I'm Major Jackson and this is the slowdown.

And this is the slowdown. Recently I facilitated an online course on the celebrated American poet, Galway Canal.

In addition to being a phenomenal poet, he was also an impactful teacher of poetry. Like so much of what our

teachers share as advice about our writing, today's poem can also be applied to our life, off the page.

Dry Spell by Lisa Sewell After Eileen Tabias and Joe Brainerd and in memory of Galway Canal.

Afterwards, I remember some poems mistake the moment they are beginning for the end.

I remember being among the first humans on Earth to see that the end of civilization and humans and other species and of

eternity will come.

I remembered Tuckerman, the first American poet, to lament the destruction of our continent.

I remember poems tipping to the right-hand side of the page because of punchy verbs, no adjectives, and nouns and verbs that

forced the ninth or tenth syllable to do a lot of the heavy lifting.

I remember the quest to find what gives the line integrity.

I remember metaphor is wish fulfillment and similarly is insight, that there is a resemblance that words control and a

resemblance that words cannot bear. I took my form and meter from other animals in the natural world which abounds in forms.

I remembered D.H. Lawrence and Mur Ru Kaiser, who praised the squeamish things in life.

I tried to get away from flatness.

I remember that rhyme and meter helped light and shadow move across the page and

poetry as a kind of singing that raises language upaccid aspect of prose into poetry that otherwise would just

be talk. I remember that stands up means little room. That form helps

light and shadow move across the page. I remember the final syllable in a line carries power because

it's the only one that doesn't have a word that follows. I remember the hermit thrushes pure vowels,

the wolf's emotional cry of isolation,

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