The Daily Poem
913 episodes — Page 3 of 19
Emily Dickinson's "I dwell in Possibility"
Today’s poem is a little more (purposefully) enigmatic than most of Dickinson’s verse. Happy reading. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit dailypoempod.substack.com/subscribe
Robert Hass' "After the Gentle Poet Kobayashi Issa"
Today’s poem may be triggering for anyone who has had to endure a vacation they didn’t plan or really even want to go. Happy reading. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit dailypoempod.substack.com/subscribe
John Keats' "To Autumn"
Today’s poem comes from a young man (he died at 25) whose Spring and Autumn were the same. Happy reading. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit dailypoempod.substack.com/subscribe
Robert Louis Stevenson's "Sing me a Song of a Lad that is Gone"
Today’s poem sings of one of the most painful and irremediable forms of nostalgia. Happy reading. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit dailypoempod.substack.com/subscribe
George Starbuck's "Sonnet with a Different Letter at the End of Every Line"
Today’s poem is a “row of perfect rhymes” and an absolute delight. Happy reading.You can find the text of the poem here.George Starbuck was born in Columbus, Ohio on June 15, 1931. He grew up in Illinois and California. He attended the University of California at Berkeley for two years, and the University of Chicago for three. He then studied with Archibald MacLeish and Robert Lowell, alongside peers Anne Sexton and Sylvia Plath, at Harvard University. Starbuck won the Yale Younger Poets Prize for his collection Bone Thoughts (1960). He is the author of several other books, including The Argot Merchant Disaster: New and Selected Poems (1982), Elegy in a Country Church Yard (1974), and White Paper (1966). He taught at the State University College at Buffalo, the University of Iowa, and Boston University.Starbuck’s witty songs of protest are usually concerned with love, war, and the spiritual temper of the times. John Holmes believed that “there hasn’t been as much word excitement ... for years,” as one finds in Bone Thoughts. Harvey Shapiro pointed out that Starbuck’s work is attractive because of its “witty, improvisational surface, slangy and familiar address, brilliant aural quality” and added that Starbuck may become a “spokesman for the bright, unhappy young men.” Louise Bogan asserted that his daring satire “sets him off from the poets of generalized rebellion.”After reading Bone Thoughts, Holmes hoped for other books in the same vein; R.F. Clayton found that, in White Paper(1966), the verse again stings with parody. Although Robert D. Spector wasn’t sure of Starbuck’s sincerity in Bone Thoughts, he rated the poems in White Paper, which range “from parody to elegy to sonnets, and even acrostic exercises,” as “generally superior examples of their kind.” In particular, Spector wrote, when Starbuck juxtaposes McNamara’s political language and a Quaker’s self-immolation by burning, or wryly offers an academician’s praise for this nation’s demonstration of humanity by halting its bombing for “five whole days,” we sense this poet’s genuine commitment.Starbuck died in Tuscaloosa, Alabama on August 1, 1996.-bio via Poetry Foundation This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit dailypoempod.substack.com/subscribe
Robert Frost's "My November Guest"
November mood. Happy reading. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit dailypoempod.substack.com/subscribe
Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings' "Lemon Pie"
Today’s poem is about something very very spooky–a tough crust. Happy reading. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit dailypoempod.substack.com/subscribe
Seamus Heaney's "Follower"
Today’s poem reminds us that we are destined to become the parents of our parents. (I also dedicate it to a child who makes me feel better about that arrangement.) Happy reading! This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit dailypoempod.substack.com/subscribe
Gerard Manley Hopkins' "Spring and Fall"
Why do we hate change? Today’s poem hazards a guess. Happy reading. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit dailypoempod.substack.com/subscribe
Ogden Nash's "A Lady Who Thinks She Is Thirty"
Today’s poem may be one of the most poem-y poems Nash ever wrote. Happy reading. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit dailypoempod.substack.com/subscribe
Wendell Berry's "Sabbath Poem III, 1994"
In today’s poem Berry draws King Lear into his sabbath reflections. Happy reading. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit dailypoempod.substack.com/subscribe
R. S. Thomas' "The Fisherman"
Today’s poem typifies the earthy clarity that Welsh poet R. S. Thomas perfected in his verse. Happy reading. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit dailypoempod.substack.com/subscribe
J. R. R. Tolkien's "The Root of the Boot"
Today’s poem traveled across many years and iterations to finally end up on the tongue of Samwise Gamgee in The Fellowship of the Ring. Happy reading! This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit dailypoempod.substack.com/subscribe
Alfred, Lord Tennyson's "The Charge of the Light Brigade"
Today’s poem is both metrical marvel and moving memorial. Happy reading. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit dailypoempod.substack.com/subscribe
Robert Frost's "Birches"
Today’s poem is a classical example of Frost’s virtuosity in crafting solid figures–here trees, climbing, etc.–that stubbornly defy allegorizing, but that simultaneously seem effortlessly to point beyond themselves. Happy reading. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit dailypoempod.substack.com/subscribe
