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🗓️ 12 October 2022
⏱️ 5 minutes
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Today’s poem is The Strength of U by DeShara Suggs-Joe.
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0:00.0 | I'm Adely Mone and this is The Slowdown. |
0:19.8 | I'm interested in how we make our own mythology out of the people and places in our lives. |
0:26.4 | How easily something from our childhood or someone from our early life can loom and transform |
0:32.2 | into something almost legendary, biblical. |
0:36.6 | I think of my maternal grandfather, Jack, how I see him in his cowboy hat, always a slight |
0:42.9 | limp from work. |
0:44.5 | He was a man in pain that pretended not to be in pain. |
0:48.3 | His hands were huge and rough to the touch from so much labor as a contractor in the blazing |
0:54.1 | Southern California Sun. |
0:56.8 | To me, his shadow still lengthens across the sky, even years after his death. |
1:03.8 | His strong foundations and planks and nails still feel like they hold up my world in some |
1:09.8 | way. |
1:10.8 | A man who is also a myth now, real and yet epic in my memory. |
1:18.4 | Today's poem explores the idea of myth-making in a way that expands our idea of who the |
1:24.6 | you is in a poem and in our minds. |
1:32.2 | The Strength of You by Shara Suggs Joe after Arasalis Germai |
1:41.4 | You are homeless, bound to the thought of freedom, no grasp, dragging your right hand across |
1:48.8 | the ink, messy quiet, the combination of enough and not quite, making shadows, lights |
1:56.3 | out, ask for the things you need. |
1:59.9 | You Mississippi clay, sweet, ham-hawk, cursed vegetarian, disowned by still, say, say who |
2:10.5 | you are and mean nothing, foot in your mouth, constant choke, planted, tell me who you are |
2:18.1 | again. |
... |
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