[encore] 871: Flesh (“You in your ecstasy of coffee”) by Deborah Landau

Today’s poem is Flesh (“You in your ecstasy of coffee”) by Deborah Landau.

The Slowdown is currently taking a break. We’ll be back soon with new episodes from a new host. This week, we’re revisiting some favorites from Major Jackson’s time as host. Today’s episode was originally released on May 5 2023. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual.

In this episode, Major writes… “When summer arrives, I run as fast as I can into its lushness. I am making new memories with family and friends that involve nights of alfresco dining, remote beaches, mountain ranges, and sun-drenched cocktail parties. Summer is the season that beckons most my senses; all that fruit bursting its wild colors: strawberries, apricots, and peaches. Whereas winter feels interminable, I am most aware summer’s bounty is numbered, finite.”

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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 you, too.

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