The Daily Poem

Margaret Wise Brown (May 23, 1910 – November 13, 1952) was an American writer of children's books, including Goodnight Moon (1947) and The Runaway Bunny (1942), both illustrated by Clement Hurd. She has been called "the laureate of the nursery" for her achievements.Brown was born in the Brooklyn borough of New York City, the middle child of three children of Maude Margaret and Robert Bruce Brown. She was the granddaughter of politician Benjamin Gratz Brown. Her parents had an unhappy marriage. She was initially raised in Brooklyn's Greenpoint neighborhood, and later attended Chateau Brilliantmont boarding school in Lausanne, Switzerland, in 1923, while her parents were living in India and Canterbury, Connecticut.In 1925, Brown attended The Kew-Forest School. She began attending Dana Hall School in Wellesley, Massachusetts, in 1926, where she did well in athletics. After graduation in 1928, Brown went on to Hollins College in Roanoke, Virginia.Brown was an avid, lifelong beagler and was noted for her ability to keep pace, on foot, with the hounds.Following her graduation with a B.A. in English from Hollins in 1932, Brown worked as a teacher and also studied art. While working at the Bank Street Experimental School in New York City she started writing books for children. Bank Street promoted a new approach to children's education and literature, emphasizing the real world and the "here and now". This philosophy influenced Brown's work; she was also inspired by the poet Gertrude Stein, whose literary style influenced Brown's own writing.Brown's first published children's book was When the Wind Blew, published in 1937 by Harper & Brothers. Impressed by Brown's "here and now" style, W. R. Scott hired her as his first editor in 1938. Through Scott, she published the Noisy Book series among others. As editor at Scott, one of Brown's first projects was to recruit contemporary authors to write children's books for the company. Ernest Hemingway and John Steinbeck neglected to respond, but Brown's hero, Gertrude Stein, accepted the offer. Stein's book The World is Round was illustrated by Clement Hurd, who had previously teamed with Brown on W. R. Scott's Bumble Bugs and Elephants, considered "perhaps the first modern board book for babies". Brown and Hurd later teamed on the children's book classics The Runaway Bunny and Goodnight Moon, published by Harper. In addition to publishing a number of Brown's books, under her editorship, W. R. Scott published Edith Thacher Hurd's first book, Hurry Hurry, and Esphyr Slobodkina's classic Caps for Sale.-bio via Wikipedia 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

Today’s poem, written in 1871, actually gave the name to the since-codified psychological phenomenon known as the “centipede effect” or “centipede syndrome.” Psychologist George Humphrey (for whom the condition is alternatively named “Humphrey’s Law”) said of the poem, "This is a most psychological rhyme. It contains a profound truth which is illustrated daily in the lives of all of us." 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

G. K. Chesterton wrote: “Oscar Wilde said that sunsets were not valued because we could not pay for sunsets. But Oscar Wilde was wrong; we can pay for sunsets. We can pay for them by not being Oscar Wilde.” Perhaps Hopkins was anticipating that sentiment in today’s poem. 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

Today’s poem is the fourth and final section of Tennyson’s Arthurian ballad. I have been reading his 1842 version and (I think) the final stanza is where it differs most from the 1832 original. You can compare both below to see for yourself how Tennyson’s alteration ramps up the pathos. Happy reading!1832 conclusion:They cross'd themselves, their stars they blest, Knight, minstrel, abbot, squire, and guest. There lay a parchment on her breast, That puzzled more than all the rest, The wellfed wits at Camelot. 'The web was woven curiously, The charm is broken utterly, Draw near and fear not,—this is I, The Lady of Shalott.'1842 conclusion:Who is this? and what is here? And in the lighted palace near Died the sound of royal cheer; And they cross'd themselves for fear, All the knights at Camelot: But Lancelot mused a little space; He said, "She has a lovely face; God in his mercy lend her grace, The Lady of Shalott." 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

Today we come to the turning point for the Lady of Shalott. 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

In part two, the “Lady” sits, weaving, in a world of images but pines for the world of solid realities. 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

Today is the first of four in which we’ll wend our way through Tennyson’s tragic Arthurian ballad. 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

