836: A City Like a Guillotine Shivers on Its Way to the Neck

Published: March 17, 2023, 8 a.m.

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Today\\u2019s poem is A City Like a Guillotine Shivers on Its Way to the Neck by Ilya Kaminsky. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Jason Schneiderman writes\\u2026 \\u201cToday\\u2019s poem is from a sequence of poems about a town that has been invaded by an occupying force. Both sides believe that they are on the side of right, and both sides justify their violence by calling it a response to the other side\\u2019s violence. The poet\\u2019s sympathy is certainly with the occupied people, and as a Ukrainian American poet, Ilya Kaminsky\\u2019s poems have become relevant in a new way, as they speak to the atrocities we are currently witnessing in his country of origin.\\u201d Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp

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