TRANSCRIPT

I’m Maggie Smith, and this is The Slowdown. 

I remember, in 2004, during the Bush/Kerry election season, one of the criticisms lobbed against John Kerry was that he was, “a flip-flopper.” It was a derogatory term meant to suggest that he was changing his mind for political gain. The attack ads at the time were plentiful, and many of them used the term “flip-flopper” to convince voters that Kerry couldn’t be trusted. He might promise one thing, and then do another. He might change his mind yet again. 

“Flip-flopper” sounds impulsive and half-baked—and by design! Political strategists know exactly what they’re doing when they assemble these rhetorical weapons and deploy them on the public via TV and radio ads. But I remember feeling frustrated by this framing at the time, as someone who is—thanks in large part to poetry—comfortable with nuance, and ambiguity, and yes, even reconsidering one’s positions. 

What does changing one’s mind really demonstrate? I think it takes maturity to reconsider old ideas and opinions, and hold them up to scrutiny. It takes maturity to take in new information, new advice, and new experiences, and to say, “You know what? I used to think X, but I’m older and wiser now, and I’ve had some enlightening conversations, and now I believe Y.” I think that shows someone who is intelligent and nimble, not a slave to their earlier opinions. I think that demonstrates growth. And that’s a good thing.

I’ve changed my mind about plenty in my life, thanks to new experiences and new data. I’m sure I’ll keep changing, too, and I won’t see that as a weakness, but instead as a strength. I have fixed core values—honesty, integrity, compassion—but I want to be flexible in my thinking, and I’m trying to raise my kids with all of this in mind, too. I want them to know it’s okay to grow, change, evolve. 

After all, there was a time the earth was believed to be flat! Humanity has since “flip-flopped” on that.

Today’s poem is a kind of poem called a palinode. In a palinode, a writer changes her mind by retracting a viewpoint expressed in one of their earlier pieces of writing. Today’s poem makes us consider how we write about other people. It “flip-flops,” in a sense, but it certainly does so in an effective and artful way.

Palinode
by Lisa Low

Your mother enters the poem 
with her sadness intact.

When your mother enters 
the poem, should she be

a strict, sad, hardworking, or
immigrant mother? Your mother

enters the poem wearing 
all her animal-print

items at once, laughs holding
a leopard-print lamp. Your

mother enters the poem laughing,
asks for compensation. Shouldn’t

she be paid for inspiring
you? Your mother reads

the poem and tells you she isn’t
an immigrant. Student visa,

she corrects your 
language. In many places,

you keep her sadness
intact despite the hazy

quality of your childhood
memory. Pay your mother

to display her sadness across
the pages of a poem.

"Palinode" by Lisa Low from REPLICA © 2026 by Lisa Low. Used by permission of the University of Wisconsin Press.