The Daily Poem

Today’s poem is about (not) getting the last word. Happy reading.Walter de la Mare, born on April 25, 1873 in London, is considered one of modern literature’s chief exemplars of the romantic imagination. His complete works form a sustained treatment of romantic themes: dreams, death, rare states of mind and emotion, fantasy worlds of childhood, and the pursuit of the transcendent.As a youth he attended St. Paul’s Cathedral School, and his formal education did not extend beyond this point. Upon graduation he went to work for the Anglo-American (Standard) Oil Company, remaining with the firm for 18 years. De la Mare began writing short stories and poetry while working as a bookkeeper in the company’s London office during the 1890s. His first published short story, “Kismet,” appeared in the journal Sketch in 1895. In 1902 he published his first major work, the poetry collection Songs of Childhood, which was recognized as a significant example of children’s literature for its creative imagery and variety of meters. Critics often assert that a childlike richness of imagination influenced everything de la Mare wrote, emphasizing his frequent depiction of childhood as a time of intuition, deep emotion, and closeness to spiritual truth. In 1908, following the publication of his novel Henry Brocken and the poetry collection titled Poems, de la Mare was granted a Civil List pension, enabling him to terminate his corporate employment and focus exclusively on writing.….As a poet de la Mare is often compared with Thomas Hardy and William Blake for their respective themes of mortality and visionary illumination. His greatest concern was the creation of a dreamlike tone implying a tangible but nonspecific transcendent reality. This characteristic of the poems has drawn many admirers, though also eliciting criticism that the poet indulged in an undefined sense of mystery without systematic acceptance of any specific doctrine. Some commentators also criticize the poetry for having an archness of tone more suitable for children’s verse, while others value this playful quality. It is generally agreed, however, that de la Mare was a skillful manipulator of poetic structure, a skill that is particularly evident in the earlier collections.….For his extravagance of invention de la Mare is sometimes labeled an escapist who retreats from accepted definitions of reality and the relationships of conventional existence. His approach to reality, however, is not escapist; rather, it profoundly explores the world he considered most significant—that of the imagination. In the London Mercury J.B. Priestley favorably concluded in 1924 that de la Mare is “one of that most lovable order of artists who never lose sight of their childhood, but re-live it continually in their work and contrive to find expression for their maturity in it, memories and impressions, its romantic vision of the world.”-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

Transcribed - Published: 23 April 2025

Today’s poem places us on the frontier of new 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

Transcribed - Published: 21 April 2025

Today, the obligatory Good Friday poem (because it is excellent). 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

Transcribed - Published: 18 April 2025

In today’s poem, Sandburg’s ability to make the same two lines land so differently with so little happening in between is a remarkable feat. 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

Transcribed - Published: 16 April 2025

Today’s poem is sometimes known as “Song of the Ent and the Entwife” because, though Tolkien tinkered with it for more than a decade, it did not take its final form until he decided to adapt it for inclusion in The Lord of the Rings. 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

Transcribed - Published: 14 April 2025

Franz Wright was born in Vienna, Austria and grew up in the Northwest, the Midwest, and California. He earned a BA from Oberlin College in 1977. His collections of poetry include The Beforelife (2001); God’s Silence (2006); Walking to Martha’s Vineyard, which won the Pulitzer Prize in 2004; Wheeling Motel (2009); Kindertotenwald (2011); and F (2013). In his precisely crafted, lyrical poems, Wright addresses the subjects of isolation, illness, spirituality, and gratitude. Of his work, he has commented, “I think ideally, I would like, in a poem, to operate by way of suggestion.”Critic Helen Vendler wrote in the New York Review of Books, “Wright's scale of experience, like Berryman's, runs from the homicidal to the ecstatic ... His best forms of or originality: deftness in patterning, startling metaphors, starkness of speech, compression of both pain and joy, and a stoic self-possession with the agonies and penalties of existence.” Langdon Hammer, in the New York Times Book Review, wrote of God’s Silence: “In his best poems, Wright grasps at the ‘radiantly obvious thing’ in short-lined short lyrics that turn and twist down the page. The urgency and calculated unsteadiness of the utterances, with their abrupt shifts of direction, jump-cuts and quips, mime the wounded openness of a speaker struggling to find faith.”Wright received a Whiting Fellowship, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts. He translated poetry by Rainer Maria Rilke and Rene Char; in 2008 he and his wife, Elizabeth Oehlkers Wright, co-translated a collection by the Belarusian poet Valzhyna Mort, Factory of Tears. He taught at Emerson College and other universities, worked in mental health clinics, and volunteered at a center for grieving children. His father was the Pulitzer Prize–winning poet James Wright. He died in 2015. 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

