1586: WHITMAN: by Larry Levis

Today’s poem is Ledge (ars poetica) (love poem) (true story) by Amorak Huey. This episode was originally released on December 15, 2025. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Maggie writes… “Today’s poem calls itself an ars poetica, a love poem, and a true story. That’s a lot of work for one poem to do — a lot of layers of meaning! But this poet does speak to the precarity of it all: writing, and loving, and living.” This show is supported by gifts from listeners. Support The Slowdown with a donation today. Slowdownshow.org/donate

Today’s poem is A toast to something beautiful flapping in the wind by J. Hope Stein. This episode was originally released on January 5, 2026. 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.” This show is supported by gifts from listeners. Support The Slowdown with a donation today. Slowdownshow.org/donate

Today’s poem is The Plum You're Going to Eat Next Summer by Gayle Brandeis. This episode was originally released on April 10, 2026. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Maggie writes… “I know optimism can be a tough sell when there’s so much suffering, so much difficulty, in the world. But this brokenness is exactly why we need more poems, more paintings, more films, more plays. More art. To make things that don’t exist yet — and don’t need to exist, because that is the very definition of art — and to send them out into the world is wildly, impractically, gorgeously hopeful.” This show is supported by gifts from listeners. Support The Slowdown with a donation today. Slowdownshow.org/donate

Today’s poem is Parts of a Body House by Erika Meitner. This episode was originally released on September 23, 2025. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Maggie writes… “It struck me recently how much technology has changed our relationships with our bodies. There are devices that tell us how well (or poorly) we slept the night before, how many steps we took in a given day, what our heart rate is when we work out. We have access to more data about our physical selves than ever, and we don’t even need to go to the doctor to get that data. We also have access to our own image more than ever before. I know that technology has made me more aware of my body and my face, because I see myself so often: on Zoom, on Facetime, in selfies.” This show is supported by gifts from listeners. Support The Slowdown with a donation today. Slowdownshow.org/donate

Today’s poem is If Night You Were a City by Adam Wiedewitsch. This episode was originally released on March 17, 2026.The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Maggie writes… “I’ve always loved myths, legends, fables, and fairy tales. When I was young, the myth of Icarus was one that captured my imagination.” This show is supported by gifts from listeners. Support The Slowdown with a donation today. Slowdownshow.org/donate

Today’s poem is For You Who Have Loved Old Dogs by Silas House. This episode was originally released on September 29, 2025.The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Maggie writes… “My Boston terrier, Phoebe, is about to turn eleven, so if she were a human, she’d be a 77 year old woman. If Phoebe were one of the Golden Girls, she’d probably be Rose: quirky, loyal, a little dim-witted. We adopted her from a Boston terrier rescue organization when she was one and a half, in the spring of 2016. When people assumed that the best thing to happen to me in 2016 was my poem “Good Bones” going viral, I have to correct them. “Good Bones” changed my life, to be sure, but the best thing to happen to me that year was Phoebe. As she grows older—silver muzzle now, too—I get emotional when I’m reminded that my years with her are limited. We only have so much time.” This show is supported by gifts from listeners. Support The Slowdown with a donation today. Slowdownshow.org/donate

Today’s poem is Protection Spell Jar by Cynthia Marie Hoffman. This episode was originally released on October 14, 2025.The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this encore episode, Maggie writes… “Today’s poem is from a collection of prose poems that chronicles a woman’s journey through obsessive-compulsive disorder, from childhood into adulthood. I admire the way we’re invited into the speaker’s consciousness, to see her mind at work.” This show is supported by gifts from listeners. Support The Slowdown with a donation today. Slowdownshow.org/donate

Today’s poem is WHITMAN: by Larry Levis.The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, guest host Myka Kielbon writes… “Every year, the Association of Writers and Writing Programs holds a conference in a different American city. A few years ago, when the literary industry descended on Kansas City, a poet I know posted on Instagram that he wanted to go to Charlie Parker’s grave. The pilgrimage was based on a Larry Levis poem. I threw my hat in the ring to join him.” This show is supported by gifts from listeners. Support The Slowdown with a donation today. Slowdownshow.org/donate

Today’s poem is Dialogue on Violence by Jayne Cortez.The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, guest host Myka Kielbon writes… “If you’re listening to this episode first thing in the morning or as you go to sleep, looking for something easeful, I should apologize. Today’s poem is not that. It is a grim litany. But I think by naming our harsh reality, it holds out hope for a different world. It will be read to you in just one voice, my voice, but the title calls it a dialogue. I want you to consider, while you’re listening, whom the dialogue might be between.” This show is supported by gifts from listeners. Support The Slowdown with a donation today. Slowdownshow.org/donate

Today’s poem is Missed Time by Ha Jin.The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, guest host Myka Kielbon writes… “I love to journal as documentation. To remember what happened in my day-to-day, even the small things I see and feel. I can thus make my own life real to myself. This is something I’ve worked out over time. When I look back at my first blue notebook, the recollections are fragmentary and melodramatic. They hardly make sense as a record. However much I feel a positive value in the process, if I look back at most of my journals, I would think that my life is miserable. Because I often turn to the page when I’m having a tough time, when I have difficult experiences to work through. I love to be alone, but it seems I write the most when I’m feeling lonely in the worst way. Today’s poem considers, joyously, the anonymous effect that this dynamic could have.” This show is supported by gifts from listeners. Support The Slowdown with a donation today. Slowdownshow.org/donate