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I'm Maggie Smith, and this is The Slowdown. The ocean gets a lot of attention, poetically speaking.

There are so many poems about the sea, so many metaphors and images.

How could you stand on a beach and look out at the waves, or wade in and let the briny water hold you

without being moved the ocean is enormous and seemingly endless when you look out you can't see

the far shore.

And unless you're in the shallows, when you look down, you can't see the bottom.

Poets have been seduced by the sea's mystery since ancient times.

But today I'm thinking about another body of water. I'm thinking about the

poetic potential of rivers. They're so often symbols of movement and freedom, like the open road, but with water, and countless poems feature rivers

in them.

Langston Hughes, the Negro speaks of rivers about the Mississippi, is a famous one, and Whitman's crossing Brooklyn Ferry about the East River

and Longfellows to the River Charles.

We can even go further back to Greek mythology

and the river Styx, said to separate the world of the living and the underworld.

The myth tells of Keron, a ferryman, who transported souls across it in his boat. There's also the

biblical story of baby Moses, being placed in a basket set to float away on the Nile River to escape Pharaoh's decree.

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