Hey Slowdown listeners. Today's episode is one of our favorites from the archives.

I'm Major Jackson and this is the slowdown. Around the holiday season I received a delightful email from a former student.

Gina wrote, after nearly a decade to inquire about a poem,

she partially remembered that we covered in class

and asked for its title. But she also used the occasion to announce

that she met her husband in my poetry workshop. They've been married two years now. Now this amped up my holiday bliss. I've long

maintained that poetry classes are a kind of dating service, where as an added bonus to improving your

craft, one is likely to encounter a potential life partner and friend, someone intelligent, humane, and sensitive, who would likely, for example,

write a poem for you on Valentine's Day rather than purchase a generic card.

Someone who will quote lines of poetry at dinner parties

and impress your family and friends. Who wouldn't want that brilliance in their daily life?

Of course, since I've started teaching,

technology has brought us new ways to help us find that potential beloved.

While the algorithms of dating apps might help to identify a potential mate or partner. After finding that special someone, we are left to our

own devices when faced with the task of building a lasting union. No marriage comes with a convenient app, which would be boring anyway.

I personally had to fail, then fail better in order to become the partner I am today.

Hopefully, with each relationship, we get closer to understanding ourselves,

our particular brand of new rosies and desires.

Then we can find the kind of person who can, in the parlance of the streets, be our ride or die.

What is true of all relationships

is that they change us, ideally for the better.

We breathe differently, become more considerate,

...