I'm Ada Limones and this is The Slowdown.

In poetry we often talk about mastery.

We have master classes and master courses and we talk about our mentors and heroes as

being masters of the craft.

But the word master is loaded, isn't it?

It comes with the idea that if we become masters, we must then be in charge, be in power,

have dominion over others.

And also, it doesn't imply that if we master something, we are no longer learning, no

longer curious as to what comes next, no longer a student of this great and pulsating life.

When I first received my graduate degree, I didn't feel ready to teach and it wasn't

just because I didn't feel like I was prepared to sit at the head of a classroom.

It was because I was suspicious of losing my place as a learner, as a receiver.

And now, the only way I can enter a classroom with any sort of confidence is to maintain

that we are learning together, studying together.

But the word master is loaded in another way too, historically a master is the master of

the house, the owner of enslaved people, the one who is in charge of everyone else.

The word is loaded indeed.

One larger conversation that the last few years has opened up is a dialogue about power.

We are examining power dynamics in new ways, interrogating what it means to be in power,

to have power.

I love this conversation, not just because it's endless and important, but because it

makes me also evaluate the ways I try to grab power or hold onto it or the way I let

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