I'm Major Jackson and this is The Slowdown.

Have you ever felt utterly foreign to those around you, despite sharing a culture, customs,

and language?

And if you remove those pillars of your identity, what has left between you and me?

What binds us?

Do you feel oneness or the feeling of separateness?

Most everyone I know, say for the occasional misanthrope, longs to be connected in some

way to a group of friends, a community of like-minded people, or cherished loved ones.

Yet, there is still that nagging desire of being different, your unique self.

I often think about poetry's distinct ability to mute what is strangers and highlight

more of what we share.

These poems of lyric, interiority, and intensity make us feel seen, even poems written long ago.

How is it possible, for example, that Langston Hughes' fictional written assignment for

a teacher, theme for English being, a poem about racial difference, should echo thoughts

I've longed held about being an American?

A poet I deeply admired, somewhat mythed by all the pyrotechnics and the conventionally

accepted practices of poetry, which she felt alienated, readers, urged poets to defy the

space that separates.

It is one of my favorite phrases and a great hope for my own poetry.

It is her belief and my that literature provides a framework by which to understand each

other's experiences, to collapse our psychic and emotional pain, and to amplify our joy,

so that we can find strength in our shared struggles and triumphs, in our stories.

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