Today’s poem is a shape poem dedicated to chefs, but (surprise?) it might be about more than cooking.John Hollander, one of contemporary poetry’s foremost poets, editors, and anthologists, grew up in New York City. He studied at Columbia University and Indiana University, and he was a Junior Fellow of the Society of Fellows of Harvard University. Hollander received numerous awards and fellowships, including the Levinson Prize, a MacArthur Foundation grant, and the poet laureateship of Connecticut. He served as a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets, and he taught at Hunter College, Connecticut College, and Yale University, where he was the Sterling Professor emeritus of English.Over the course of an astonishing career, Hollander influenced generations of poets and thinkers with his critical work, his anthologies and his poetry. In the words of J.D. McClatchy, Hollander was “a formidable presence in American literary life.” Hollander’s eminence as a scholar and critic was in some ways greater than his reputation as a poet. His groundbreaking introduction to form and prosody Rhyme’s Reason (1981), as well as his work as an anthologist, has ensured him a place as one of the 20th-century’s great, original literary critics. Hollander’s critical writing is known for its extreme erudition and graceful touch. Hollander’s poetry possesses many of the same qualities, though the wide range of allusion and technical virtuosity can make it seem “difficult” to a general readership.Hollander’s first poetry collection, A Crackling of Thorns (1958) won the prestigious Yale Series of Younger Poets Awards, judged by W.H. Auden. And in fact James K. Robinson in the Southern Review found that Hollander’s “early poetry resembles Auden’s in its wit, its learned allusiveness, its prosodic mastery.” Hollander’s technique continued to develop through later books like Visions from the Ramble (1965) and The Night Mirror (1971). Broader in range and scope than his previous work, Hollander’s Tales Told of the Fathers (1975) and Spectral Emanations (1978) heralded his arrival as a major force in contemporary poetry. Reviewing Spectral Emanations for the New Republic, Harold Bloom reflected on his changing impressions of the poet’s work over the first 20 years of his career: “I read [A Crackling of Thorns] … soon after I first met the poet, and was rather more impressed by the man than by the book. It has taken 20 years for the emotional complexity, spiritual anguish, and intellectual and moral power of the man to become the book. The enormous mastery of verse was there from the start, and is there still … But there seemed almost always to be more knowledge and insight within Hollander than the verse could accommodate.” Bloom found in Spectral Emanations “another poet as vital and accomplished as [A.R.] Ammons, [James] Merrill, [W.S.] Merwin, [John] Ashbery, James Wright, an immense augmentation to what is clearly a group of major poets.”Shortly after Spectral Emanations, Hollander published Blue Wine and Other Poems (1979), a volume which a number of critics have identified as an important milestone in Hollander’s life and career. Reviewing the work for the New Leader, Phoebe Pettingell remarked, “I would guess from the evidence of Blue Wine that John Hollander is now at the crossroads of his own midlife journey, picking out a new direction to follow.” Hollander’s new direction proved to be incredibly fruitful: his next books were unqualified successes. Powers of Thirteen (1983) won the Bollingen Prize from Yale University and In Time and Place (1986) was highly praised for its blend of verse and prose. In the Times Literary Supplement, Jay Parini believed “an elegiac tone dominates this book, which begins with a sequence of 34 poems in the In Memoriam stanza. These interconnecting lyrics are exquisite and moving, superior to almost anything else Hollander has ever written.” Parini described the book as “a landmark in contemporary poetry.” McClatchy held up In Time and Place as evidence that Hollander is “part conjurer and part philosopher, one of our language’s true mythographers and one of its very best poets.”Hollander continued to publish challenging, technically stunning verse throughout the 1980s and ’90s. His Selected Poetry (1993) was released simultaneously with Tesserae (1993); Figurehead and Other Poems (1999) came a few years later. “The work collected in [Tesserae and Other Poems and Selected Poetry] makes clear that John Hollander is a considerable poet,” New Republic reviewer Vernon Shetley remarked, “but it may leave readers wondering still, thirty-five years after his first book … exactly what kind of poet Hollander is.” Shetley recognized the sheer variety of Hollander’s work, but also noted the peculiar absence of anything like a personality, “as if the poet had taken to heart, much more fully than its author, Eliot’s dictum that poetry should embody ‘emotion which has its life in the poem and not in the history

In today’s poem, from Songs of Innocence, we meet William Blake struggling to sort out his theological analogies. 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

In today’s poem, also known as “Sonnet 19,” Milton offers a pious alternative to “raging” against the dying of the light. 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

Today’s poem muses on the sweet and awful creation of the 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

Today’s poem is a song from Ben Jonson’s final play, The Sad Shepherd (1641). 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

