1183: maggie and milly and molly and may by E.E. Cummings, with special guest Eric Whitacre

The Slowdown: Poetry & Reflection Daily

American Public Media

Arts, Performing Arts

4.8 • 1.2K Ratings

🗓️ 14 August 2024

⏱️ 6 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Today’s poem is maggie and milly and molly and may by E.E. Cummings, with special guest Eric Whitacre. Whitacre is a Grammy Award-winning composer, conductor, and speaker. A graduate of The Juilliard School, his works are programmed worldwide, and his ground-breaking Virtual Choirs have united well over 100,000 singers from more than 145 countries. Upcoming premieres include a new major work for choir, instrumentalists and electronics, Eternity in an Hour, at the Royal Albert Hall as part of the BBC Proms.

The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Eric shares… “I could sit for hours and just look at sunlight reflecting off the top of the water. I'm not a religious person, but I'm convinced that if there's a God, that's the language that he speaks — light on the surface of the water. I'm mesmerized by it. And my wife even notices that every time I go swimming in the ocean, I come out a different person.”

Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hi, it's Major. The best way to support the slowdown is with a monthly gift.
0:06.7	Show your love for the slowdown and help us plan for the future today at slowdown show
0:12.8	dot org slash donate.
0:16.8	Hey, it's slowdown producer Micah Kielbonne.
0:20.1	We all need to take a moment to pause.
0:22.4	Here at the show, we realized we know some pretty amazing poetry lovers who have their own slowdown moments to share with you.
0:29.7	Shefs, musicians, journalists, and more.
0:32.9	These late summer Wednesdays,
0:34.9	we're bringing you their selections.
0:37.4	We hope you enjoy. I'm Eric Whittaker and this is the slowdown.
0:45.8	I'm Eric Whittaker, the book and the movie. A river runs through it where he says, I am haunted by waters.
1:08.0	And it's the best way I can describe how I feel about the sea, about water, about rivers, about the vast expanse of the ocean.
1:17.0	There's something so beautiful and seductive about the liquid nature of water, the way it moves.
1:25.0	I could sit for hours and just look at sunlight reflecting off the top of water.
1:29.0	I'm not a religious person, but I'm convinced that if there's a God that's the language that he speaks
1:35.2	is light on the surface of the water. I'm mesmerized by it and my wife even notices that every
1:42.0	time I go swimming in the ocean, I come out a different person.
1:45.0	I'm cleansed or I'm released somehow or I wash away the armor of the world.
1:50.6	I don't know what it is. I have so many experiences in my life where I have a
1:56.7	genuinely mystical experience with water and I've always had that even as a child.
2:03.0	I don't know where that where it comes from,
2:05.0	but I'm drawn over and over again to water.
	...

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