Transcribed - Published: 11 April 2025

Mondays go down easier with Mary Oliver. 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

Transcribed - Published: 7 April 2025

Today’s selections are characteristic passages from (maybe) the greatest and (certainly) strangest poem in Lyrical Ballads–Coleridge’s Ancient Mariner. Happy reading.(Nota bene: If you are ready for your own copy of Lyrical Ballads, the Oxford World Classics edition is a great way to see the developments across early editions.) 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

Transcribed - Published: 4 April 2025

While you can count on one hand the poems Coleridge contributed to Lyrical Ballads, they are some of the most memorable in the collection. Today’s poem uses an abstract description to conjure a very concrete social evil–the state of British prisons at the end of the long 18th 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

Transcribed - Published: 2 April 2025

We begin a week of selections from Lyrical Ballads with today’s nostalgic and pastoral poem, “Lines Written a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey, on Revisiting the Banks of the Wye during a Tour, July 13, 1798.” Happy reading!Jonathan Kerr of the Wordsworth Trust writes about the revolutionary context of the Lyrical Ballads and the revolutionary nature of the project itself:“Wordsworth and Coleridge’s first major literary undertaking and a pioneering work of English Romanticism – came into being at a tumultuous moment in England’s history…Not since the English Revolution had the country faced such alarming upheaval and discord within its borders.On first glance it might not seem like the little collection authored by Wordsworth and Coleridge has much to do with this heady and factional atmosphere. Lyrical Ballads came about in the spring and summer of 1798, when the Coleridge and Wordsworth families lived as neighbours in the secluded village of Holford, Somerset. Wordsworth and Coleridge had only known one another a short time, but they became quick friends and mutually-admiring colleagues. The small village provided both poets with a break from the spirited goings-on of cities like London and Bristol, which could often be dangerous places for young men with unorthodox opinions. Coleridge and Wordsworth, both committed reformers through the early years of the French Revolution, knew this is as well as anybody, and their retreat into the country was motivated as much by concerns for their personal security as anything else.…Whether or not Wordsworth and Coleridge continued to sympathize with the revolution abroad, there can be little doubt that with Lyrical Ballads the two were committed to one kind of revolution at least, a revolution in the sphere of poetry and art. Lyrical Ballads is among other things an attempt to purify poetry of the cold conventions which had come to dominate the literary scene, at least according to both poets; in place of this, Wordsworth and Coleridge wanted to bring poetry back to what is most common and recognizable, and also most important, within our emotional, social, and imaginative lives. If this doesn’t seem like such an extraordinary undertaking today, this might owe to the remarkable success of Wordsworth and Coleridge’s quiet revolution on the literary front.” 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

Transcribed - Published: 31 March 2025

What do Hilaire Belloc and a scorpion have in common? 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

