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.

I'm Major Jackson and this is the slowdown.

In an interview,

In an interview,

speaking about an ancestor, In an

interview,

novelist Tony Morrison coughed,

then reaching for a glass of water said,

that's what happens when you talk about the dead.

It might have been unremarkable,

except that Morrison is known for conjuring people in her literature.

She was the first author to alert me to the notion of writing

as an invocation of the past, a way to understand one's present-day self and community through literature.

While a student at Temple University, I once listened to various speakers on a Kwanza program

extoll values of faith, unity, and collective

responsibility. The poet Sonia Sanchez began her reading with a

syncopated incantation of deceased black leaders into the room with us.

...