[encore] 442: Climbing China's Great Wall by Afaa M. Weaver

The Slowdown: Poetry & Reflection Daily · Jul 17, 2025 · 5m

Today’s poem is Climbing China's Great Wall by Afaa M. Weaver.

The Slowdown is currently taking a break. We’ll be back soon with new episodes from a new host. This week, we’re going back into the archive to revisit Tracy K. Smith’s time as host. Today’s episode was originally released on August 4, 2020.

In this episode, Tracy writes… “I visited China for the first time in the spring of 2017. It was a visit to the great poet Yi Lei, whose poems I had been working to translate. It was my second time meeting Yi Lei in person. The first had been three years earlier, over lunch in Manhattan. That…