I'm Major Jackson and this is The Slowdown.

I've come to view The Slowdown as an opportunity to present ideas wrapped in poems or feelings

wrapped in ideas or ideas and feelings wrapped in language. However, language itself is fragile,

meaning shift, words or zapped of their energy from overuse. Suddenly, language is exposed for

its inadequacy and loses value. Previous generations of experimental poets viewed the conundrum as an

opportunity to be transparent about languages, limitations, and the elusiveness of the

communicability of this form. Do poems signify essence or do they create presence? Are words merely

signifiers of objects and of phenomenon, including our emotions? And yet, there is poetry,

and then there is the theory about poetry. At The Slowdown, we are earnest and sincere in our

wish to put into perspective our world through the great powers of verse. We believe in poetry as

much as we know a flesh and blood human being wrote the poem out of their own complex circumstances.

Our commitment is not theoretical. Sometimes, in our daily work, perspective does not come,

but we are willing to embrace the most salient and radiant questions directly.

The poems we present guide us to clarity sometimes. But other times, they hold us in the harbor

of the ineffable. In either case, we know we are better human beings for the mere journey of listening

to each other. We are not always seeking poems whose function is to illuminate human struggle

and whose goal is enlightenment. Occasionally, we want poems that we can chew on for their chewiness,

for their taste in the mouth. Plus, poetry should not just carry the burdens of the world.

Sometimes, poetry wants to step out of the woods and off the path and find itself in a funhouse

or theme park. Sometimes, we want our minds massaged, as well as hear our hearts through a

stethoscope while laughing at the wonder of its sound, beating in our ears.

Today's poem gently refuses to consign poetry to the world of philosophical musing,

...