Today’s poem is The Way by Cynthia Cruz.

The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “This past spring like every spring many of my students graduated into the uncertainty of their futures. Their lives can take so many directions. I am curious as to what ultimately launches us as human beings with a purpose, or not. If ever we meet as new friends, I will likely ask what you do for a living. In some scenarios, my inquisitiveness can sound like prying. But what I am really asking is what makes you happy — to really live.”

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Today’s poem is from "American Analects" by Gary Young.

The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “I find that poems emerge out of dialogues that I have either with myself, other works of art, or my friends. In this way, my poems are a collaboration of silences.”

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Today’s poem is Refusing Rilke's “You must change your life” by Remica Bingham-Risher.

The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “I live with Rilke’s famous line, “You must change your life,” in my ear on repeat, an earworm, as if something is less than stellar about who I am today. I move instinctively towards myself as though I were a massive project, believing I will someday, again in Rilke’s words, “burst like a star.” That this is how to be seen, to be loved, to be cherished. This quest has distorted my sense of what is important, sown constant dissatisfaction, and emotional states of being that pose health risks. Pursuing perfection has, at times, alienated me from those I hold dear. Not that I don’t love them or they me —- but that I get tunnel vision in seeking some heroic terminus.”

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Today’s poem is Transfusion by Shara Lessley.

The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “Today’s fine poem creates the feeling of a medically induced slumber, but, by working layers of sound, a gorgeous aesthetic tension enlivens my ears.”

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Today’s poem is Wind Poem by Song Yu, translated by Chloe Garcia Roberts.

The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “During moments of political crises, I think of wind, how conflicts arise and unfold. Today’s poem, written some 17 centuries ago, effectuates a storm. In the very structure of its sentences, the poem enacts the motion of a mighty gust and its aftermath — a murmuring calm and quiet that claims our being.”

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Today’s poem is Pando Aspen Clone by Jacqueline Balderrama.

The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “When lost, truth is, someone always rescued me from my disorientation. Today’s poem reminds me that we are a single body, reliant on each other to find our way.”

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Today’s poem is Act of Gratitude by Cyrus Cassells.

The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “Reading poems that strike big-hearted notes of the ecstatic have me celebrate my own victories and joys, small things in life that are meaningful, yet unnoticeable to the distracted eye: a child’s hug at the end of bedtime, first sip of steaming soup on a frigid day that fogs your face, the way a friend smiles at a corny joke. Today’s poem deftly catalogs those unexpected moments and still advances positivity as a social emotion that is beneficial to all.”

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Today’s poem is Voice Clear As by Kemi Alabi.

The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “Long ago, I knew I needed a new conception of heaven. The one with pearly white gates and winged angels from my youth in church just wasn’t working for me. I mean, I get clouds and blue skies as symbols of ascension from earthly plains. And it wasn’t just in church — heaven was everywhere, in museums and in movies, too. But those early images, lodged into my subconscious, weren’t inclusive or realistic, except for the 1936 Hollywood classic Green Pastures.”

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