Just when you thought you were out, The Daily Poem pulls you back in–to poems about movies. Today’s charming and earnest poem imitates the medium it describes (film) by swapping memorable images and sensations for linear propositions. Happy reading.Amy Clampitt was born and raised in New Providence, Iowa. She studied first at Grinnell College in Grinnell, Iowa, and later at Columbia University and the New School for Social Research in New York City. Throughout the 1940s and 1950s, Clampitt held various jobs at publishers and organizations such as Oxford University Press and the Audubon Society. In the 1960s, she turned her attention to poetry. In 1974 she published a small volume of poetry titled Multitudes, Multitudes; thereafter her work appeared frequently in the New Yorker. Upon the publication of her book of poems The Kingfisher in 1983, she became one of the most highly regarded poets in America. Her other collections include A Silence Opens (1994), Westward (1990), What the Light Was Like (1985), and Archaic Figure (1987). Clampitt received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the MacArthur Foundation, and the Academy of American Poets. A member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, Clampitt taught at the College of William and Mary, Amherst College, and Smith College.Joseph Parisi, a Chicago Tribune Book World reviewer, called the poet’s sudden success after the publication of The Kingfisher “one of the most stunning debuts in recent memory.” Parisi continued, “throughout this bountiful book, her wit, sensibility and stylish wordplay seldom disappoint.” In one of the first articles to appear after The Kingfisher’s debut, New York Review of Books critic Helen Vendler wrote that “Amy Clampitt writes a beautiful, taxing poetry. In it, thinking uncoils and coils again, embodying its perpetua argument with itself.” Georgia Review contributor Peter Stitt also felt that “The Kingfisher is … in many ways an almost dazzling performance.” In the Observer, Peter Porter described Clampitt as “a virtuoso of the here and the palpable.” Porter ranked her with the likes of Emily Dickinson and Elizabeth Bishop.Critics praised the allusive richness and syntactical sophistication of Clampitt’s verse. Her poetry is characterized by a “baroque profusion, the romance of the adjective, labyrinthine syntax, a festival lexicon,” said New York Times Book Review contributor Alfred Corn in an article about Clampitt’s second important collection, What the Light Was Like (1985). Indeed, the poet’s use of vocabulary and syntax is elaborate. “When you read Amy Clampitt,” suggests Richard Tillinghast in the New York Times Book Review, “have a dictionary or two at your elbow.” The poet has, Tillinghast continues, a “virtuoso command of vocabulary, [a] gift for playing the English language like a musical instrument and [a] startling and delightful ability to create metaphor.” Her ability as a poet quickly gained Clampitt recognition as “the most refreshing new American poet to appear in many years,” according to one Times Literary Supplement reviewer.Clampitt’s work is also characterized by erudite allusions, for which she provides detailed footnotes. Times Literary Supplement critic Lachlan Mackinnon compared her “finical accuracy of description and the provision of copious notes at the end of a volume,” to a similar tendency in the work of Marianne Moore. “She is as ‘literary’ and allusive as Eliot and Pound, as filled with grubby realia as William Carlos Williams, as ornamented as Wallace Stevens and as descriptive as Marianne Moore,” observed Corn. Washington Post reviewer Joel Conarroe added Walt Whitman and Hart Crane to this list of comparable poets: “Like Whitman, she is attracted to proliferating lists as well as to ‘the old thought of likenesses,’” wrote Conarroe. “And as in Crane her compressed images create multiple resonances of sound and sense.”What the Light Was Like centers around images of light and darkness. This book is “more chastely restrained than The Kingfisher,” according to Times Literary Supplement contributor Neil Corcoran. Conarroe believed that the poet’s “own imagery throughout [the book] is sensuous (even lush) and specific—in short, Keatsian.” Corn similarly commented that “there are stirring moments in each poem, and an authentic sense of Keats’ psychology.” He opined, however, that “her sequence [‘Voyages: A Homage to John Keats‘] isn’t effective throughout, the reason no doubt being that her high-lyric mode” does not suit narrative as well as a plainer style would.Clampitt’s Archaic Figure (1987) maintains her “idiosyncratic style,” as William Logan called it in the Chicago Tribune. New York Times Book Review contributor Mark Rudman noted the poet’s “spontaneity and humor; she is quick to react, hasty, impulsive, responsive to place—and to space.” In the London Sunday Times, David Profumo further praised Archaic Figure. Taking the example of the poem “Hippocrene,” the critic asserted t