Transcribed - Published: 28 March 2025

Oliver Goldsmith (born Nov. 10, 1730, Kilkenny West, County Westmeath, Ire.—died April 4, 1774, London) was an Anglo-Irish essayist, poet, novelist, dramatist, and eccentric, made famous by such works as the series of essays The Citizen of the World, or, Letters from a Chinese Philosopher (1762), the poem The Deserted Village (1770), the novel The Vicar of Wakefield (1766), and the play She Stoops to Conquer (1773).Goldsmith was the son of an Anglo-Irish clergyman, the Rev. Charles Goldsmith, curate in charge of Kilkenny West, County Westmeath. At about the time of his birth, the family moved into a substantial house at nearby Lissoy, where Oliver spent his childhood. Much has been recorded concerning his youth, his unhappy years as an undergraduate at Trinity College, Dublin, where he received the B.A. degree in February 1749, and his many misadventures before he left Ireland in the autumn of 1752 to study in the medical school at Edinburgh. His father was now dead, but several of his relations had undertaken to support him in his pursuit of a medical degree. Later on, in London, he came to be known as Dr. Goldsmith—Doctor being the courtesy title for one who held the Bachelor of Medicine—but he took no degree while at Edinburgh nor, so far as anyone knows, during the two-year period when, despite his meagre funds, which were eventually exhausted, he somehow managed to make his way through Europe. The first period of his life ended with his arrival in London, bedraggled and penniless, early in 1756.Goldsmith’s rise from total obscurity was a matter of only a few years. He worked as an apothecary’s assistant, school usher, physician, and as a hack writer—reviewing, translating, and compiling. Much of his work was for Ralph Griffiths’s Monthly Review. It remains amazing that this young Irish vagabond, unknown, uncouth, unlearned, and unreliable, was yet able within a few years to climb from obscurity to mix with aristocrats and the intellectual elite of London. Such a rise was possible because Goldsmith had one quality, soon noticed by booksellers and the public, that his fellow literary hacks did not possess—the gift of a graceful, lively, and readable style. His rise began with the Enquiry into the Present State of Polite Learning in Europe (1759), a minor work. Soon he emerged as an essayist, in The Bee and other periodicals, and above all in his Chinese Letters. These essays were first published in the journal The Public Ledger and were collected as The Citizen of the World in 1762. The same year brought his Life of Richard Nash, of Bath, Esq. Already Goldsmith was acquiring those distinguished and often helpful friends whom he alternately annoyed and amused, shocked and charmed—Samuel Johnson, Sir Joshua Reynolds, Thomas Percy, David Garrick, Edmund Burke, and James Boswell. The obscure drudge of 1759 became in 1764 one of the nine founder-members of the famous Club, a select body, including Reynolds, Johnson, and Burke, which met weekly for supper and talk. Goldsmith could now afford to live more comfortably, but his extravagance continually ran him into debt, and he was forced to undertake more hack work. He thus produced histories of England and of ancient Rome and Greece, biographies, verse anthologies, translations, and works of popular science. These were mainly compilations of works by other authors, which Goldsmith then distilled and enlivened by his own gift for fine writing. Some of these makeshift compilations went on being reprinted well into the 19th century, however.By 1762 Goldsmith had established himself as an essayist with his Citizen of the World, in which he used the device of satirizing Western society through the eyes of an Oriental visitor to London. By 1764 he had won a reputation as a poet with The Traveller, the first work to which he put his name. It embodied both his memories of tramping through Europe and his political ideas. In 1770 he confirmed that reputation with the more famous Deserted Village, which contains charming vignettes of rural life while denouncing the evictions of the country poor at the hands of wealthy landowners. In 1766 Goldsmith revealed himself as a novelist with The Vicar of Wakefield (written in 1762), a portrait of village life whose idealization of the countryside, sentimental moralizing, and melodramatic incidents are underlain by a sharp but good-natured irony. In 1768 Goldsmith turned to the theatre with The Good Natur’d Man, which was followed in 1773 by the much more effective She Stoops to Conquer, which was immediately successful. This play has outlived almost all other English-language comedies from the early 18th to the late 19th century by virtue of its broadly farcical horseplay and vivid, humorous characterizations.During his last decade Goldsmith’s conversational encounters with Johnson and others, his foolishness, and his wit were preserved in Boswell’s Life of Samuel Johnson. Goldsmith eventually became deeply embroiled in mounting debts despite his considerable earnings as an author, though, and after a short illness in the spring of 1774 he died.-bio via Britannica 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

Transcribed - Published: 26 March 2025

Today’s poems (too lovely to keep behind the paywall) come from Edwin Muir and Denise Levertov and both marvel at different aspects of the same great mystery. 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

