Episode Overview

Podcast: The Slowdown: Poetry & Reflection Daily
Host: Maggie Smith
Episode: 1483: How to Write by Anne Waldman
Date: March 31, 2026

In this episode, host Maggie Smith invites listeners to reflect on the tireless activity of consciousness, the relief and exhaustion in being human, and the solace poetry offers as a space to process and play with those experiences. The central focus is a reading and contemplation of Anne Waldman's poem, "How to Write," which examines the intricacies of self-awareness, existence, and creativity amid modern life's relentless motion.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

The Challenge and Gift of Consciousness

[01:00]

• Maggie opens with a meditation on the human mind’s constant activity compared to devices that simply power down:

  "Consciousness is just exhausting sometimes, isn't it? ... Being a human is sort of like having 24:7 screen time, but the screen is your own mind and there's no real way to turn it off."

  • She acknowledges the weariness and inescapability of thought.
• Nevertheless, she frames this endless processing as a "gift," the very reason poetry becomes essential—a space for the mind to wander, reflect, and play.

Anne Waldman’s “How to Write”: Poem Reading & Reflection

[02:14]

• Maggie reads the entirety of Waldman’s poem. The poem explores:
  • The doubt and questioning inherent to the writer and thinker (“Perhaps I’m kidding myself about the life I lead. Sometimes I feel I’m dying…”).
  • Descriptions of music, movement, urban experience, and the desire for both connection and escape.
  • Fluid identities and existential pondering (“Once on the Sixth Avenue bus, I got a sudden sensation I had been alive before, that I was a man at some other time traveling...”).
  • The tension between wanting awareness (“which simply means alive, awake and digging everything, even that which makes me sick and want to die”) and the fatigue of it.
  • The universal complexity of life:

    "Because everything is simple and complicated all at once. Everyone has this feeling, even people downtown. It is very basic to the way we are, which is why I can say we."

  • A meditation on transformation—drugs, travel, information—yet the constancy of self and worry remains:

    "Then everything's the same afterward anyway, all into one space. And here I am again, alive still. Same worries on my mind."

Community, Connection, and Perspective

[04:40]

• Waldman’s poem, as relayed by Maggie, closes on the importance of connection through friends, news, and shared spaces, which expands the confines of one's inner world:

  “They take you out of your little room... and put you in a much larger room, one in which you are in constant motion around the clock.”

• Maggie does not directly analyze the poem (adhering to the show’s format), instead allowing Waldman’s words to stand as reflective meditation for the morning.

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On consciousness:

  "There's no power down mode for our minds like there is for the devices we use, laptops and phones and televisions." – Maggie Smith, [01:01]

• On what it means to be a poet:

  "If I were a man right now I'd be getting out of the draft. But I think I'd want to be a poet too, which simply means alive, awake and digging everything, even that which makes me sick and want to die." – Anne Waldman, read by Maggie Smith, [02:58]

• On universal complexity:

  "Everything is simple and complicated all at once. Everyone has this feeling, even people downtown. It is very basic to the way we are, which is why I can say we." – Anne Waldman, read by Maggie Smith, [03:30]

• On expansion and solidarity:

  "They take you out of your little room, just like the newspapers or the news or the man you live with, and put you in a much larger room, one in which you are in constant motion around the clock." – Anne Waldman, read by Maggie Smith, [04:48]

Timestamps for Important Segments

• 01:00 — Maggie’s reflection on the exhaustion and gift of consciousness
• 02:14 — Full reading of Anne Waldman’s "How to Write"
• 03:30 — Poem section on universal experience and identity
• 04:40 — Poem’s ending on community and connection

Wrap-up

This episode of The Slowdown is a gentle yet probing meditation on being “alive, awake and digging everything,” even as that state is both energizing and wearing. Through Maggie Smith’s thoughtful framing and Anne Waldman’s evocative poem, listeners are invited to recognize their own ceaseless consciousness, to find solace in poetry’s embrace, and to feel expanded by the realities and connections that link us all.