The Daily Poem

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

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 U...

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

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

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

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

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

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 s...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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...

“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

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

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

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

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

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

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