Hey, it's Maggie Smith. I'll be joining you on Monday, August 18th with brand new episodes of The Slowdown.

Until then, here's a look back at an episode from Ada Limon's tenure as host. I hope you enjoy the selection from the archives.

I'm Eda Limon, and this is the slowdown. One of the things I love about writing poetry is that sometimes you don't know what it is you're searching for, what it is you want to explore.

But the poem knows. The poem is smarter than the poet. You might begin with one word and then suddenly the poem transforms and opens

and there's what you were feeling, what was circling in you all that time without you even knowing it.

I suppose what I mean is I love how poems reveal us to us. Once I wrote a poem about my bird feeder,

surprise, surprise, I know. And of course, it began with the feeder and then it moved and moved

until it wasn't about the feeder at all, but about naming our pain, recognizing when something wasn't love, but

suffering. That is not at all what I had intended to write about, but clearly that was what was

occupying my mind, and I wouldn't have known that if the poem, word by word, or bird by bird, hadn't

unraveled it for me. For me, that's why not just reading poetry, but also riding poetry,

can be so powerful. It can help us name our wounds, and in doing so, help us begin to heal them,

or fight our way forward, or transform into something even stronger.

Today's poem is a perfect example of starting a poem in one place and ending it in another unexpected place.

I admire how this poem reveals a truth and a desire that pulsates under each stanza.

Trash Part 2 by Joshua Bennett.

The Knicks were trash.

Head colds at the outset of a South Bronx summer, trash.

The second hour after she is gone, the moment the song you both used to slow dance through the kitchenette too comes on moving on all trash

death is trash love is a robust engagement with the trash of another monthly bills of any kind

are trash although access to gas and electricity is not, so there is that to consider.

Blackouts are incontrovertibly trash, much like student loans or the fact that we live in a culture

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