Episode Overview

Podcast: The Slowdown: Poetry & Reflection Daily
Host: Maggie Smith
Episode: 1410: Go by Kathleen Ossip
Date: December 4, 2025

This episode of The Slowdown centers on the poem “Go” by Kathleen Ossip. Host Maggie Smith reflects on the nature of poetry—how different poems can take on very different shapes and roles in our lives—and invites the listener to experience Ossip’s expansive, multifaceted poem as both a meditation and a celebration of complexity, endurance, and hope.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

Poems Come in Many Forms

• Diamonds vs. Pearls Metaphor:
  Maggie Smith opens with a reflection on the form and impact of poems:
  • [01:49] “Some poems are compressed like diamonds, like small gems you can hold in your palm. They shine up at you and you can come back for the glint of them whenever you want. I love poems like that.”
  • [02:10] “Other poems are like strands of pearls, long and lustrous and nearly impossible to gather into your hands all at once. I love poems like that too.”
• She frames today’s poem, “Go,” as the latter—a long, lustrous strand, inviting the listener to experience its sweep.

The Reading of “Go” by Kathleen Ossip

• Smith reads the poem in its entirety, allowing its associative logic and swirling images to wash over the listener.
• The poem itself moves through a cascade of images and concepts, each one beginning with “It is” or “It’s,” weaving together thoughts on identity, existence, and change.

Thematic Highlights

• Shapeshifting Essence:
  Ossip’s poem treats “It” as a kind of universal life force or experience, ever-changing:

  • “It is a cube. It is red. It is mountainous. It is a bird of fire. It is the bones of the pelvis, it is a walnut, it is treasured.” [02:42]
  • “It is the fight in you and the fight in you dying. It is the need for water, the water that falls from the sky.” [03:27]

• Human Encounters & Vulnerability:
  The poem touches on connection and fragility:

  • “It is the desire to sit down with strangers in cafes. And then it is the strangers in cafes. It is the man with the black T shirt labeled Unarmed Civilian and it is the blind man with him and his painful trembling.” [03:04]

• Existential Struggle & Acceptance:
  A back-and-forth between hurt, healing, and acceptance rolls through the lines:

  • “You can't let it hurt you. You must let it hurt you.” [04:44]
  • “It is waking up now. It is a small cat on the bed.” [04:25]

• The Ordinary & the Cosmic:
  The poem darts from specific, everyday images to vast cosmic references:

  • “It's the sun that stuns over and over again. It's your tablet, which is every tablet everywhere. It's an explosion. It is every explosion everywhere.” [05:31]
  • “It's the stars that pitch white needles into the pond.” [05:38]

• Resilience & Motion:
  At its close, lines suggest endurance and movement, even in contradiction:

  • “It moves swiftly. It is stuck. It moves swiftly. It is stuck. It moves through swiftly. It's the impenetrable truth now clear as ice. It is serious. It is irreversible. It is going, going.” [06:09]
  • “It is flying. Now laughing strong enough to know any.” [06:38]

Notable Quotes

• On Poetic Form

  • “Some poems are compressed like diamonds, like small gems you can hold in your palm… Other poems are like strands of pearls, long and lustrous and nearly impossible to gather in into your hands all at once. I love poems like that too.”
    —Maggie Smith, [01:49]-[02:26]

• On the Nature of ‘It’

  • “It is a little project called loving the world. It is howling in the dirt. It is an extravaganza. It's the abandoned sports bra in the dirt beside howling you. It's the wind chimes in the thin necked tree and it is tongue tied. It is asleep. It is waking up now.”
    —Kathleen Ossip (as read by Maggie Smith), [04:11]-[04:25]

• On Endurance & Change

  • “It is serious. It is irreversible. It is going, going. It is flying.”
    —Kathleen Ossip (as read by Maggie Smith), [06:09]-[06:38]

Timestamps for Important Segments

• [01:35] — Host Maggie Smith introduction
• [01:49] — Reflections on poetic form
• [02:36] — Introduction to and reading of “Go” by Kathleen Ossip
• [02:42]-[06:56] — Full reading of “Go,” with vivid movements through imagery
• [06:56] — Closing production notes

Memorable Moments

• The juxtaposition of disparate images—mundane, cosmic, humorous, and grave—underscores the poem's central meditation on the messiness and beauty of living.
• The lines “You can't let it hurt you. You must let it hurt you.” [04:44] stand out for their frank acknowledgment of emotional duality.
• Smith’s gentle but enthusiastic tone throughout the introduction provides a welcoming context for listeners, emphasizing the value in both brief and soaring poetic experiences.

Conclusion

This episode invites listeners to step into a broad and searching meditation, using Kathleen Ossip’s poem “Go” as both anchor and launchpad. Through Smith’s thoughtful introduction and Ossip’s kaleidoscopic poem, the episode leaves us contemplating the continual movement and transformation at the core of being alive. The embrace of both pain and joy, of contradiction and clarity, reminds us: poetry helps us “keep hoping”—to connect with ourselves and the world, even in the midst of uncertainty.