1465 Episodes

  1. [encore] 476: Minneapolipstick by Rachel McKibbens

    Published: 4/25/2025

  2. [encore] 499: Leaving Tulsa by Jennifer Elise Foerster

    Published: 4/24/2025

  3. [encore] 143: Untitled by Sesshu Foster

    Published: 4/23/2025

  4. [encore] 282: Waiting for Happiness by Nomi Stone

    Published: 4/22/2025

  5. [encore] 305: Wake Up by Carl Phillips

    Published: 4/21/2025

  6. [encore] 1045: Sonnet for Ochún by Leslie Sainz

    Published: 4/18/2025

  7. [encore] 865: Worry (the Dybbuk) by Anthony Immergluck

    Published: 4/17/2025

  8. [encore] 915: Who Among You Knows the Essence of Garlic? by Garrett Hongo

    Published: 4/16/2025

  9. [encore] 848: Six for Gold by Kate Hanson Foster

    Published: 4/15/2025

  10. [encore] 846: Some Madness There by Charlotte Pence

    Published: 4/14/2025

  11. 1331: The Party is Downstairs by Didi Jackson

    Published: 4/11/2025

  12. 1330: Playback by Lauren Camp

    Published: 4/10/2025

  13. 1329: Mantle by Kevin Young

    Published: 4/9/2025

  14. 1328: Forge by Ethel Rackin

    Published: 4/8/2025

  15. 1327: Gertrude: In the Rooms by Kate Daniels

    Published: 4/7/2025

  16. 1326: The Slowdown Live

    Published: 4/4/2025

  17. 1325: Flame by C.D. Wright

    Published: 4/3/2025

  18. 1324: Why I Write Poetry by Major Jackson

    Published: 4/2/2025

  19. 1323: The Ways of Remembering Women by Lynne Thompson

    Published: 4/1/2025

  20. 1322: [as freedom is a breakfastfood] by E.E. Cummings

    Published: 3/31/2025

2 / 74

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.