1464 Episodes

  1. [encore] 760: Song by Charif Shanahan

    Published: 5/22/2025

  2. [encore] 647: Walking Across Fire Island by Shelley Wong

    Published: 5/21/2025

  3. [encore] 571: Golden Age by Chris Santiago

    Published: 5/20/2025

  4. [encore] 708: Bruised Peaches by Bronwen Tate

    Published: 5/19/2025

  5. [encore] 236: Polaroid Ode by Cori Winrock

    Published: 5/16/2025

  6. [encore] 389: Kissing the Opelu by Donovan Kūhiō

    Published: 5/15/2025

  7. [encore] 168: What Does It Say by Tess Gallagher

    Published: 5/14/2025

  8. [encore] 386: Someday I'll Love Ocean Vuong by Ocean Vuong

    Published: 5/13/2025

  9. [encore] 496: a brief meditation on breath by Yesenia Montilla

    Published: 5/12/2025

  10. [encore] 1025: I Am Trying to Love the Whole World by Jenny Browne

    Published: 5/9/2025

  11. [encore] 995: Dear—, by DéLana R.A. Dameron

    Published: 5/8/2025

  12. [encore] 1202: If only by Dawn Lundy Martin

    Published: 5/7/2025

  13. [encore] 860: Learning Money in Reverse by Stephanie Niu

    Published: 5/6/2025

  14. [encore] 1132: Felonious States of Adjectival Excess Featuring Comparative and Superlative Forms by A. H. Jerriod Avant

    Published: 5/5/2025

  15. [encore] 789: hoop snake by Rebecca Wee

    Published: 5/2/2025

  16. [encore] 547: Travel by Edna St. Vincent Millay

    Published: 5/1/2025

  17. [encore] 661: The Field by Rick Barot

    Published: 4/30/2025

  18. [encore] 765: a fishing story. by Mia S. Willis

    Published: 4/29/2025

  19. [encore] 723: Divorce by José A. Alcántara

    Published: 4/28/2025

  20. [encore] 476: Minneapolipstick by Rachel McKibbens

    Published: 4/25/2025

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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.