Advertise on podcast: The Slowdown: Poetry & Reflection Daily

Today’s poem is Lotioning My Mother’s Back by Ama Codjoe. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Maggie writes… “The world feels like a hard place right now—a not very soft and tender place. In times that feel difficult, it’s tempting to retreat, to harden ourselves, to “numb out.” But I think, more and more, that tenderness is what we need—toward one another, and toward ourselves. We need touch. We need connection. We need soft places to land. We need to hold on to one another.” 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 at the baggage claim in JFK by Lo Naylor. This episode was originally released on April 24, 2026. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Maggie writes… “When I’m preparing for a multi-city book tour, I’m not nervous about reading in front of people or answering questions or finding my way around a strange place. I’m nervous about getting where I’m going. And with somewhat regular government shutdowns impacting TSA these days, those nerves aren’t coming from nowhere! But there are so many beautiful moments in airports, if you pay attention: parents comforting children, or occupying them with silly games; couples excited to be going on a trip together; teams of uniformed student athletes traveling to, or from, a big game.” This show is supported by gifts from listeners. Support The Slowdown with a donation today. Slowdownshow.org/donate

Today’s poem is Hackberry by Cecily Parks. This episode was originally released on January 29, 2026. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Maggie writes… “Today’s poem is a kind of love poem—to a beloved tree, and to the sense of home it created.” This show is supported by gifts from listeners. Support The Slowdown with a donation today. Slowdownshow.org/donate

Today’s poem is Panegyric by Leila Farjami. This episode was originally released on July 28, 2026. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Maggie writes… “Poems that engage with war and grief are texts that communicate to us in ways that news articles about war, and loss, and grief cannot. An article might tell us what happened, who died, how many casualties there were. It should provide facts as to who, what, where, when, and how. It might even attempt the why. But a poem sings to us. A poem sits with us. Holds us, even.” This show is supported by gifts from listeners. Support The Slowdown with a donation today. Slowdownshow.org/donate

Today’s poem is How to Dress a Star by Nicholas Goodly. This episode was originally released on May 4, 2026. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Maggie writes… “Today’s poem reminds me to feel tenderness toward the earlier versions of me. It reminds me that we should acknowledge our past selves more. Just think of what earlier versions of you were able to endure. Bless them for that.” This show is supported by gifts from listeners. Support The Slowdown with a donation today. Slowdownshow.org/donate

Today’s poem is Animal Prudence by Kathy Fagan. This episode was originally released on September 8, 2025. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Maggie writes… “Today’s poem is a favorite of mine for its associative leaps—the way it carries us from image to image, memory to memory. I admire the way it uses the language we encounter in our lives to make those leaps: road signs, the names of streets and flowers, the lists we find in our pockets.” This show is supported by gifts from listeners. Support The Slowdown with a donation today. Slowdownshow.org/donate

Today’s poem is I Find Myself Defending Pigeons by Keith S. Wilson. This episode was originally released on August 22, 2025. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Maggie writes… “One thing I love about poems is how they give us the opportunity to take our time, to dial in, to look and listen closely. Not everything screams to be noticed. Some things barely whisper! Or they might just squawk or coo now and then.” This show is supported by gifts from listeners. Support The Slowdown with a donation today. Slowdownshow.org/donate

Today’s poem is Six Hours Lost, Land Between the Lakes by Kathleen Driskell. This episode was originally released on October 8, 2025. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Maggie writes… “Today’s poem tells a story about a tense encounter in the woods. I so admire how this poet unfolds the narrative, then leaves me sighing deeply at the end.” This show is supported by gifts from listeners. Support The Slowdown with a donation today. Slowdownshow.org/donate

Today’s poem is The New City by Hieu Minh Nguyen. This episode was originally released on May 21, 2026. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Maggie writes… “There’s a very specific pleasure in doing things alone. Going to the movies by yourself, sitting in the dark with your own drink and popcorn or candy that you don’t have to share, and sitting anywhere you want in the theatre without asking a companion where they want to sit. Or having a meal on your own, party of one, just people watching and enjoying the ambience without the need to make conversation.” This show is supported by gifts from listeners. Support The Slowdown with a donation today. Slowdownshow.org/donate

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