[encore] 168: What Does It Say by Tess Gallagher

Today’s poem is What Does It Say by Tess Gallagher. The Slowdown is currently taking a break. We’ll be back soon with new episodes from a new host. This week, we’re going back into the archive to revisit Tracy K. Smith’s time as host. Today’s episode was originally released on July 17, 2019. In this episode, Tracy writes… “When I packed up for college, back in 1990, I took sneakers and loafers. I probably also brought some nerdy deck shoes, and maybe even a pair of heels. But by the time my sophomore year rolled around, nearly all of those shoes had been replaced by a pair of black cowboy boots. I wore them everyday, even in snow. By the time I came home for the holidays, they were worn down at the heel and a coin-sized hole had been worn through each sole. I was afraid I’d have to let them go, but my mother took them to the shoe repairman, who resoled them, built the heels back up, and polished them to a high shine, reviving them to their former glory!” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp

Om Podcasten

Poet Major Jackson is your guide on the pathways to feel and understand our common journey – through poetry. In sharing poems, we take a moment to pause and acknowledge the world’s magnitude, and how poets illuminate that mystery. Join The Slowdown for a poem and a moment of reflection in one short episode, every weekday. Produced by APM Studios in partnership with The Poetry Foundation and supported in part by the National Endowment for the Arts. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. Make us a part of your routine as you drink coffee in the morning, as you take a walk in nature, or as you wind down to go to sleep in the evening. With host Major Jackson, we collectively take a moment to calm, to inspire, to learn, and to engage with the best emerging poets and established writers of our time and generations past, from Emily Dickinson to Danez Smith, from Amanda Gorman to Mary Oliver. Listen to our back catalog for episodes by our previous hosts, Tracy K. Smith and Ada Limón, as well as guest hosts Jenny Xie, Brenda Shaughnessy, Tina Chang, Nate Marshall, Shira Erlichiman, and Jason Schneiderman. Our hosts and production team select poems that move them, and we hope they move you, too.