Today’s poem–published in 1920–is one of the early intersections between poetry and cinema. Happy reading.Siegfried Sassoon (1886-1967) is best remembered for his angry and compassionate poems about World War I, which brought him public and critical acclaim. Avoiding the sentimentality and jingoism of many war poets, Sassoon wrote of the horror and brutality of trench warfare and contemptuously satirized generals, politicians, and churchmen for their incompetence and blind support of the war. He was also well known as a novelist and political commentator. In 1957 he was awarded the Queen’s Medal for Poetry.-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

In today’s poem, written a century ago, cinema (and Charlie Chaplin) is already supplying metaphors for the work and experience of modern poets. Happy reading.Harold Hart Crane was born on July 21, 1899, in Garrettsville, Ohio, and began writing verse in his early teenage years. Though he never attended college, Crane read regularly on his own, digesting the works of the Elizabethan dramatists and poets William Shakespeare, Christopher Marlowe, John Donne and the nineteenth-century French poets Charles Vildrac, Jules Laforgue, and Arthur Rimbaud. His father, a candy manufacturer, attempted to dissuade him from a career in poetry, but Crane was determined to follow his passion to write.Living in New York City, he associated with many important figures in literature of the time, including Allen Tate, the novelist and short story writer Katherine Anne Porter, E. E. Cummings, and Jean Toomer, but his heavy drinking and chronic instability frustrated any attempts at lasting friendship. An admirer of T. S. Eliot, Crane combined the influences of European literature and traditional versification with a particularly American sensibility derived from Walt Whitman.His major work, the book-length poem, The Bridge, expresses in ecstatic terms a vision of the historical and spiritual significance of America. Like Eliot, Crane used the landscape of the modern, industrialized city to create a powerful new symbolic literature.Hart Crane died by suicide on April 27, 1932, at the age of thirty-two, while sailing back to New York from Mexico.-bio via Academy of American Poets 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

Today’s poem (from an art scholar and master of ekphrastic poetry) features another classic Hopper painting and a contemplative trip to the movies. Happy reading!Joseph Stanton’s books of poems include A Field Guide to the Wildlife of Suburban O‘ahu, Cardinal Points, Imaginary Museum: Poems on Art, and What the Kite Thinks, Moving Pictures, and Lifelines: Poems for Homer and Hopper. He has published more than 300 poems in such journals as Poetry, Harvard Review, Poetry East, The Cortland Review, Ekphrasis, Bamboo Ridge, Elysian Fields Quarterly, Endicott Studio’s Journal of the Mythic Arts, and New York Quarterly. In 2007, Ted Kooser selected one of Stanton’s poems for his “American Life in Poetry” column.Stanton has edited A Hawai‘i Anthology, which won a Ka Palapala Po‘okela Award for excellence in literature. Two of his other books have won honorable mention Ka Palapala Po‘okela Awards. In 1997 he received the Cades Award for his contributions to the literature of Hawai‘i.As an art historian, Stanton has published essays on Edward Hopper, Winslow Homer, Maurice Sendak, Chris Van Allsburg, and many other artists. His most recent nonfiction books are The Important Books: Children’s Picture Books as Art and Literature and Stan Musial: A Biography. He teaches art history and American studies at the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa.-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

This week The Daily Poem heads to the movies.Cornelius Eady is the founder of the poetry group Cave Canem and his published collections include Victims of the Latest Dance Craze (Omnation Press, 1986), winner of the Lamont Poetry Prize from the Academy of American Poets; The Gathering of My Name (Carnegie Mellon University Press,1991), nominated for a Pulitzer Prize; Brutal Imagination (G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 2001), a National Book Award finalist; and Hardheaded Weather: New and Selected Poems (G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 2008). 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

Today’s poem both responds to and carries on the work of Walt Whitman and Langston Hughes. Happy reading!Allison Adelle Hedge Coke has written seven books of poetry, one book of nonfiction, and a play. Following former fieldworker retraining in the mid-1980s, the much-decorated poet began her writing and teaching career. She now serves as distinguished professor of creative writing at the University of California, Riverside.-bio via UC Riverside 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

Today’s (frequently-paired) poems form an antiphonal song between Walt Whitman and Langston Hughes on the complicated ideal of “being American.” Happy Independence Day 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

