1434: Waiting for the Call I Am by Wyatt Townley

Today’s poem is ars poetica, 2019 by Airea D. Matthews. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Maggie writes… “I love poetry. Of course I do—I’m hosting this show every weekday! And you’re here, listening, so I think we have this love of poetry in common. But I also know people who are a little uneasy with poetry. I’ve met plenty of people who’ve confessed to me, ‘I love to read, but I don’t get poetry.’ Or they might simply say, ‘I’m not a poetry 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 Waiting for the Call I Am by Wyatt Townley. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Maggie writes… “Waiting is a kind of purgatory, a middle ground. In that liminal, in-between space, we alternate between hope and fear. Some despair might creep in, too. Everything will be okay, we tell ourselves one minute. The worst has happened, we tell ourselves the next. Even the metaphors for waiting are deeply uncomfortable. Treading water. Being on pins and needles, or on tenterhooks. Waiting is hard on the body because it’s hard on the mind.” 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 Given to Rust by Vievee Francis. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Maggie writes… “Today’s poem touched me in how it explores the intimacy of sound, and especially the human voice. How, too, the silence between us can be so loud.” 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 Good Guy by Blas Falconer. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Maggie writes… “Today’s poem touched me because it acknowledges the patience and tenderness we need to have as spouses and as parents. Relationships are a lot of work, and when you have children it adds another layer of love and another layer of work. Another level of consideration.” 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 Going Home by Joan Kwon Glass. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Maggie writes… “When my children tell me about their dreams, it's not uncommon for them to say, “We were at home, but it wasn’t our house,” or “I was with my friends, but they weren’t my real-life friends.” Sometimes I play a cameo role as myself, but sometimes the role of their mother is played by someone else. Dreams are strange like that. Our sleeping brains sometimes offer us alternate versions of familiar people and places.”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 Earth Shovel by Dan Albergotti. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Maggie writes… “Today’s poem, which looks at the fragility of our planet, begins with two epigraphs. One is from American astronomer Carl Sagan, from his book Pale Blue Dot. The other is the famous line from politician Michael Steele.” 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 Midlife Crisis by Jane Zwart. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Maggie writes… “Midlife has upended everything I thought about aging. It’s not at all what I expected. Certainly, when I was a child, I thought of people in their forties as old, and now that I’m closer to 50 than 40, I laugh at that. I feel … young! I feel younger, in many ways, than I did ten years ago. I admire how today’s poem describes time, and what it feels like to reach the middle of one’s life only to be surprised at what you find.” 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 Defense of “Candelabra with Heads” by Nicole Sealey. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Maggie writes… “Today’s poem pulls back the curtain on the revision process, showing us how it’s about more than just the text on the page. The poet refers to an earlier poem of theirs, an ekphrastic poem based on a sculpture by Thomas Hirschhorn. His work “Candelabra with Heads” features mannequins bandaged in brown duct tape and hung from a wood frame. This poet revised her poem of the same name to remove the last line, but later went back and reinstated 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 A toast to something beautiful flapping in the wind by J. Hope Stein. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Maggie writes… “Once upon a time, I was a new mother with a baby girl in my arms, and I was her whole world. It was seventeen years ago, but sometimes I swear I can transport myself back there just by closing my eyes and taking a deep breath. I remember reading that a baby’s first three months of life are called the fourth trimester. Three trimesters are spent in the mother’s body, bobbing around like a little fish, but the ‘fourth trimester’ is when everyone is adapting to life in the outside world. The babies seem bewildered, trying to adjust to nursing and sleeping, but I think parents are just as bewildered.” 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 One-Way Gate by Jenny George.The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Maggie writes… “Sometimes I swear I can feel a life-changing moment as it’s happening. Some moments in life feel like walking through a doorway from one place or time into another. Like crossing a threshold. It’s often easier to see these thresholds from the other side, looking back. Retrospect is clearer than present perspective. But as I get older, I think I’m getting better at seeing significant moments as they’re happening: seeing the train doors slide open or closed. I think I’m getting better at noticing that my life is changing in real time, even if I don’t know how it will turn out.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp