1468 Episodes

  1. 1188: In Jerusalem by Mahmoud Darwish, translated by Fady Joudah, with special guest adrienne maree brown

    Published: 8/21/2024

  2. 1187: Picking Favorites by George Franklin

    Published: 8/20/2024

  3. 1186: Oh, y’know, just your standard Q&A by Alex Z. Salinas

    Published: 8/19/2024

  4. 1185: Fragment 31 by Sappho, translated by Christopher Childers

    Published: 8/16/2024

  5. 1184: End of December by Ashjan Hendi, translated by Moneera Al-Ghadeer

    Published: 8/15/2024

  6. 1183: maggie and milly and molly and may by E.E. Cummings, with special guest Eric Whitacre

    Published: 8/14/2024

  7. 1182: from “Take Me Back, Burden Hill” by L. Lamar Wilson

    Published: 8/13/2024

  8. 1181: Enlightenment by Vijay Seshadri

    Published: 8/12/2024

  9. 1180: The Gardener 85 by Rabindranath Tagore

    Published: 8/9/2024

  10. 1179: Nude by James Kelly Quigley

    Published: 8/8/2024

  11. 1178: America by Claude McKay, with special guest Tonya Mosley

    Published: 8/7/2024

  12. 1177: Machete: Look by Jasminne Mendez

    Published: 8/6/2024

  13. 1176: Fowl at Large by Sarah Giragosian

    Published: 8/5/2024

  14. 1175: Hunger by Kelli Russell Agodon

    Published: 8/2/2024

  15. 1174: Separation Wall by Naomi Shihab Nye

    Published: 8/1/2024

  16. 1173: Sono by Suji Kwock Kim

    Published: 7/31/2024

  17. 1172: From Blossoms by Li-Young Lee

    Published: 7/30/2024

  18. 1171: One Art by Elizabeth Bishop

    Published: 7/29/2024

  19. 1170: The Way by Cynthia Cruz

    Published: 7/26/2024

  20. 1169: from "American Analects" by Gary Young

    Published: 7/25/2024

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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.