The Slowdown: Poetry & Reflection Daily
American Public Media
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...
Location:
United States
Genres:
Arts & Culture Podcasts
Networks:
American Public Media
Description:
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.
Language:
English
Episodes
1485: Scheduling the Bone Scan by Katie Farris
4/2/2026
Today’s poem is Scheduling the Bone Scan by Katie Farris.
The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Maggie writes… “I know our hearing involves sound waves and the structures of the ear, but I wouldn’t have been able to explain it in depth or draw you a diagram. So I did a little research, and as I suspected, there is plenty of poetry — by which I mean music and mystery — in the science.”
Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp
Duration:00:06:11
1484: Crossing by C. Rees
4/1/2026
Today’s poem is Crossing by C. Rees. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Maggie writes… “Today’s poem carries us to the Delaware River, cold and dark in winter, and also a place that feels both beautiful and haunted.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp
Duration:00:06:42
1483: How to Write by Anne Waldman
3/31/2026
Today’s poem is How to Write by Anne Waldman.
The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Maggie writes… “Consciousness is just … exhausting sometimes, isn’t it? There’s no “power down” mode for our minds like there is for the devices we use: laptops and phones and televisions. Being a human is sort of like having 24/7 screentime, but the screen is your own mind, and there’s no real way to turn it off — none that’s worked for me, anyway.”
Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp
Duration:00:05:51
1482: XII. Southern Constellations by Brandon Kilbourne
3/30/2026
Today’s poem is XII. Southern Constellations by Brandon Kilbourne.
The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Maggie writes… “No matter where I am in the world, no matter what beautiful landscape I might find myself in, no matter what new experience I might be having, I feel the pull of home. I don’t mean home as in place. I mean home as in people.”
Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp
Duration:00:05:52
[encore] 1381: What Is This Air Changing, This Warm Aura, These Threads of Air Vibrating Rows of People by Ariel Yelen
3/27/2026
Today’s poem is What Is This Air Changing, This Warm Aura, These Threads of Air Vibrating Rows of People by Ariel Yelen.
The Slowdown is taking a week to return to some of our favorite episodes from Maggie’s tenure so far. We’ll be back on Monday, March 30 with new episodes.
Today’s episode was originally released on October 24, 2025. In this episode, Maggie writes… “Going to the elementary school choir concerts and winter music festivals, I got teary every time the kids sang. I told myself it was because of their sweet, little-kid voices, but that’s not the whole story. Something about hearing voices in unison—it’s powerful, and communal, and comforting, and deeply moving.”
Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp
Duration:00:06:38
[encore] 1460: Poem to Remind Myself of the Natural Order of Things by Donika Kelly
3/26/2026
Today’s poem is Poem to Remind Myself of the Natural Order of Things by Donika Kelly.
The Slowdown is taking a week to return to some of our favorite episodes from Maggie’s tenure so far. We’ll be back on Monday, March 30 with new episodes. Today’s episode was originally released on February 19, 2026.
In this episode, Maggie writes… “Today’s poem is such a beautiful meditation on knowing ourselves, and knowing what we need to be at home in our own lives.”
Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp
Duration:00:05:43
[encore] 1429: Midlife Crisis by Jane Zwart
3/25/2026
The Slowdown is taking a week to return to some of our favorite episodes from Maggie’s tenure so far. Today’s poem is Midlife Crisis by Jane Zwart. We’ll be back on Monday, March 30 with new episodes.
Today’s episode was originally released on January 7, 2026. 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.”
Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp
Duration:00:05:40
[encore] 1383: The Situation in Our City by Ciona Rouse
3/24/2026
The Slowdown is taking a week to return to some of our favorite episodes from Maggie’s tenure so far. We’ll be back on Monday, March 30 with new episodes.
Today’s poem is The Situation in Our City by Ciona Rouse. Today’s episode was originally released on October 28, 2025.
In this episode, Maggie writes… “This poem has me thinking more and more about chance, and about our circumstances. It also has me thinking about the ways we take care of one another, and how we can—and must—do BETTER. As James Baldwin famously wrote, ‘The children are always ours.’”
Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp
Duration:00:05:56
[encore] 1444: Congratulations! Your Grief Is About to Stop Being Relevant! by Bridget Bell
3/23/2026
Today’s poem is Congratulations! Your Grief Is About to Stop Being Relevant! by Bridget Bell.
