The Slowdown: Poetry & Reflection Daily

Today’s poem is Nature Poem About Flowers by Matthew Rohrer. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “They say clothes make the man. Frequently though, clothes hide the person, particularly a person’s depth of feeling.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp

Today’s poem is In Jerusalem by Mahmoud Darwish, translated by Fady Joudah, with special guest adrienne maree brown. Through her writing, which includes short- and long-form fiction, nonfiction, spells, tarot decks and poetry; her music, which includes songwriting, singing and immersive musical rituals; and her podcasts, including How to Survive the End of the World, Octavia’s Parables and The Emergent Strategy Podcast, adrienne has nurtured Emergent Strategy, Pleasure Activism, Radical Imagination and Transformative Justice as ideas, frameworks, networks and practices for transformation. Her work is informed by 25 years of social and environmental justice facilitation primarily supporting Black liberation, her path of teaching somatics, her love of Octavia E. Butler and visionary fiction, and her work as a doula. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, adrienne shares… “For me, poetry is how I get to be my whole human self in a given moment, and really, connect to that river — I always talk about [how] there's this river of love and justice that's flowing from the beginning of time to the end and it flows through us to different degrees. We're supposed to do that kind of work, but it has to be able to hold the whole complexity of a given moment. It has to be able to hold life and death — really life and death — over and over again in a variety of ways.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp

Today’s poem is Picking Favorites by George Franklin. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “Today’s poem finds a capacious way of existing that honors an entire life and everyone in it.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp

Today’s poem is Oh, y’know, just your standard Q&A by Alex Z. Salinas.The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “Today’s poem is the kind of interview that I long to give, one full of non sequiturs and expansive evasions.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp

Today’s poem is Fragment 31 by Sappho, translated by Christopher Childers.The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “If you listen close enough to a poem, especially to the very best of them, you can hear on their surface, the poet’s breathing and silences shaped by the pace and noise of their age. You can hear a voice fastened to the page, the speech of the era in which the poem was written, along with images that float into our mind’s eye which are also of a period like red wheelbarrows, pool players, frigates, and 8-track cassettes.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp

Today’s poem is End of December by Ashjan Hendi, translated by Moneera Al-Ghadeer.The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “Tests to long-term commitments are bound to happen. Expending too much affection can lead to exhaustion and the bruise of eventual disappointment. As today’s poem suggests, one of the secrets to a successful marriage is moderation and restraint.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp

Today’s poem is maggie and milly and molly and may by E.E. Cummings, with special guest Eric Whitacre. Whitacre is a Grammy Award-winning composer, conductor, and speaker. A graduate of The Juilliard School, his works are programmed worldwide, and his ground-breaking Virtual Choirs have united well over 100,000 singers from more than 145 countries. Upcoming premieres include a new major work for choir, instrumentalists and electronics, Eternity in an Hour, at the Royal Albert Hall as part of the BBC Proms. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Eric shares… “I could sit for hours and just look at sunlight reflecting off the top of the water. I'm not a religious person, but I'm convinced that if there's a God, that's the language that he speaks — light on the surface of the water. I'm mesmerized by it. And my wife even notices that every time I go swimming in the ocean, I come out a different person.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp

Today’s poem is from “Take Me Back, Burden Hill” by L. Lamar Wilson.The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “Humans, it seems, are bound to feel adrift. So many times in my life, I have worked to muster a belief that all of it matters. I have made great efforts to not be lulled into amnesia nor medicate myself blind to the forces that harm — and to those that truly heal. Living a spiritual existence means developing strategies that keep us in possession of ourselves, ever aware that we share this fragile world.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp

Today’s poem is Enlightenment by Vijay Seshadri.The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “Today’s poem points to how people’s sense of desolation and lack of meaning sometimes fuel a desire to save the world, work they go about with patronizing superiority and condescension.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp

Today’s poem is The Gardener 85 by Rabindranath Tagore.The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “Poetry has a way of collapsing time, and by working the senses, having us experience an era. In the blues rhythms of Langston Hughes’ poetry, I hear early twentieth century New York, and going back, I hear the plurality of America and its citizens in the poetry of Walt Whitman who explicitly said he heard singing. In a way, poems are capsules from the past that open whenever we read them.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp