Today’s poem is Mercy, Mercy Me by Olatunde Osinaike.
The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… "The speaker in today’s poem survives by an adherence to their values — but also by a willingness to adopt new codes, to risk new experiences, to take on new attitudes.” 
Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp

1097: Mercy, Mercy Me by Olatunde Osinaike

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.

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Visual Arts

Today’s poem is Monet Refuses the Operation by Lisel Mueller.
The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “Poets and visual artists work to give representation to the world which shimmers and blurs. Sometimes only impressions are available. Rather than a fidelity to things as they are, we desire to represent those very distortions. Today’s dramatic monologue is a gem of a poem, one that reminds how everything around us is divined with light, even our imperfections.” 
Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp

1120: Monet Refuses the Operation by Lisel Mueller

Today’s poem is A Black Doe in the Anthropocene by Artress Bethany White.
The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “Here is my ignorance; I thought we settled the matter of the “Anthropocene” a long time ago. Isn’t there enough conclusive evidence? Wars, loss of biodiversity, overpopulation, endangered species, deforestation, earth warming, greenhouse gasses, the production of nonbiodegradable materials, nuclear waste that further threatens wildlife, human beings, and agricultural lands. But, as one scientist noted, “Human impact goes much deeper into geological time.”” 
Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp

1119: A Black Doe in the Anthropocene by Artress Bethany White

Today’s poem is At My Funeral by Hélène Cardona.
The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “Ultimately, we do not know the experience of dying. We can only imagine. Artists, though, have fun playing with the mystery of what happens when we transition to no longer walking the earth in the flesh. From the Jerry Zucker movie “Ghost” to Dylan Thomas’s poem “Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night,” I have found special comfort in works that find a boldness in facing the inevitable.” 
Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp

1118: At My Funeral by Hélène Cardona

Today’s poem is I Am Waiting by Lawrence Ferlinghetti.
The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “On a Saturday morning group Zoom call, I wore my Philadelphia Phillies cap. A friend almost choked on his coffee, confusing my red hat for a MAGA hat. It made for a funny exchange, where I unapologetically claimed my belief in the ideals of America, but, no . . . I am a different kind of patriot. America is defined by its belief in equality, freedom, liberty, opportunity, and justice, but maybe even more by its betrayal of those principles and then its struggle to recommit to values we hold self-evident.” 
Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp

1117: I Am Waiting by Lawrence Ferlinghetti

Today’s poem is Mercy by Dessa.
The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “I never took to the attitude of I’ll show them. It concedes that those people, people who did not think enough of me to take care of my feelings, are still in my life, in an unhealthy manner, subconsciously controlling my actions. My success is not going to suddenly prove me worthy of love in their eyes. Will they have thought better of that moment when they scarred me? Maybe. Will they think me more intelligent than they initially granted? Possibly. But, truth is, I am healed when I no longer care to have their acceptance or validation.” 
Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp

1097: Mercy, Mercy Me by Olatunde Osinaike

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