I'm Major Jackson, and this is The Slowdown.

One of the great difficulties of being the writer is choosing from amidst the density

and sprawl of the world around us, trying to decide what particular images I should

focus my efforts on when he vote in life for a reader.

Not all poetry has to do this work, but how gratifying when a poem anchors us.

The intensity of seeing and the process of selecting is a marker of a poet's personality,

and a crucial aspect of their vision, especially as we try to assign meaning.

Isn't that the crucial work of writing too?

Well, even of living, meaning.

Even if we grasp it for a moment, clarity and insight are fleeting.

This is why Robert Frost referred to poetry as a momentary stay against confusion, emphasis

on momentary.

So for example, today, I'm writing this episode from my home in Vermont while looking out

my window.

Right now, the forest floor is covered with decayed leaves, and the fog is beginning to engulf

the detritus.

I can still see ash and charred wood in a fire pit from a small bonfire evidence of an

impromptu gathering with friends this fall.

The nudist saplings stand erect like thin soldiers, and branches point in every direction.

They make a haphazard mesh of my sight.

Abandoned nests lodge in the crooks of tree limbs, little patches of snow that survived the

rains from several days ago, linger.

...