I'm Major Jackson, and this is the slowdown.

There's nothing like family to keep you in check, lest your head gets too big, or you forget from whence you came, or in case you thought all the book learning made you somehow magically better than everyone else you grew up with or who gave you love.

A crime. I never committed because my family wouldn't permit it.

I thanked them for their lessons of humility and modesty.

Even if at times their barbs felt, when I was younger, targeted, meant to hurt a bit.

I know they're teasing, sometimes their reprimands,

came from what they felt to be a little unfairness in the cosmos.

To bring me down a few pegs, my grandfather's favorite admonishment was, I've forgotten more

than you'll ever know.

Another family member would tease.

All that book learning is still you don't know how to fill in the blank.

What is true, however, is that I am addicted to the vast knowledge of the world,

to instructions, to learning the right way. I'm quick to run to a book. I do all kinds of

research before launching into a project. I am a deep diver. For an 8,000-word commissioned article

that I've yet to write, on the first black celebrity cyclists, also named Major, Major Taylor,

I read three biographies. When writing poems and essays, I saturate my brain, when in fact, I should instead let intuition

and a meandering knowing take over.

There is something in the old-time folk wisdom, and what some used to call common sense, that which cannot be learned in a book,

but arrives from the sweet streets of living.

As a person who sticks to the recipe, step by step, exact measurements and all,

I appreciate how today's poem lifts up the magic of feeling

and improvisation of putting one's whole body into a task.

...