Today’s poem is lovely, dark, and deep. Loneliness, Americana, Edward Hopper, literary illusions, clams: it has it all. Happy reading!Poet and editor Grace Schulman (b. 1935) was born Grace Waldman in New York City, the only child of a Polish Jewish immigrant father and a seventh-generation American mother. She studied at Bard College and earned her BA from American University and her PhD from New York University. She is Distinguished Professor of English at Baruch College, CUNY, and served as the poetry editor of the Nation from 1972 to 2006. She also directed the 92nd Street Y Poetry Center from 1973 to 1985. She has published nine collections of poetry, including Again, the Dawn: New and Selected Poems, 1976-2022 (Turtle Point Press, 2022) and Days of Wonder: New and Selected Poems (Harper Collins, 2022). Her collection of essays, First Loves and Other Adventures (2010), reflects on her life as a writer and reader.Typically written in a lucid free verse that occasionally reaches vatic heights, Schulman’s poems often take on subjects of art, history, and faith. Schulman’s history is usually that of her beloved New York City, where she has lived and worked as a dedicated poetry advocate all her life. Earthly moments and details of city life constantly suggest larger spiritual questions. Poet Ron Slate has described Schulman as “not only a poet of praise, but one who addresses the grounding questions of this mode. How and why do we find beauty in adversity?”Schulman names Hopkins, Donne, Shakespeare, Dante, Whitman, and Marianne Moore as her influences. When Schulman was a teenager she was introduced to Moore, who had a profound effect on her poetics. Schulman wrote on the poet in a critical study, Marianne Moore: The Poetry of Engagement (1986), and edited The Poems of Marianne Moore (2004). Schulman has received numerous awards for her work, including the Delmore Schwartz Memorial Award, the Aiken Taylor Award for poetry, and Pushcart prizes. She has received fellowships from the New York Foundation of the Arts and the Guggenheim Foundation. Her work has been published in the Nation, the New Yorker, and numerous other magazines and journals, and appeared in The Best of the Best American Poetry 1988–1998.She lives in New York City and East Hampton.-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

Today’s poem from John Ciardi goes out to all of the dads who can cook, all of the dads who can’t, all of the children who have endured the latter, and all of the moms who deserve to sleep late more often. 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

In today’s poem, Poe offers us an ode to the Homeric beauty that is also definitely giving some Stacy’s-mom vibes. 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

On one of her darker days, Emily Dickinson dreams of a fate worse than death. 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

Happy birthday to the trailblazing Paul Laurence Dunbar.For more meditations on “lawyers’ ways,” come join our discussion of To Kill a Mockingbird over on the Close Reads Podcast! 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

Though rarely anthologized or even contemplated as such, today’s poem is arguably the very first–and its a solid 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

Today’s poem is one of the purest and most earnest offerings from one of the most indefatigable lover-poets of the twentieth century. 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

Marianne Craig Moore (November 15, 1887 – February 5, 1972) was an American modernist poet, critic, translator, and editor. Her poetry is noted for its formal innovation, precise diction, irony, and wit. She was nominated for the 1968 Nobel Prize in Literature.-bio via Wikipedia 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

Today’s poem comes from Matthew Hollis’ remarkable collection, Earth House, which blends explorations of the four cardinal directions and original translations of Anglo-Saxon verse from the Exeter Book. Matthew Hollis was born in Norwich in 1971, and now lives in London. His debut Ground Water (Bloodaxe Books, 2004) was shortlisted for the Guardian First Book Award, the Whitbread Poetry Award and the Forward Prize for Best First Collection; it was a Poetry Book Society Recommendation. He is co-editor of Strong Words: Modern Poets on Modern Poetry (Bloodaxe Books, 2000) and 101 Poems Against War (Faber & Faber, 2003), and editor of Selected Poems of Edward Thomas (Faber & Faber, 2011). Now All Roads Lead to France: the Last Years of Edward Thomas (Faber & Faber, UK, 2011; Norton, US, 2012) won the Costa Biography Award and the H. W. Fisher Biography Prize, was Radio 4 Book of the Week and Sunday Times Biography of the Year. He has published the handmade and letterpress pamphlets Stones (Incline Press, 2016), East (Clutag Press, 2016), Leaves (Hazel Press, 2020) and Havener (Bonnefant Press, 2022). Leaves was shortlisted for the Michael Marks Poetry Award 2021. He is the author of The Waste Land: A Biography of a Poem (Faber & Faber, UK, Norton, US, 2022). He was Poetry Editor at Faber & Faber from 2012 to 2023. His second book-length collection, Earth House, was published by Bloodaxe Books in 2023 and was longlisted for The Laurel Prize 2023.-bio via Bloodaxe Books 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