Charles and Mary Lamb's "Feigned Courage"
Today’s poem couples a vanished past with a timeless present. Happy reading. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit dailypoempod.substack.com/subscribe
Ted Kooser's "How to Foretell a Change in the Weather"
My old knee injury usually alerts me to changes in the weather, but in today’s poem Kooser offers a litany of other indicators. Happy reading. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit dailypoempod.substack.com/subscribe
Linda Pastan's "The Dogwoods"
Today’s poem is a tribute to the seasonal liftings-of-the-veil that reveal to us the beauty undergirding the world. Happy reading. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit dailypoempod.substack.com/subscribe
Lewis Carroll's "You Are Old, Father William"
In today’s poem: the dignity of old age, and Charles Dodgson as the Victorian Weird Al. Happy reading. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit dailypoempod.substack.com/subscribe
John Donne's "The Relic"
John Donne muses on the ineffability of a chaste love and devises a brilliant (or, at any rate, novel) scheme for reuniting with his loved one in the next life. Happy reading. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit dailypoempod.substack.com/subscribe
J. R. R. Tolkien's "The Last of the Old Gods"
Tolkien was no believer in the power of geo-political solutions to better the state of man, convinced that his duty was to fight “the long defeat” while awaiting God’s miraculous and unlooked-for deliverance–eucatastrophe. Though he would not publish the Lord of the Rings for another twenty years, this 1931 poem shows much of that thinking was already well-formed. Happy reading. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit dailypoempod.substack.com/subscribe
Ralph Waldo Emerson's "Fable"
Emerson spent a lot of time observing the natural world. In today’s poem, he couples that pastime with an art form that specializes in human nature. Happy reading. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit dailypoempod.substack.com/subscribe
Geoffrey Hill's "Genesis"
In today’s poem, a young Geoffrey Hill is looking for a story to believe in. Happy reading.Known as one of the greatest poets of his generation writing in English, and one of the most important poets of the 20th century, Geoffrey Hill lived a life dedicated to poetry and scholarship, morality and faith. He was born in 1932 in Worcestershire, England to a working-class family. He attended Oxford University, where his work was first published by the U.S. poet Donald Hall. These poems later collected in For the Unfallen: Poems 1952-1958 marked an astonishing debut. In dense poems of gnarled syntax and astonishing rhetorical power, Hill planted the seeds of style and concern that he cultivated over his long career. Hill’s work is noted for its seriousness, its high moral tone, extreme allusiveness and dedication to history, theology, and philosophy.-bio via Poetry Foundation (read the full biography here) This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit dailypoempod.substack.com/subscribe
Prince Hal's soliloquy from Henry IV, pt.1 ("herein will I imitate the sun")
In today’s poem, Shakespeare puts the theatre in political theater via a candid moment with the future King Henry V in Henry IV pt. 1, Act 1, Scene 2. Happy reading! This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit dailypoempod.substack.com/subscribe
Phineas Fletcher's "A Litany"
Today’s poem is a short meditation on grief made enduringly-famous after Orlando Gibbons set it to music. You can hear an arrangement of that piece here. Happy reading. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit dailypoempod.substack.com/subscribe
Richard Wilbur's "The Writer"
Today’s poem goes out to 6-year-od girls and their dads. Happy reading! This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit dailypoempod.substack.com/subscribe
Alfred Tennyson's "In Memoriam..." 1-3
In today’s poem, a young Tennyson begins the long wrestling with grief. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit dailypoempod.substack.com/subscribe
Kenn Nesbitt's "Our Teacher's Not a Zombie"
Today’s poem may or may not be based on actual events. Happy reading! This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit dailypoempod.substack.com/subscribe
Donald Hall's "An Old Life"
In the latter years of his career and life, Donald Hall became something of an expert on growing old (his essay collections Essays After Eighty and A Carnival of Losses: Notes Nearing Ninety are a breathtaking dissertation on the subject), and in today’s poem we get a glimpse of his early apprenticeship in the art. Happy reading. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit dailypoempod.substack.com/subscribe
Gwendolyn Brooks' "The Bean Eaters"
In today’s poem, better is a dinner of herbs where love and memory are, than great riches. Happy reading. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit dailypoempod.substack.com/subscribe
Lucy Maud Montgomery's "A Request"
Today’s poem is channeling Anne Shirley in the autumn of her years. Happy reading. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit dailypoempod.substack.com/subscribe
Linda Pastan's "Something About the Trees"
Today’s poem takes full advantage of the pantoum form’s naturally-contemplative structure–the repeating lines carrying us back and forth between past, present, and an undetermined future. Happy reading. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit dailypoempod.substack.com/subscribe
