The Daily Poem

Today’s poem, one of English literature’s most extracted and anthologized, is still best appreciated when read in light of the momentous collection it belongs to. 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 also a poem for “ABC”–which is to say, it’s a brilliantly executed example of the alphabetic form known as the abecedarian . Happy reading. Jessica Greenbaum is the author of  Inventing Difficulty  (Silverfish Review Press, 1998), winner of Gerald Cable Prize; The Two Yvonnes  (Princeton University Press, 2012), named by Library Journal as a Best Book in Poetry; and  Spilled and Go...

Rhina P. Espaillat was born in the Dominican Republic under the dictatorship of Rafael Trujillo. After Espaillat’s great-uncle opposed the regime, her family was exiled to the United States and settled in New York City. She began writing poetry as a young girl—in Spanish and then English—and has published in both languages. Espaillat’s numerous poetry collections include And After All (2019); Her...

In today’s poem, Plath (who died at 30) contrasts the transience of youth and nature with the seeming permanence of art and artifice. (I even make time for a brief shout-out to a not-so-transitory Golden Mouth.) 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 selection from Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s American epic, The Song of Hiawatha . The passage is structured beautifully so that two divergent streams of imaginative thought suddenly flow together into a single, tangible reality. 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.substac...

Today's poem is an enduring memorial for a hastily interred hero. 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

Kenneth Grahame (8 March 1859 – 6 July 1932) is best remembered for the classic of children's literature The Wind in the Willows (1908). Scottish by birth, he spent most of his childhood with his grandmother in England, following the death of his mother and his father's inability to look after the children. After attending St Edward's School in Oxford, his ambition to attend university was thwarte...

Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1860-1935) wrote fiction and nonfiction works including several collections of poetry and her most famous short story, “The Yellow Wallpaper” (1892). Her poems address the issues of women’s suffrage and the injustices of women’s lives. She was also the author of Women and Economics (1898), Concerning Children (1900), The Home: Its Work and Influence (1903) , Human Work (1...

“The line through the hole in the dark…trembling/with its high connections.” Robert Morgan (born 1944) is an American poet , short story writer , non-fiction author, biographer , and novelist . He studied at North Carolina State University as an engineering and mathematics major, transferred to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill as an English major, graduating in 1965, and completed a...

Today’s poem is about politics (but this, too, shall pass). 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 reluctant reckoning with the present absence created by 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

Luci Shaw was born in 1928 in London, England, and has lived in Canada, Australia and the U.S.A. A graduate of Wheaton College, she became co-founder and later president of Harold Shaw Publishers, and since 1988 has been a Writer in Residence at Regent College, Vancouver, Canada. Shaw has lectured in North America and abroad on topics such as art and spirituality, the Christian imagination, poetry...

In today’s poem, while everyone else is dressing up to become something terrible, the acerbic Jonathan Swift gives us a domestic horror story in reverse. Happy reading. Anglo-Irish poet, satirist, essayist, and political pamphleteer Jonathan Swift was born in Dublin, Ireland. He spent much of his early adult life in England before returning to Dublin to serve as Dean of St. Patrick’s Cathedral, Du...

Today’s poem is the stuff real nightmares are made of. Happy reading. Nesbitt’s poetry for children is “irrepressible, unpredictable, and raucously popular,” in the words of former Children’s Poet Laureate J. Patrick Lewis. Nesbitt’s poems frequently deal with humorous, relatable situations that verge on the madcap. He is the author of numerous books of poetry for children, including Believe It or...

Today’s poem is some of the greatest ironic advice ever offered on the stage–do as Polonius says, not as he does, and you’ll be just fine. 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

Bob Hicok was born in 1960 in Michigan and worked for many years in the automotive die industry. A published poet long before he earned his MFA, Hicok is the author of several collections of poems, including The Legend of Light , winner of the Felix Pollak Prize in Poetry in 1995 and named a 1997 ALA Booklist Notable Book of the Year; Plus Shipping (1998); Animal Soul (2001), a finalist for the Na...

Today’s poem commemorates the Council of Elrond, testifies to the love (and fussiness) of hobbits, and even boasts a possible Shakespearean connection. 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

Poet and translator Henry Taylor was born in Lincoln, Virginia on June 21, 1942. He earned a BA from the University of Virginia and an MA from Hollins University. Taylor’s many poetry collections include Crooked Run (2006); Understanding Fiction: Poems 1986-1996 ; The Flying Change (1985), for which he received the Pulitzer Prize; An Afternoon of Pocket Billiards (1975); and The Horse Show at Midn...

Today’s poem is a particularly novel example of an ancient writerly tradition: writing about how hard it is to write. Happy reading. On February 9, 1874, Amy Lowell was born at Sevenels, a ten-acre family estate in Brookline, Massachusetts. Her family was Episcopalian, of old New England stock, and at the top of Boston society. Lowell was the youngest of five children. Her elder brother Abbott Law...

Today’s poem, subtitled “a nun takes the veil,” is one of Hopkins’ earliest surviving works. 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

Though its author remained otherwise undistinguished, today's poem–with all its ecstasy, agony, and irony–has become almost as essential to the American experience as baseball itself. Happy reading! Ernest Lawrence Thayer was born on August 14, 1863, in Lawrence, Massachusetts. He graduated with a BA in philosophy from Harvard University in 1885, where he was a member of the Hasty Pudding Club and...

Today’s poem is an appreciation of little things. 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 celebrates the crisp, cool days of early Autumn as the most hospitable season of the year. 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 world-wandering John Masefield waxes Solomonic 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 for everyone who knows that children keep you young, but also know how old you feel while it’s happening. Hall, taken aback by the success of this poem, expressed some regret that he became “the fellow whose son strapped him into the electric chair,” explaining that its inspiration came from 2 a.m. bottle-feedings that he conducted “with pleasure.” Happy reading. This is a public e...