Today’s poem goes out to all the unsung heroes of the grease trap and the fry basket. Happy reading.Jim Daniels is the author of numerous collections of poetry, most recently The Middle Ages (Red Mountain Press, 2018) and Street Calligraphy (Steel Toe Books, 2017). His third collection, Places/Everyone (University of Wisconsin Press, 1985), won the inaugural Brittingham Prize in Poetry in 1985. He lives in Pittsburgh and is the Thomas Stockham University Professor of English at Carnegie Mellon University.-bio via Academy of American Poets 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

Lucille Clifton was born in Depew, New York, on June 27, 1936. Her first book of poems, Good Times (Random House, 1969), was rated one of the best books of the year by the New York Times.Clifton remained employed in state and federal government positions until 1971, when she became a writer in residence at Coppin State College in Baltimore, Maryland, where she completed two collections: Good News About the Earth (Random House, 1972) and An Ordinary Woman (Random House, 1974). She was the author of several other collections of poetry, including Blessing the Boats: New and Selected Poems 1988–2000 (BOA Editions, 2000), which won the National Book Award; Good Woman: Poems and a Memoir 1969–1980 (BOA Editions, 1987), which was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize; and Two-Headed Woman (University of Massachusetts Press, 1980), also a Pulitzer Prize nominee as well as the recipient of the University of Massachusetts Press Juniper Prize.In 1999, Clifton was elected a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets. She served as the poet laureate for the State of Maryland from 1979 to 1985, and distinguished professor of humanities at St. Mary’s College of Maryland.After a long battle with cancer, Lucille Clifton died on February 13, 2010, at the age of seventy-three.-bio via Academy of American Poets 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

Captain Robert von Ranke Graves (24 July 1895 – 7 December 1985) was an English poet, soldier, historical novelist and critic. His father was Alfred Perceval Graves, a celebrated Irish poet and figure in the Gaelic revival; they were both Celticists and students of Irish mythology.Robert Graves produced more than 140 works in his lifetime. His poems, his translations and innovative analysis of the Greek myths, his memoir of his early life—including his role in World War I—Good-Bye to All That (1929), and his speculative study of poetic inspiration The White Goddess have never been out of print. He is also a renowned short story writer, with stories such as "The Tenement" still being popular today.He earned his living from writing, particularly popular historical novels such as I, Claudius; King Jesus; The Golden Fleece; and Count Belisarius. He also was a prominent translator of Classical Latin and Ancient Greek texts; his versions of The Twelve Caesars and The Golden Ass remain popular for their clarity and entertaining style. Graves was awarded the 1934 James Tait Black Memorial Prize for both I, Claudius and Claudius the God. 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

Today’s economical little poem from Carl Sandburg is jam-packed with allusion and metaphor. 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

The conclusion to yesterday’s poem. 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

