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The Slowdown: Poetry & Reflection Daily

American Public Media

Arts Performing Arts

Latest episode

604 episodes

1473: Solar Eclipse by Aimee Nezhukumatathil
10/03/2026 | 6 mins.
Today’s poem is Solar Eclipse by Aimee Nezhukumatathil.

The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Maggie writes… “The last total solar eclipse, my kids and I put on cardboard eclipse glasses and spread a big quilt in our backyard, where we could lay and look up. I could see neighbors in the yards around us doing the same thing. We were all ogling the sky. When totality happened, the sky got darker and the air felt cooler. Our patio lights, which automatically come on at dusk, lit up. It was so eerie. And at the same time, it was so nice to be looking up with everyone else, sharing the same experience.”

Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp
1472: The Road to Baghdad by Seth Brady Tucker
09/03/2026 | 6 mins.
Today’s poem is The Road to Baghdad by Seth Brady Tucker. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Maggie writes… “Home is a mythic place as much as a real place. It’s different in our minds than it is on the map. And some of what we remember isn’t on the map at all — the way we felt when we were there, how we spent our time in that place, and who we were with. The emotional cartography of any place is different from its actual cartography.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp
1471: It Was Like This: You Were Happy by Jane Hirshfield
06/03/2026 | 6 mins.
Today’s poem is It Was Like This: You Were Happy by Jane Hirshfield.

The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Maggie writes… “If someone asked you, at the end of your life, “What was your life like?” I wonder what you might say. How would you characterize your lived experience — the whole of it, cradle to grave? You couldn’t tell every story, or detail every friendship or romantic relationship. You couldn’t list all of your jobs or accomplishments in some sort of highlight reel. You couldn’t describe every place you visited and what you experienced there. So how would you summarize your life? Your tiny-in-the-grand-scheme-of-things-but-enormous-to-you life?”

Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp
1470: Common Denominators by Cynthia Arrieu-King
05/03/2026 | 6 mins.
Today’s poem is Common Denominators by Cynthia Arrieu-King.

The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Maggie writes… “There’s one phrase toward the end of this poem that I keep coming back to: “The earth is a school.” The more I hear it, the more I agree. The earth is a school. The world is for learning and becoming, and we humans — we students — have so very much to learn.”

Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp
1469: Pardon My Heart by Marcus Jackson
04/03/2026 | 5 mins.
Today’s poem is Pardon My Heart by Marcus Jackson.

The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Maggie writes… “If I had a different kind of heart, a tougher heart, would I be able to see what’s happening in the world around me and not feel so brokenhearted? What would it be like to be able to sleep through the night, unbothered? I can’t imagine feeling less, or caring less. That’s not the heart I have.”

Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp

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About The Slowdown: Poetry & Reflection Daily

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.

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Arts Performing Arts