently taking a break. We’ll be back soon with new episodes from a new host. This week, we’re going back into the archive to revisit Ada Limón’s time as host. Today’s episode was originally released on October 20, 2022.
In this episode, former host Ada Limón writes… “Today’s poem by former U.S. Poet Laureate Robert Hass, is a poem that balances the worrisome long threads of our lives against the large wonder of mountains. The poem’s title also asks us to question who gets to name, or claim, nature at all.”
Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp
Duration:00:05:33
[encore] 382: Another Night at Sea Level by Meg Day
7/18/2025
Today’s poem is Another Night at Sea Level by Meg Day.
The Slowdown is currently taking a break. We’ll be back soon with new episodes from a new host. This week, we’re going back into the archive to revisit Tracy K. Smith’s time as host. Today’s episode was originally released on May 12, 2020.
In this episode, Tracy writes… “Written in letter form, today's poem captures and seeks to describe that feeling of the sublime for someone who is far away.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today.
Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp
Duration:00:06:31
[encore] 442: Climbing China's Great Wall by Afaa M. Weaver
7/17/2025
Today’s poem is Climbing China's Great Wall by Afaa M. Weaver.
The Slowdown is currently taking a break. We’ll be back soon with new episodes from a new host. This week, we’re going back into the archive to revisit Tracy K. Smith’s time as host. Today’s episode was originally released on August 4, 2020.
In this episode, Tracy writes… “I visited China for the first time in the spring of 2017. It was a visit to the great poet Yi Lei, whose poems I had been working to translate. It was my second time meeting Yi Lei in person. The first had been three years earlier, over lunch in Manhattan. That was the trip when we visited the Mutianyu section of the Great Wall. It was a bright, clear, warm day. There were plenty of visitors all around, but our climb up and down the thousand steep steps felt spacious somehow, as if we had the site to ourselves. I gawked happily at trees and mountains, stones and birds. I wanted to feel history under my feet, but really it was the living moment that enraptured me.”
Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp
Duration:00:05:35
[encore] 454: On a Spaceship Somewhere, Long After Empire's Collapse by Jesús I. Valles
7/16/2025
Today’s poem is On a Spaceship Somewhere, Long After Empire's Collapse by Jesús I. Valles.
The Slowdown is currently taking a break. We’ll be back soon with new episodes from a new host. This week, we’re going back into the archive to revisit Tracy K. Smith’s time as host. Today’s episode was originally released on August 20, 2020.
In this episode, Tracy writes… “The message from the stars is simple: it doesn’t have to be this way. I hope we humans might change of our own volition. Barring that, I’m game for celestial intervention.”
Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp
Duration:00:05:42
[encore] 470: Say Thank You Say I'm Sorry by Jericho Brown
7/15/2025
Today’s poem is Say Thank You Say I'm Sorry by Jericho Brown.
The Slowdown is currently taking a break. We’ll be back soon with new episodes from a new host. This week, we’re going back into the archive to revisit Tracy K. Smith’s time as host. Today’s episode was originally released on September 11, 2020.
In this episode, Tracy writes… “I like it when I pass into the orbit of a stranger and, without expecting or even wanting to, I feel a very accidental, very fleeting form of kinship. For me, this happens sometimes when I’m traveling and far from home — far from my everyday me. Or when I’m moving through public space while also deeply lost in thought. Talking to myself maybe. Or laughing at something I think only I have seen. And then I meet unfamiliar eyes, and I understand that we are in the same moment together. How wonderful would it be if trust, or even love, might be possible between any of us — or even all of us. I mean, if we let ourselves believe such a thing is possible.”
Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp
Duration:00:05:37
[encore] 393: Song In Which We Yet Sidestep Disaster by Tess Taylor
7/14/2025
Today’s poem is Song In Which We Yet Sidestep Disaster by Tess Taylor.
The Slowdown is currently taking a break. We’ll be back soon with new episodes from a new host. This week, we’re going back into the archive to revisit Tracy K. Smith’s time as host. Today’s episode was originally released on May 27, 2020.
In this episode, Tracy writes… “How can everything be? How is it possible? Maybe to be alive is a matter of accepting that such answers do not concern us. Maybe being alive in matter is a matter of learning to hear and see and feel and trust and to love all that is available to us.”
Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp
Duration:00:05:47
[encore] 1175: Hunger by Kelli Russell Agodon
7/11/2025
Today’s poem is Hunger by Kelli Russell Agodon.
Last spring, we asked our community to submit poems that have helped you slow down in your lives. This week we’re revisiting these 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
Duration:00:06:59
[encore] 1174: Separation Wall by Naomi Shihab Nye
7/10/2025
Today’s poem is Separation Wall by Naomi Shihab Nye.
Last spring, we asked our community to submit poems that have helped you slow down in your lives. This week we’re revisiting these 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
Duration:00:07:04
[encore] 1173: Sono by Suji Kwock Kim
7/9/2025
Today’s poem is Sono by Suji Kwock Kim.
The Slowdown is currently taking a break. Last spring, we asked our community to submit poems that have helped you slow down in your lives. This week we’re revisiting these 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
Duration:00:06:45
[encore] 1172: From Blossoms by Li-Young Lee
7/8/2025
Today’s poem is From Blossoms by Li-Young Lee.
Last spring, we asked our community to submit poems that have helped you slow down in your lives. This week we’re revisiting these selections. 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
Duration:00:06:48
[encore] 1171: One Art by Elizabeth Bishop
7/7/2025
Today’s poem is One Art by Elizabeth Bishop.
Last spring, we asked our community to submit poems that have helped you slow down in your lives. This week we’re revisiting these 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
Duration:00:06:55