The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Maggie writes… “As humans, we're hardwired to see faces. How many of us have come upon a discarded item of clothing or a balled up blanket on the side of the road and shuddered to think it might be a dog or a deer? There’s a sense of relief when we realize we’re looking at an object, not a dead creature, but there’s also another feeling—one I hadn’t been able to put my finger on until I read today’s poem.”
Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp
1445: Hackberry by Cecily Parks
29/1/2026 | 6 min
Today’s poem is Hackberry by Cecily Parks.
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.”
Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp
1444: Congratulations! Your Grief Is About to Stop Being Relevant! by Bridget Bell
28/1/2026 | 5 min
Today’s poem is Congratulations! Your Grief Is About to Stop Being Relevant! by Bridget Bell.
The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. 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
1443: Come Back! by Camille Guthrie
27/1/2026 | 6 min
Today’s poem is Come Back! by Camille Guthrie.
The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Maggie writes… “One of the poets I discovered in college was H.D.. Born Hilda Doolittle, she published under her initials. I remember being wowed by her poems, which were experimental and strange, unlike anything I’d read before—and unlike anything I’ve read since.”
Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp
1442: Apocatastasis by G.C. Waldrep
26/1/2026 | 5 min
Today’s poem is Apocatastasis by G.C. Waldrep.
The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Maggie writes… “When a poet, or a child, plays with figurative language, they explore the possibilities and the boundaries of the words we use to describe the world around us. Life will throw at us things that are hard or impossible to describe, both beautiful and awful things. So I think that kind of play isn't just a writing tool—it's a life skill.”
Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp
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.