919: Take This Poem

Today’s poem is Take This Poem by Elizabeth Willis. This episode was recorded live, in-person, at On Air Fest 2023. Onstage, Major described that “In coming to this role, I've been thinking a lot about how poetry shifts from the page to the voice. How the words hold different meanings written versus spoken. For when we speak out loud the words of the poets, we access their freedom and consciousness and rage for order. As my friend Robert Pinsky tells us, “poetry’s medium is the individual chest and throat and mouth of whoever undertakes to say the poem.” It is a physical embodiment that changes us and the spaces we occupy. The poem creates an environment.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp

Om Podcasten

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.