Hey, it's Francis Lamb, host of the splendid table.

And you know, I just want to tell you that our show is a great place to come to for some holiday sanity.

We're getting cooking help from amazing people this holiday season,

including Chef Kristen Kish, Errik Kephere, co-book authors, Jocelyn Jelk Adams, Dan Pelosi, and Amy Felon.

We have cooking, eating, and gifting ideas for anyone you're going to have at your table.

But listen to the splendid table, wherever you get your podcast.

Talk to you soon. I Major Jackson and this is the slowdown.

I Major Jackson and this is the slowdown. The Slowdown. This fall I traveled the country promoting my book Razzle Dazzle, a selection of poems written

over two decades, taken from five previous books, plus new poems. It was exhausting but full of pleasures. In addition to lounging

in hotel rooms, taking in cityscapes, and laughing it up with old and new friends over delicious meals,

I especially love being in dialogue with emerging writers.

Some very smart and intuitive questions arose during the question and answer periods,

and at book signing tables, including one from a student at John Hopkins.

When you read poems from this book,

are you transformed to a younger self,

like a script from the past?

How do you inhabit the time

between when you wrote the poem and today?

Wow, okay. Let's see. The question paused me. Poets often secretly wish their poems to be read into the future, to

transcend time, to possess perennial relevance. Putting the book together was an exercise in testing each poem's

usefulness today. Occasionally the illusions and wisdom's gained in a poem lose their purchase on our lives.

Yet each poem is like a talking snapshot.

...