1548 Episodes

  1. 469: Dusty Lemons

    Published: 9/10/2020

  2. 468: "You Will Never Get Death / Out of Your System"

    Published: 9/9/2020

  3. 467: The Toothbrush to the Bicycle Tire

    Published: 9/8/2020

  4. 466: The Hastily Assembled Angel Falls at the Beginning of the World

    Published: 9/7/2020

  5. 465: praise poets and their pens

    Published: 9/4/2020

  6. 464: Chance Meeting

    Published: 9/3/2020

  7. 463: To be of use

    Published: 9/2/2020

  8. 462: What It's Like to Fall In Love

    Published: 9/1/2020

  9. 461: For Black Children at the End of the World—and the Beginning

    Published: 8/31/2020

  10. 460: American Mother

    Published: 8/28/2020

  11. 459: The Feeling

    Published: 8/27/2020

  12. 458: Tyranny of the Human Face

    Published: 8/26/2020

  13. 457: I Found Kin in a Thrift Store Photograph

    Published: 8/25/2020

  14. 456: Pelvic Ultrasound

    Published: 8/24/2020

  15. 455: Mercury in Retrograde

    Published: 8/21/2020

  16. 454: On a Spaceship Somewhere, Long After Empire's Collapse

    Published: 8/20/2020

  17. 453: You Can Take Off Your Sweater, I've Made Today Warm

    Published: 8/19/2020

  18. 452: The Ghosts of the Space Dogs

    Published: 8/18/2020

  19. 451: Dancing with Kiko on the Moon

    Published: 8/17/2020

  20. 450: Essay on Reentry

    Published: 8/14/2020

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Host Maggie Smith is your daily poetry companion. Poetry is one of the greatest tools we have to wield our own attention — to consider our own lives and the lives of others, to help us live creatively and compassionately, to use that attention to lean into wonder, and joy, and truth, and to find hope — to keep hoping. The Slowdown community knows that reflecting on a poem, every weekday, can connect us to our inner world and the world around us. Listen as you make your morning coffee, as you go on a walk in your neighborhood, as you pull away from the to-do list, as you resist the dismal, endless scroll to share five minutes of perspective through the lens of poetry, from poets old and new, well-loved and emerging onto the scene. Brought to you by American Public Media, in partnership with the Poetry Foundation.