Hello, it's Tracy K Smith, the first host of The Slowdown.

I'm here today to celebrate the five year anniversary of this incredible show.

For the past five years, we've shared a moment of poetry and reflection every

week day. This public media program is powered by a listener community who believes in poetry and its ability to transform our world views.

Today I'm asking you to make a donation to the slowdown in any amount to celebrate this

important milestone.

Visit Slowdown Show.org slash donate

or find the link in the show notes.

Thanks and happy listening.

I'm Major Jackson and this is the slowdown. I'm Major Jackson and this is the slowdown. Back in graduate school, back in the day when creative writing workshops felt like

gladiator battles, Matthew McGriff, Michael, felt like Gladiator Battles.

Matthew, McGriff, Michael, Carl, Sarah, and I,

all met to play pool at the Southtown pub.

It's seen back then, MFA students sought to politely mall whoever dared to present a less than stellar poem that failed,

as Emily Dickison phrased it, to take the top of our heads off.

One of those days, my poem had been torched and obliterated.

At the pub, my friends and I leaned over the table's green felt beneath the

pendant cone light and knocked billiard balls into pocket holes. Each sunk ball wore away my gloominess. In between rounds we talked

trash and debated great poems. All the while, the bartender, an older gentleman, curated our evening of friendship.

With a dignified air, almost ethereallyarily he delivered beers.

Occasionally he'd quote a few lines of Keats, then returned behind the bar.

It being midweek, the pub had long emptied.

...