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I'm Maggie Smith, and this is The Slowdown.

I know this is a podcast, a podcast in which I read you a poem and you listen to that poem.

So what I'm about to say may sound a little strange. When I can't see the poems I'm hearing,

I feel like I'm missing out. I want to see what the poem looks like. I want to know the shape of it

on the page, the lines, the stanzas, the way the poet uses the field of the page. Sometimes I swear I can

hear the form of a poem if I listen carefully.

I might notice the repeating end words of a sestina or the repeated phrase of a guzzle.

But often I'm left to imagine the layout when I don't have the text in front of me, especially when it's a free-verse poem.

My ideal reading experience is to hear a poem being read to me while looking at it and following along.

And thanks to the slowdown newsletter and the transcripts being available online,

you can do just that. Poems are meant to live in the air, to be read aloud, but I also know that

form follows function. I want to see the choices the poet made when crafting

the piece. Is the poem in couplets, tersets, or sturdy quatrains? Is it in one unbroken stanza with no

white space?

When I read a poem knowing that form has the opportunity to enact,

or at least reinforce the content,

I learn from the poet's choices.

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