Today, while the host works in the mountains, we are featuring the first half of a longer poem by Fugitive poet Donald Davidson, imagining the inner agonies of a Robert E. Lee in retirement. Part 2 tomorrow.Associated with the Fugitives and Southern Agrarians, poet Donald (Grady) Davidson was born in Tennessee and earned both a BA and an MA from Vanderbilt University in Nashville. Davidson published five collections of poetry The Outland Piper (1924), The Tall Man (1927), Lee in the Mountains and Other Poems (1938), The Long Street: Poems (1961), and Collected Poems: 1922–1961 (1966). In the 1920s, Davidson co-founded and co-edited the influential journal The Fugitive. His prose writings include an essay in I’ll Take My Stand: The South and the Agrarian Tradition (1930); a collection, Still Rebels, Still Yankees and Other Essays (1957); and Southern Writers in the Modern World (1958), which he first delivered as a lecture at Mercer University in Georgia. Davidson wrote a two-volume history of Tennessee, The Tennessee Volume One: The Old River: Frontier to Secession (1946) and The Tennessee Volume Two: The New River: Civil War to TVA (1948).Davidson taught English at Vanderbilt University from 1920 to 1968. He spent summers teaching at the Bread Loaf School of English in Vermont.-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 Bly (born December 23, 1926, in Madison, Minnesota) is the author of more than thirty books of poetry, including Stealing Sugar from the Castle: Selected Poems (W. W. Norton, 2013); Talking into the Ear of a Donkey: Poems(W. W. Norton, 2011); Reaching Out to the World: New and Selected Prose Poems (White Pine Press, 2009); My Sentence Was a Thousand Years of Joy (HarperCollins, 2005); The Night Abraham Called to the Stars (HarperCollins, 2001); Loving a Woman in Two Worlds (Dial Press, 1985); This Body is Made of Camphor and Gopherwood (Harper & Row, 1977); and The Light Around the Body (Harper & Row, 1967), which won the National Book Award.As the editor of the magazine The Sixties (begun as The Fifties), Bly introduced many unknown European and South American poets to an American audience. He is also the editor of numerous collections including (Beacon Press, 2007); Mirabai: Ecstatic Poems(Beacon Press, 2004), co-authored with Jane Hirshfield; The Soul Is Here for Its Own Joy: Sacred Poems from Many Cultures (HarperCollins, 1995); Leaping Poetry: An Idea with Poems and Translations (Beacon Press, 1975); The Rag and Bone Shop of the Heart: Poems for Men (HarperCollins, 1992); News of the Universe: Poems of Twofold Consciousness (Sierra Club Books, 1980); and A Poetry Reading Against the Vietnam War (American Writers Against the Vietnam War, 1966). Among his many books of translations are Lorca and Jiminez: Selected Poems (Beacon Press, 1997); Times Alone: Selected Poems of Antonio Machado (Wesleyan University Press, 1983); The Kabir Book: Ecstatic Poems (Beacon Press, 1977); Friends, You Drank Some Darkness: Three Swedish Poets—Martinson, Ekeloef, and Transtromer (Beacon Press, 1975); and Neruda and Vallejo: Selected Poems (Beacon Press, 1971), co-translated with John Knoepfle and James Wright.Bly’s honors include Guggenheim, Rockefeller, and National Endowment for the Arts fellowships, as well as The Robert Frost Medal from the Poetry Society of America.Bly lived on a farm in the western part of Minnesota with his wife and three children until his death on November 21, 2021.-bio via Academy of American Poets 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 (1947–1995), former Poet Laureate of New Hampshire, was the author of four volumes of poetry. Her collected poems were published by Graywolf Press in 2007. 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

Today’s poem isn’t what you think, until you do some thinking–then its exactly what you thought.R. S. Gwynn (born 1948) is the author of six collections of poetry, including Dogwatch (2014) and the University of Missouri Breakthrough Award winner The Drive-In (1986).-bio via Library of Congress 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

Today’s poem, a lover’s plea disguised as a meditation on virtuous restraint, marks the end of our week of sonnets. 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

Today, the Bard gets bitter. 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

Today’s sonnet details a painful reality: even great poets lose their hair sometimes. 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

Today, a (biased) case for poems as the monuments that can outlast monuments. 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

Today’s poem–arguably the Bard’s most famous sonnet–will set the stage for four days of dramatically underrated Shakespearean sonnets. 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

From a New York Times obituary of Oliver Herford (1860-1935): "His wit…was too original at first to go down with the very delectable highly respectable magazine editors of the Nineties. It was odd, unexpected, his own brand. It takes genius to write the best nonsense, which is often far more sensible than sense. Herford's, the result of care and polish, looked unforced.…Intelligent, thoughtful, well-bred, what with his animals and his children and his artistic simplicities, he was remote from the style of the best moderns. No violence, no obscenity, not even obscurity or that long-windedness which is the signet of the illustrious writer of today. An old-fashioned gentleman, a painstaking artist, whose work had edge, grace and distinction.” 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

Today’s poem is a good reminder about noblesse obliges. 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

Today’s poem might be a perfect companion to a bedtime-reading of Where the Wild Things Are on a balmy summer evening. 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

Today’s poem is another from Belloc–one of his Cautionary Tales for Children just in time for the beginning of a quiet summer (maybe?). 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

Today’s poem is a series of increasingly vital pleas. Happy reading.For more of Belloc’s advice to the young, find yourself a copy of Cautionary Tales for Children! 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

Today we’re feeling out a Saturday bonus episode featuring a reading of “Morituri Salutamus” in its entirety. 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

Today’s episode features selections from Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s fifty-year retrospective on his own graduation, the lengthy speech-in-verse, “Morituri Salutamus: Poem for the Fiftieth Anniversary of the Class of 1825 in Bowdoin College.” Come back tomorrow to hear the poem in full. 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

Today’s poem from Christina Rossetti is not about high school or college, but it might still be about graduation. 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