I'm Italy Mom and this is the Slowdown.

I think friendship is underrated.

I think it's underrated as an actual meaningful part of our chaotic little lives and I think

it's also underrated as a subject for our poetry, for our art.

In Buenos Aires, I had the pleasure of talking with two wonderful poets, Daniela Ayinsky

and Laura Wittner.

We spoke about the trends in poetry in Latin America, specifically in Argentina.

It delighted me that friendship was a theme that was coming up again and again in Latin

American poetry.

That feels like an important paradigm shift in our literary landscape.

I have long been a fan of writing about my friends and I've loved friendship poems and

how they point out that some of the greatest loves of our lives are, in fact, our friends.

For me, I'd be unable to function without my friends.

Once today, I've texted my friends at least a dozen times on different threads and email

chains.

I ask advice on everything.

I try not to offer too much advice of my own because who needs that?

And for the most part, I just want to be sure that everyone knows that we are in this bruised

and swirling world together.

I think often of the friends I had as a young person, many of them are still in my life.

I remember the games we played, the waiting in the creek to the one big rock that was big

enough for sunning, the all day wandering, and later the boys, the heartbreak, the colleges,

...