← The Slowdown: Poetry & Reflection Daily![[encore] 845: Dear Future Me (#12) by Lena Moses-Schmitt — The Slowdown: Poetry & Reflection Daily cover](https://img.apmcdn.org/211c9211a245dbd699367310a6f6165ba0798bf5/square/f4b4d4-20241224-20241230-slowdown-2000.jpg)
The Slowdown: Poetry & Reflection Daily
[encore] 845: Dear Future Me (#12) by Lena Moses-Schmitt
00:06:29
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Hey, it's Slowdown producer Micah As 2024 comes to a close, we are asking you to help us plan for a poetry filled 2025. Your donation today helps us continue making the show and plan for future episodes. Show your support during this season of giving by making a tax deductible gift in any amount today. Visit slowdownshow.org donate or find the link in the show. Notes thanks and happy listening.
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Foreign I'm Major Jackson and this is the Slowdown. People ask all the time, what is writing poetry like? I say, for me, writing poetry is like donning special sunglasses as though one were suddenly cast in the classic grainy black and white film, riding shotgun in a convertible that travels along a countryside in which the cameraman, precariously lodged on the side of a mountain, suddenly pans in close to one's laughter, a mouth traveling at 30 miles an hour while a minimalist soundtrack provides texture and mystery. No, writing poetry is less performative in its enactment of its special powers of vision, though most often its form of seeing occurs at the level of metaphor, life itself understood by understanding something else. What you see becomes your muse. Writing poetry is chiefly a search for language that makes a tidy explanation of both the present and the past, with the hope our mind grabs on so that the poem emerges also as a visceral experience of thinking. That is, thinking as an unfolding and awakening, both for the author and the reader, or, in this instance, a listener. But then, occasionally, writing poetry is also an offering to the future poem as a container of time whose language signifies the era in which it was written. Take, for example, let us go then, you and I, when the evening is spread out against the sky. Thank you, Mr. Elliot, for a wee slice of the early 20th century. The poem can be read as a report of the author's thinking and feelings filed away for future reading. Today's superb poem makes explicit poetry's relationship to time, selfhood, and metaphor in surprising language that goes beyond performance to a true fullness of heart and spirit. Dear Future Me Number 12 by Lena Moses Schmidt here's how it's going lately. This morning, the minute I sat down to write a poem, the men outside in orange vests and hard white skies, strapped over the heads, started up their jackhammering D. I typed and set off an explosion of sound. My thoughts vibrated in my jaw, every bandage on my brain ripped clean off. All the wise and gorgeous things I want the skill to say began to circle the drain, and I was left with this why do I like poems? Life continues I guess. Except it's very loud. Lately. I I'm too tired to care about getting old. I never put my phone down. I scroll many futures away. I sleep many futures away. I write them away. The longer I live, the more the future disappears. Then again, at least when I type Tysm, I feel like a cool little snake wearing sunglasses. Don't mind me. I'm working through all the mind trash. Do you think of harming yourself? No, but I have other desires. I'm afraid. What if you're someone you don't want me to know? What if I'm someone you'll wish to disown? God, just leave me alone for once. Yesterday on my just before dark walk, I saw a few pretty things. A gasp of birds flirting through the brown barcode of trees in the park. A shadow of a half ladder casting an H onto a roof as if the light was starting to spell house. I imagined the sun with its giant typewriter smashing down the keys and was relieved. I'm just another person. There is such little use for fear. But of course there are the things you know and then the things you feel. The Slowdown is a production of American Public Media in partnership with the Poetry Foundation. This project is also supported in part by the National Endowment for the Arts. On the web@arts.gov to get a poem delivered to you daily, go to slowdownshow.org and sign up for our newsletter and find us on Instagram and Twitter. Lowdownshow Give your loved ones the gift of poetry this year with Poetry Magazine. Poetry's gift bundle includes a one year print and digital subscription to the magazine, plus a limited edition tote bag. Your loved ones will receive 10 beautifully curated volumes of contemporary poetry and unlimited digital access through the Poetry Magazine app. It's a gift that lasts all year. Subscribe today@poetrymagazine.org slow that's poetrymagazine.org slow.