The slowdown is supported by W. W. Norton and Company,

publishers of Poetry Unbound by Padreck Ottumah,

a poetry anthology that offers immersive reflections, keen insights, and personal anecdotes on 50 powerful poems.

Focusing mainly on poets writing today, Poetry Unbound engages with a diverse array of voices that includes

Aida Lamone, Ilea Kaminsky, Margaret Atwood, Ocean Vong, Lally Long soldier, and Reginald Wayne Betts.

Poetry Unbound, now in paperback. I'm Major Jackson and this is the slowdown.

And this is the slowdown.

Foundational narratives and their archetypal characters give us models to understand ourselves. The hero, the ruler, the jester, the mentor. The Queen and the outlaw

reveal patterns of human behavior

and inner psychology.

They embed in us.

They structure our worldview what will be done. They embed in us.

They structure our worldview, what we believe,

and how we respond to situations in life.

They govern what we unfold and accept into the warp and woof of the story of the universe.

The constellations in the sky are an early example of our proclivity to magnify our stories.

As we say, they become fixed in the stars.

But what if we do not see ourselves reflected between Orion, the Hunter, and

Cassiopeia, the Queen? What if we don't have the privilege of our journey being cast as heroic in films?

What if no poem exists that locates our place within the larger human story.

What if our sacred texts and folk tales fail to help us see ourselves as divine. Sometimes it is necessary to create our own stories and

poems that account for our reality, for who we are presently in the 21st century.

...