{"podcast":{"title":"The Slowdown: Poetry & Reflection Daily","slug":"the-slowdown-poetry-reflection-daily-7043130","podcast_index_feed_id":7043130,"rss_url":"https://www.spreaker.com/show/6220773/episodes/feed","website_url":"https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-slowdown-poetry-reflection-daily--6220773","image_url":"https://d3wo5wojvuv7l.cloudfront.net/t_rss_itunes_square_1400/images.spreaker.com/original/da0c6a368b84c1071fbd347ea97864da.jpg","author":"Eliana Benavides","episode_count":933,"summary":"Poet Major Jackson is your guide on the pathways to feel and understand our common journey – through poetry. In sharing poems, we take a moment to pause and acknowledge the world’s magnitude, and how poets illuminate that mystery. Join The Slowdown for a poem and a moment of reflection in one short episode, every weekday. Produced by APM Studios in partnership with The Poetry Foundation and supported in part by the National Endowment for the Arts. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. Make us a part of your routine as you drink coffee in the morning, as you take a walk in nature, or as you wind down to go to sleep in the evening. With host Major Jackson, we collectively take a moment to calm, to inspire, to learn, and to engage with the best emerging poets and established writers of our time and generations past, from Emily Dickinson to Danez Smith, from Amanda Gorman to Mary Oliver. Listen to our back catalog for episodes by our previous hosts, Tracy K. Smith and Ada Limón, as well as guest hosts Jenny Xie, Brenda Shaughnessy, Tina Chang, Nate Marshall, Shira Erlichiman, and Jason Schneiderman. Our hosts and production team select poems that move them, and we hope they move y…","last_synced_at":"2026-07-20T16:20:32.051676+00:00","page_url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/the-slowdown-poetry-reflection-daily-7043130"},"episode":{"title":"1511: Dispatch as Prologue or Epilogue by Megan Gannon","slug":"1511-dispatch-as-prologue-or-epilogue-by-megan-gannon","published_at":"2026-05-08T08:00:00+00:00","page_url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/the-slowdown-poetry-reflection-daily-7043130/1511-dispatch-as-prologue-or-epilogue-by-megan-gannon","show_page_url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/the-slowdown-poetry-reflection-daily-7043130","url":"https://www.spreaker.com/episode/1511-dispatch-as-prologue-or-epilogue-by-megan-gannon--71919884","audio_url":"https://api.spreaker.com/download/episode/71919884/theslowdown_20260508_20260508_128.mp3","summary":"Today’s poem is Dispatch as Prologue or Epilogue by Megan Gannon. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Maggie writes… “I once heard the comedian Pete Holmes say, about his past, something along the lines of: “That life was the weird horse I rode to get to this life.” I think the speaker of today’s poem would like that imagery as much as I do. Here’s to weird horses, and to do-overs, and to new beginnings, which are endless.” We’re asking you, our community of listeners, to help us select poems to share on the show in an upcoming week of special programming. What poems have you sent friends and loved ones to encourage them to slow down? Send in your own selection, we’ll mail you a special Slowdown postcard and sticker as a thank you. Submit here: https://bit.ly/slowdownsubmissions","meta_description":"Today’s poem is Dispatch as Prologue or Epilogue by Megan Gannon. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Maggie writes… “I once heard…","key_points":[],"chapters":[],"topics":[],"duration_seconds":517,"processing_state":"not_requested","actions":[{"name":"request_transcript","method":"POST","url":"https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/the-slowdown-poetry-reflection-daily-7043130/episodes/1511-dispatch-as-prologue-or-epilogue-by-megan-gannon/transcription-requests","description":"Idempotently request low-priority transcript generation for this episode."},{"name":"read_markdown","method":"GET","url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/the-slowdown-poetry-reflection-daily-7043130/1511-dispatch-as-prologue-or-epilogue-by-megan-gannon.md","description":"Read the agent-friendly Markdown representation of this episode resource."}]}}