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. I joke with my family that I want to move my office into my clothes closet.

It's dark and secluded.

When I stay at hotels, I get the smallest room I can, preferably one whose windows face a brick wall.

Maybe it began as a kid when I crawled into tight spaces to shield myself away from the adults.

Their loud talking and histrionics thundered in my soul, and the comings and goings of siblings

disrupted my serious 11-year-old contemplation.

Nowadays, when I write,

occasionally I throw a wool blanket over my head to cocoon myself. Sometimes I wear a zip-up

hoodie and wear an eye mask to simulate a grotto. Plato's got nothing on me. I wish to go physically inward, which is why in graduate school,

when my roommates and neighbors were deep in their slumber, I was the nocturnal rider who did not sleep until close to sunrise.

I do not want the world too much with me, late and soon.

I wish not to lay waste my power. with me, late and soon.

I wish not to lay waste my powers of creative thinking.

I need the blankness of an imagined wall or canvas

so I can see shapes emerge so that memories can rise from the depths of my

subconscious. The will of my mind is then mapped onto my sentences.

...