4.8 • 1.2K Ratings
🗓️ 21 November 2023
⏱️ 6 minutes
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Today’s poem is Without Name by Pauli Murray. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual.
In this episode, Major writes… “Today, words lead me to pockets of understanding, which I've carefully cultivated through writing poetry. The journey to insights and those momentary stays against confusion are often filled with inarticulate, wayward wanderings and long stretches of speechlessness. Part of my love of poetry is owed to how it stages eloquence and puts a finishing touch on the thing that I finally needed to say. But, on occasion, we find silence as a vessel of our innermost feelings. Today’s poem illustrates how, when language is muted, strong emotions such as love and desire are amplified — and echo into a future without end.”
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0:00.0 | I'm Major Jackson and this is the slowdown. |
0:05.8 | I'm Major Jackson and this is |
0:11.3 | the slowdown. The Slow down. Words, more words, says glorious. |
0:20.0 | Words, more words, says Gloria Swanson as Norma Desmond in the film classic Sunset |
0:28.3 | Sunset Boulevard. Norma famously complains of the demise of silent films, thanks to the appearance of the |
0:36.1 | talkies. She goes on, there was once a time in this business when they had the eyes of the whole world, but that wasn't |
0:45.2 | good enough. Oh no, they had to have the ears of the whole world too. Among writers, Norma is not likely to find a sympathetic audience. Most poets hunger for language like |
1:03.6 | bees thirst for nectar like soccer players thirst for a winning kick or a skydiver out of |
1:08.6 | necessity for survival a successful jump. At times a writer's appetite for language feels outsized and |
1:19.1 | obsessive. Love of words is considered by poets and critics alike as primal evidence of why the poet is in the game. |
1:29.0 | Yet, Norma would have been right at home with my family who considered walking on eggshells to be the norm. |
1:39.0 | I came from a tribe for when words were overrated. My family believed you do not need to say |
1:46.0 | everything that's on your mind or share your feelings just because you felt them. |
1:51.4 | In fact, paradoxically, at times the unsaid was heard louder. |
1:59.0 | I still recall the cutting look of disappointment whenever my mom walked into my unkempt bedroom. |
2:07.0 | Once, my grandfather hushed me mid-sentence. |
2:11.8 | I was telling him about how I felt the presence of my deceased |
2:15.5 | grandmother in the house after her passing. |
2:18.5 | Nope. Stop right there, he said. For him to speak was to conjure. There was to the risk of an explosive moment in my home because |
2:31.5 | of suppressed feelings and deferred real talk, we were accustomed to holding |
2:36.9 | everything inside and to avoiding conflict. |
2:42.2 | Today, words lead me to pockets of understanding, |
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