The Slowdown is taking a week to return to some of our favorite episodes from Maggie’s tenure so far. We’ll be back on Monday, March 30 with new episodes. Today’s episode was originally released on January 28, 2026.
In this episode, Maggie writes… “Today’s poem captures a time of grief in the speaker’s life, when life goes a little quiet after a flurry of support and care.”
Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp
Duration:00:05:51
1481: from Mosaic by Supritha Rajan
3/20/2026
Today’s poem is from Mosaic by Supritha Rajan.
The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Maggie writes… “When I see the word productivity, it’s hard not to see the word product nestled inside it, reminding me again of capitalism. I think we should try to keep whatever we can from getting chewed up — and spit out! — by capitalism. Creativity included. Creativity, especially.”
Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp
Duration:00:06:39
1480: Reverse Requiem by Ina Cariño
3/19/2026
Today’s poem is Reverse Requiem by Ina Cariño.
The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Maggie writes… “Today’s poem inspired me to learn more about requiems — what they are, how they’ve evolved, and how we might think of them more broadly and metaphorically.”
Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp
Duration:00:07:29
1479: After Dinner by James Ciano
3/18/2026
Today’s poem is After Dinner by James Ciano.
The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Maggie writes… “Today’s poem reminded me of one of my father’s rituals when I was young, one of his ways of taking care of himself. He’d go to the driving range at the local golf center some evenings after dinner to, in his words, ‘hit a bucket of balls.’ When we return to our rituals, we bring whoever we are that unique day, and we link it with whoever we’ve been before. In our rituals, we can find our own wholeness in a fractured world.”
Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp
Duration:00:05:38
1478: If Night You Were a City by Adam Wiedewitsch
3/17/2026
Today’s poem is If Night You Were a City by Adam Wiedewitsch.
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.”
Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp
Duration:00:06:17
1477: Surety by Anna Zumbahlen
3/16/2026
Today’s poem is Surety by Anna Zumbahlen.
The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Maggie writes… “Writing is a way of memorizing moments. I know this. I do this. Because a poem can act as a portal, taking me back to a specific time and place. So often, mid-experience, I start to sense the poetic possibility of the moment. I find myself making a metaphor or grasping for imagery and descriptive language. I’m half living in the present, half processing this moment’s future on the page.”
Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp
Duration:00:06:08
1476: The Quiet World by Jeffrey McDaniel
3/13/2026
Today’s poem is The Quiet World by Jeffrey McDaniel.
The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Maggie writes… “Poets are known for making big moves in small spaces. We value brevity and compression, which go hand in hand. In a brief poem, maybe a poem with only a handful of lines, each word weighs a ton. We have to choose them carefully. An enormous amount of meaning — and possibility — is packed inside every word. I picture them as expandable suitcases, unzipped so that we can stuff even more inside them. That’s compression! The words themselves may be few, but they carry a great deal.”
Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp
Duration:00:06:01
1475: Out of These Wounds, the Moon Will Rise by Jay Hopler
3/12/2026
Today’s poem is Out of These Wounds, the Moon Will Rise by Jay Hopler. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Maggie writes… “Today’s poem is about wishing, and in that way, I think it’s about hope. Even when a wish is farfetched and seems less than likely, hope is what allows us to make it anyway.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp
Duration:00:05:35
1474: Epistemic Distance by Emma Bolden
3/11/2026
Today’s poem is Epistemic Distance by Emma Bolden.
The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Maggie writes… “I’m a poet, so I’m all for nuance. I embrace ambiguity, and I’m flexible in my thinking. But I refuse to believe that we’re living in a post-factual world. We might be tempted to call epistemology too abstract, too intellectual, too high brow, not relevant to the lives of real people. Who needs to know about this branch of philosophy when we’re just trying to get by, day by day? But if there was ever a time to think about what we know, and how we know it, it’s now.”
Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp
Duration:00:06:45
1473: Solar Eclipse by Aimee Nezhukumatathil
3/10/2026
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
Duration:00:06:01
1472: The Road to Baghdad by Seth Brady Tucker
3/9/2026
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
Duration:00:06:33
1471: It Was Like This: You Were Happy by Jane Hirshfield
3/6/2026
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
Duration:00:06:18