The Slowdown: Poetry & Reflection Daily

Episode 1399: "Alarm Clock" by Jennifer Maier
Host: Maggie Smith
Date: November 19, 2025

Episode Overview

In this episode, host Maggie Smith explores the constructed nature of time, drawing from personal anecdotes about Daylight Saving Time and time zones before introducing and reflecting on "Alarm Clock" by Jennifer Maier. The poem itself is a persona piece, giving voice to an alarm clock, and meditates on the human tendency to split and segment infinity through the invention of measured time. Through poetic language and thoughtful reflection, Smith uses this episode to invite listeners to question our relationship with time and the illusions we maintain to find structure in our days.

Key Discussion Points and Insights

The Artificiality of Time

• [00:50] Maggie Smith opens with an accessible musing on Daylight Saving Time, sharing the confusion it sparks in her children:
  “So it’s seven o’clock now just because they say it is?”
  She acknowledges the arbitrariness of “springing forward” and “falling back,” noting how technology now often keeps time updated automatically, but kitchen clocks rarely match.

• Smith also discusses the complexities of time zones, especially when traveling for work, and how explaining “my time and your time” to her children reveals the odd possessiveness embedded in our language about time.

Humanizing Time Through Language and Machines

• Smith notes that today’s poem is a persona poem—written in the voice of a clock—highlighting how humans already humanize clocks through terms like “face” and “hands.”

Reading and Reflecting on "Alarm Clock" by Jennifer Maier

• [02:03] Maggie Smith reads the poem in full.

  • The poem’s opening lines set a reflective tone: “Because you seek your image in all things, the part you call my face is round, though dark as the night sky...”
  • The alarm clock’s voice observes how humans impose structure and meaning (“numbers glow in the places you’ve ordained for them”) and how we use clocks to chart our “course hourly through nothingness.”

• The poem critiques the futility and smallness of dividing infinity:
  “My hands too are complicit in your fictions... they slice your life into morsels to fix on the tines of your fork.”
  — “Alarm Clock,” Jennifer Maier [02:50]

• The poem’s speaker (the clock) points out the irony that, though “untouched by time,” even it “can’t keep it.”

  • Memorable metaphor: “Each tick a small erasure like the beat of your own heart. One less, one less.”

• The poem’s closing reflects on the impossibility of truly possessing time:
  “Each second breaks like a salt wave at your feet and returns to the sea, which is only ever the now alive and infinite. This is what time tells you, the fact I whisper 60 times per minute but that you will not hear, you and the others roused to waking only by my screams.”
  — “Alarm Clock,” Jennifer Maier [03:51]

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On the arbitrary nature of time:
  “Nothing makes it clearer that time is a construct like Daylight saving time.” — Maggie Smith [01:16]

• On using clocks as metaphors:
  “A clock is already something we humanize, metaphorically, given its face and hands.” — Maggie Smith [01:42]

• From the poem, on the futility of dividing time:
  “How like you not to see that even I, untouched by time, can't keep it.” — Jennifer Maier, read by Maggie Smith [03:26]

• On the ceaseless nature of the present:
  “Each second breaks like a salt wave at your feet and returns to the sea, which is only ever the now alive and infinite.” — Jennifer Maier, read by Maggie Smith [03:55]

Important Timestamps

• 00:50 — Maggie Smith introduces the topic of Daylight Saving Time and personal musings about time’s arbitrariness.
• 01:29 — Reflection on time zones and the possessiveness of “my time/your time.”
• 01:42 — Introduction to today’s poem as a persona poem spoken by a clock.
• 02:03 — Smith reads “Alarm Clock” by Jennifer Maier in full.
• 03:26 — Poem delves into the illusion of mastery over time and the clock’s complicity in “your fictions.”
• 03:51 — Poem closes with philosophical reflection on the living moment and our inability to possess time.

Tone and Language

The episode is contemplative, gentle, and nurturing, matching Maggie Smith’s trademark thoughtful delivery and the meditative spirit of The Slowdown. The language is poetic yet accessible, inviting listeners to consider the beauty and strangeness of the everyday act of keeping time.

Summary Takeaway

This episode tenderly examines our human obsession with slicing and measuring time through the lens of an imaginative poem. By channeling the “voice” of a clock, Jennifer Maier’s “Alarm Clock” becomes a meditative critique of our rituals and anxieties about time’s passage. Maggie Smith uses this poem and her own reflections to remind listeners to notice the “now,” questioning what we lose in our rush to master time.