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

I've read a lot of books over the years, and some have fundamentally changed not only the way I write, but the way I think.

I mean books that broke everything wide open for me, showing me possibilities, in form, and in content, that I couldn't

access before. The shortlist includes CD writes, Deep Step Come Shining, Lynn Hagenians, My Life, Carol Mesos, break every rule, and Clarice

Lestpectors, the stream of life, originally published in Portuguese as Agua Viva.

When I think about what these texts have in common,

they're all books that possess a beautiful strangeness.

They share a commitment to authenticity, originality, and lyricism.

They're each innovative, but not gimmicky, because in these texts,

form follows function, risks taken on the page, mirror risks taken in content. And though all of these books are prose, they're some of the most poetic books I've ever encountered. The sentences shine clear and sharp and bright.

Today's poem impacted me like those beloved texts with its jewel-like sentences and its use of the field of the page.

Articulation of Salus by Jung Yu Chen.

We are mothering ourselves.

We are articulating solace for each other.

We are trying to not fall in love.

Write love poems to not fall in love.

The fault line between the language of feeling and the language of catastrophe,

we find it, our common language, our white world.

We are trying to write close to it, even closer. Closeness changes.

Every poem was once impossible.

Medieval torture devices.

Fallon stares.

...