logo
episode-header-image
Jul 2024
5m 59s

1152: from "The Crystal Text" by Clark C...

American Public Media
About this episode

Today’s poem is from "The Crystal Text" by Clark Coolidge.


The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “Poetry negotiates that space between our inner life and the relational world we share with others. Magically, we make plain what we feel and observe to convey what some might call a soul. I often describe poetry as a mirror that reflects back our interiority. But today’s poem wonders if such perspective is even possible, given that we barely know who we are — making the enterprise of connection through art deeply indeterminate and delicate.”


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

Up next
Today
1337: New York Address by Linda Gregg
Today’s poem is New York Address by Linda Gregg. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Maggie writes… “Today’s poem captures that feeling when you’ve just had it—you’ve absolutely hit your limit. But at the same time, you realize that you’re the only person w ... Show More
5m 47s
Aug 22
1336: I Find Myself Defending Pigeons by Keith S. Wilson
Today’s poem is I Find Myself Defending Pigeons by Keith S. Wilson. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Maggie writes… “One thing I love about poems is how they give us the opportunity to take our time, to dial in, to look and listen closely. Not everything ... Show More
6m 35s
Aug 21
1335: Bonfire Opera by Danusha Laméris
Today’s poem is Bonfire Opera by Danusha Laméris. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Maggie writes… “Yes, I have new lines around my eyes and new glints of silver in my hair, but my body continues to surprise me in wonderful ways, too. It brings me a lot o ... Show More
5m 46s
Recommended Episodes
Apr 2025
Re-release: How to enrich your everyday life with poetry (w/ Sarah Kay)
Roses are red, violets are blue, has poetry ever been intimidating for you? For many people, this art form can feel unapproachable, but poet and educator Sarah Kay, suggests that people who don’t like poetry just maybe haven’t found a poem that really speaks to them. Sarah propos ... Show More
31m 28s
Apr 2007
C.K. Williams
Collected Poems (Farrar, Straus & Giroux)C.K. Williams' Collected Poems covers a lifetime's concern with ethics and personal morality. As his work proceeds, he develops a quality of consciousness and empathy that some would describe as a soul. In this conversation, this accessibl ... Show More
29m 30s
Feb 2025
Fady Joudah — [...]
Even though Palestinian-American Fady Joudah’s poem is sparingly titled “[...],” an ellipsis surrounded by brackets, this work itself is psychologically dense. Through crisp lines and language, it wrestles with the nature of human ambivalence — about things like fear, desire, dis ... Show More
12m 55s
Dec 2024
Richard Langston — Hill walk
In Richard Langston’s poem “Hill walk,” he proffers a handful of things that move us over the course of a day — words said or read, notes played, the sight of halting steps taken by a sibling. We marvel at the sound of an unfamiliar bird call, but there’s a startling mystery to t ... Show More
12m 18s
Dec 2024
Taylor Johnson — Pennsylvania Ave. SE
When you look at people who are younger than you — particularly teenagers — does your mind ever take you back to yourself at their age? Taylor Johnson’s poem “Pennsylvania Ave. SE” performs this feat of time travel, going from a glimpse of two boys on bicycles to a haunting sense ... Show More
13m 21s
May 2023
Evie Shockley, "Suddenly We" (Wesleyan UP, 2023)
In her new poetry collection Suddenly We (Wesleyan UP, 2023), Evie Shockley mobilizes visual art, sound, and multilayered language to chart routes towards openings for the collective dreaming of a more capacious "we." How do we navigate between the urgency of our own becoming and ... Show More
1h 15m
Apr 2025
Let Yourself Rage With Poet Laureate Ada Limón
As U.S. poet laureate, Ada Limón has had a far-reaching impact. She has visited readers and writers across the country, installed poems at majestic sites in national parks, and she even wrote a poem that’s engraved inside a NASA spacecraft on its way to Jupiter.Today on the show, ... Show More
34m 35s
Dec 2022
Brian Glavey on Frank O'Hara ("Having a Coke with You")
Brian Glavey joins Close Readings to talk about one of the great love poems of the twentieth century, Frank O'Hara's "Having a Coke with You." Check out Brian's recent article on the poem in PMLA and his first book, The Wallflower Avant-Garde (Oxford UP, 2016). Follow Brian on Tw ... Show More
51m 42s
Aug 15
"Genius Still Unrecognised" - The Worst Poet in the World
William McGonagall's poems are something else. The jarring meter, the banal imagery, the awkward rhymes: they made him a laughing stock in 19th Century Scotland and are still derided to this day. How does someone get that bad at poetry? Or have we been misunderstanding McGonagall ... Show More
40m 3s
Mar 2025
Love and Death: ‘Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard’ by Thomas Gray
Situated on the cusp of the Romantic era, Thomas Gray’s work is a mixture of impersonal Augustan abstraction and intense subjectivity. ‘Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard’ is one of the most famous poems in the English language, and continues to exert its influence on contempo ... Show More
15m 21s