The Daily Poem

Happy birthday to the Bard! NB : Anyone itching to dig deeper into Shakespeare’s plays should look no further than one of our sister podcasts, The Play’s the Thing! 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

Louise Glück was born in New York City in 1943. She is the author of numerous poetry collections, including Winter Recipes from the Collective (2021);  Faithful and Virtuous Night (2014), which won the National Book Award;  Poems: 1962-2012 (2012), winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize; and  The Wild Iris (1992), which won the Pulitzer Prize; and Ararat (1990), which won the Rebekah Johnson B...

Francis Thompson was born in Northwest England in 1859. The son of Catholic converts, as a boy he was initially educated for the priesthood. When he was 18, at his parents' insistence, he entered Owens College in Manchester to follow in his father's footsteps and study medicine. But before long, he left for London hoping to pursue what he believed was his true vocation of being a writer. As a resu...

Today’s poem–benign anthem of the resilient human spirit or a hymn to radical autonomy?–has divided audiences for more than a century. Born in Gloucester, England, poet, editor, and critic William Ernest Henley was educated at Crypt Grammar School, where he studied with the poet T.E. Brown, and the University of St. Andrews. His father was a struggling bookseller who died when Henley was a teenage...

What do John Donne, Paul Simon, and AC/DC have in common? 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 it’s Whitman (and Dylan) on the march of progress. 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 imagines what you might do when you’re through paying taxes. 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 an ekphrasis on a portrait of the poet himself–all that the portrait does and doesn’t capture or convey. 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 lighter take on the self-portrait ekphrasis. What is it about the self-portrait that is so intriguing to poets, anyway? 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

Elizabeth Jennings (1926-2001) was born in Boston, Lincolnshire but moved to Oxford at the age of six where she lived for the rest of her life. She studied at St. Anne’s College, Oxford and worked in advertising, at the City Library and briefly in publishing before becoming a full-time writer. Her consistent devotion to poetry yielded over twenty books during her life, a New Collected Poems appear...

Richard Howard (born Oct 13, 1929, died march 31, 2022) was credited with introducing modern French fiction—particularly examples of the Nouveau Roman—to the American public; his translation of Charles Baudelaire’s Les Fleurs du Mal (1984) won a National Book Award in 1984. A selection of Howard’s critical prose was collected in the volume Paper Trail: Selected Prose 1965-2003 , and his collection...

ekphrasis: “Description” in Greek. An ekphrastic poem is a vivid description of a scene or, more commonly, a work of art. Through the imaginative act of narrating and reflecting on the “action” of a painting or sculpture, the poet may amplify and expand its meaning. Once internationally famous as the author of the poem "The Man with the Hoe," Edwin Markham (1852-1940) was a popular American litera...

Today’s poem is in honor of April being (according to now-outdated tradition) the last prudent month till Autumn in which to eat oysters. Happy reading! Self-effacing, yet having an expressive critical ability; reveling in the possibilities of fancy, though thoroughly at home with the sophisticated nuances of logic and mathematics, Lewis Carroll (Charles Lutwidge Dodgson) was an individual who, th...

West Indian poet and playwright Derek Walcott made his debut as an 18-year-old with In a Green Night . For many years he divided his time among Saint Lucia; Boston University, where he taught; and Trinidad, where he managed a theater. Walcott also worked as an artist and combined his poetry with painting in the volume Tiepolo’s Hound (2005). Walcott’s works often deal with Caribbean history, while...

In today’s poem: George Herbert meditating on the simple profundity of a single, sustained 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

Today’s poem–a layered, jokingly-serious response to one of last week’s–comes from Ogden Nash, dubbed the ‘Laurate of Light Verse.’ Which banner would you rally under–Nash or Byron? One of the most widely appreciated and imitated writers of light verse , Frediric Ogden Nash was born in Rye, New York, on August 19, 1902, to Edmund Strudwick and Mattie Nash. He came from a distinguished family; the...

A joyous Eastertide and happy reading to you all! 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

Due to the inconsistencies and ambiguities within his work and the scarcity of information about his personal life, Andrew Marvell has been a source of fascination for scholars and readers since his work found recognition in the early decades of the twentieth century. Born on March 31, 1621, Marvell grew up in the Yorkshire town of Hull, England, where his father, Rev. Andrew Marvell, was a lectur...

English peer and poet George Gordon Byron was one of the bad boys of the Romantic movement and, by some accounts, the first ‘celebrity.’ Like countless celebrities who would come after, he was embroiled in a number of romantic scandals and never accused of being overly pious (to put it Britishly). Nevertheless, he was moved by a number of stories from the Hebrew scriptures–a response that inspired...

Poet, editor, translator, and critic Louis Simpson was born in Jamaica to Scottish and Russian parents. He moved to the United States when he was 17 to study at Columbia University. After his time in the army, and a brief period in France, Simpson worked as an editor in New York City before completing his PhD at Columbia. He taught at colleges such as Columbia University, the University of Califor...

Alfred Edward Housman was born in Fockbury, Worcestershire, England on March 26, 1859 and was the eldest of seven children. A year after his birth, Housman’s family moved to nearby Bromsgrove, where the poet grew up and had his early education. In 1877, he attended St. John’s College, Oxford and received first class honours in classical moderations. Housman became distracted, however, when he fell...

John Robert Lee was born, and lives in St Lucia. He is the author of three collections of poetry,  Elemental , (2008),  Collected Poems  1975-2015 , (2017), and  Pierrot , (2020). His poems are included in a number of international anthologies and periodicals including The Penguin Book of Caribbean Verse , The Oxford Book of Caribbean Verse , Poetry Wales , Small Axe , and The Missing Slate . He h...

Today’s poem takes the peripheral and makes it the primary. 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 Ezra Pound (a poet with his own colorful history of exile) is after the style of Li Po , featured last week. Ezra Pound was born in Hailey, Idaho, on October 30, 1885. He completed two years of college at the University of Pennsylvania and earned a degree from Hamilton College in 1905. After teaching at Wabash College for two years, he travelled abroad to Spain, Italy, and London...

Today’s poem answers the question you never thought to ask: ‘What do Macbeth and a buzz saw have in common?’ 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