Jane Kenyon's "Three Songs at the End of Summer"
In today’s poem, Kenyon wrestles with the Solomonic thesis that “the end of a thing is better than its beginning.” Happy reading. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit dailypoempod.substack.com/subscribe
Ogden Nash's "The People Upstairs"
Noisy upstairs neighbors have been consternating mankind for as long as second-floors have existed. The all-too-familiar phenomenon has inspired novels, movies, Tom Waits songs, and even a poem or two–like today’s. Happy reading. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit dailypoempod.substack.com/subscribe
Emily Dickinson's "How soft a Caterpillar steps —"
Philosopher Thomas Nagel famously argued that it is impossible to know what it’s like to be a bat. Dickinson, on the other hand, claims to know what caterpillars care (or don’t care) about. Happy reading. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit dailypoempod.substack.com/subscribe
Randall Jarrell's "The Lost World"
Today’s poem is the first half of Randall Jarrell’s reverie about his Los Angeles childhood–and one of the most effortless examples of terza rima in all of English poetry. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit dailypoempod.substack.com/subscribe
Rudyard Kipling’s “The Ballad of the Clampherdown”
Today’s poem is the satirical saga of an anachronistic naval battle. Heave ho and happy reading! This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit dailypoempod.substack.com/subscribe
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's "The Fire of Drift-wood"
Nothing feels better and hurts worse than nostalgia. Happy reading. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit dailypoempod.substack.com/subscribe
Miroslav Holub's "Napoleon"
Today’s brief poem goes out to teachers everywhere as they return to work. Good luck and happy reading.“Poet Seamus Heaney described Holub’s writing as ‘a laying bare of things, not so much the skull beneath the skin, more the brain beneath the skull; the shape of relationships, politics, history; the rhythms of affections and disaffection; the ebb and flow of faith, hope, violence, art.’ In 1988 poet Ted Hughes called Holub ‘one of the half dozen most important poets writing anywhere.’” This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit dailypoempod.substack.com/subscribe
John Keats' "To Sleep"
“To die, to sleep.” Sometimes the space between the two seems as slight as that intervening comma. Happy reading. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit dailypoempod.substack.com/subscribe
William Shakespeare's "Sonnet 94: They that have power to hurt..."
I might say today’s poem is all subtext–if it weren’t for all the text. Ambiguous praise, sincere romantic angst, just the right amount of bitter wit: this sonnet has it all. Happy reading. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit dailypoempod.substack.com/subscribe
Live: William Carlos Williams' "The Fool's Song"
This special, live edition of The Daily Poem was recorded at the Close Reads 10th Anniversary celebration last weekend in Concord, NC. Happy reading! This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit dailypoempod.substack.com/subscribe
Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings' "Prize Jelly"
Best known as the author of The Yearling and Cross Creek, Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings enjoyed a long side-hustle as an occasional poet. Happy reading. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit dailypoempod.substack.com/subscribe
Malcolm Guite's "Transfiguration"
Today’s poem comes from Guite’s excellent collection, Sounding the Seasons (now in a new edition with over 100 sonnets!). Blessed feast and happy reading. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit dailypoempod.substack.com/subscribe
Terrence Hayes’ “The Same City”
Hayes has said he longs for a language that can circumvent idea and communicate pure emotion—in today’s poem that quest is dramatized in a powerful way. Happy reading. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit dailypoempod.substack.com/subscribe
Billy Collins' "On Turning Ten"
Happy tenth birthday to the Close Reads podcast, and happy reading! This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit dailypoempod.substack.com/subscribe
Philip Appleman's "Anniversary"
Today’s poem is one of “promises kept, and / promises / still to keep.” Happy reading. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit dailypoempod.substack.com/subscribe
John Donne's "The Anniversary"
Today’s poem looks forward to a long and prosperous “reign.” Happy reading. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit dailypoempod.substack.com/subscribe
Rhina P. Espaillat's "Gardening"
This week’s poems are arranged around the themes of retrospection and anniversaries in honor of the Close Reads Podcast celebrating its tenth year. Today, we have Rhina Espaillat turning over rich soil. Happy reading! This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit dailypoempod.substack.com/subscribe
Carole Boston Weatherford's "Sidewalk Chalk"
Today’s poem is a little hopscotch down memory lane. Happy reading.Weatherford is author of over seventy books including fiction, non-fiction, and poetry inspired, she says, by “family stories, fading traditions, and forgotten struggles that center on African American resistance, resilience, remarkability, rejoicing and remembrance.” This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit dailypoempod.substack.com/subscribe