Transcribed - Published: 25 March 2025

As the long, exhausting march toward summer begins for many students, the wise and compassionate David Wagoner takes us to the intersection of love and weakness. Happy reading.David Wagoner was recognized as the leading poet of the Pacific Northwest, often compared to his early mentor Theodore Roethke, and highly praised for his skillful, insightful and serious body of work. He won numerous prestigious literary awards including the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize, two Pushcart Prizes, and the Academy of Arts and Letters Award, and was nominated twice for the National Book Award. The author of ten acclaimed novels, Wagoner’s fiction has been awarded the Sherwood Anderson Foundation Award. Professor emeritus at the University of Washington, Wagoner enjoyed an excellent reputation as both a writer and a teacher of writing. He was selected to serve as chancellor of the Academy of American Poets in 1978, replacing Robert Lowell, and was the editor of Poetry Northwest until 2002.Born in Ohio and raised in Indiana, Midwesterner Wagoner was initially influenced by family ties, ethnic neighborhoods, industrial production and pollution, and the urban environment. His move to the Pacific Northwest in 1954, at Roethke’s urging, changed both his outlook and his poetry. Writing in the Contemporary Authors Autobiography Series, Wagoner recalls: “when I drove down out of the Cascades and saw the region that was to become my home territory for the next thirty years, my extreme uneasiness turned into awe. I had never seen or imagined such greenness, such a promise of healing growth. Everything I saw appeared to be living ancestral forms of the dead earth where I’d tried to grow up.” Wagoner’s poetry often mourns the loss of a natural, fertile wilderness, though David K. Robinson, writing in Contemporary Poetry, described the themes of “survival, anger at those who violate the natural world” and “a Chaucerian delight in human oddity” at work in the poems as well. Critics have also praised Wagoner’s poetry for its crisp descriptive detail and metaphorical bent. However, Paul Breslin in the New York Times Book Review pronounced David Wagoner to be “predominantly a nature poet…as Frost and Roethke were nature poets.”Wagoner’s first books, including Dry Sun, Dry Wind (1953), A Place to Stand (1958), and Poems (1959), demonstrate an early mastery of his chosen subject matter and form. Often comprised of observations of nature, Wagoner links his speakers’ predicaments and estrangement to the larger imperfection of the world. In Wagoner’s second book, A Place to Stand,Roethke’s influence is clear, and the book uses journey poems to represent the poet’s own quest back to his beginnings. Wagoner’s fourth book, The Nesting Ground (1963), reflects his relocation physically, aesthetically and emotionally; the Midwest is abandoned for the lush abundance of the Pacific Northwest, and Wagoner’s style is less concerned with lamentation or complaint and more with cataloguing the bounty around him. James K. Robinson called the title poem from Staying Alive (1966) “one of the best American poems since World War II.” In poems like “The Words,” Wagoner discovers harmony with nature by learning to be open to all it has to offer: “I take what is: / The light beats on the stones, / the wind over water shines / Like long grass through the trees, / As I set loose, like birds / in a landscape, the old words.” Robert Cording, who called Staying Alive “the volume where Wagoner comes into his own as a poet,” believed that for Wagoner, taking what is involves “an acceptance of our fragmented selves, which through love we are always trying to patch together; an acceptance of our own darkness; and an acceptance of the world around us with which we must reacquaint ourselves.”Collected Poems 1956-1976 (1976) was nominated for the National Book Award and praised by X. J. Kennedy in Parnassus for offering poems which are “beautifully clear; not merely comprehensible, but clear in the sense that their contents are quickly visible.” Yet it was Who Shall Be the Sun? (1978),based upon Native American myth and legend, which gained critical attention. Hayden Carruth, writing in Harper’s Magazine, called the book “a remarkable achievement,” not only for its presentation of “the literalness of shamanistic mysticism” but also for “its true feeling.” Hudson Review’s James Finn Cotter also noted how Wagoner “has not written translations but condensed versions that avoid stereotyped language….The voice is Wagoner’s own, personal, familiar, concerned. He has achieved a remarkable fusion of nature, legend and psyche in these poems.”In Broken Country (1979), also nominated for the National Book Award, shows Wagoner honing the instructional backpacking poems he had first used in Staying Alive. Leonard Neufeldt, writing in New England Review,called “the love lyrics” of the first section “among the finest since Williams’ ‘Asphodel.’” Wagoner has been accused of using staid pastoral conventions in book after book, as well as writing less well about human subjects. However, his books have continued to receive critical attention, often recognized for the ways in which they use encounters with nature as metaphors for encounters with the self. First Light (1983), Wagoner’s “most intense” collection, according to James K. Robinson, reflects Wagoner’s third marriage to poet Robin Seyfried. And Publishers Weekly celebrated Walt Whitman Bathing (1996) for its use of “plainspoken formal virtuosity” which allows for “a pragmatic clarity of perception.” A volume of new and collected poems, Traveling Light, was released in 1999. Sampling Wagoner’s work through the years, many reviewers found the strongest poems to also be the newest. Rochelle Ratner in Library Journal noted “since many of the best are in the ‘New Poems’ section, it might make sense to wait for his next volume.” That next volume, The House of Song (2002) won high praise for its variety of subject matter and pitch-perfect craft. Christina Pugh in Poetry declared “The House of Song boasts a superb architecture, and each one of its rooms (or in Italian, stanzas) affords a pleasure that enhances the last.” In 2008 Wagoner published his twenty-third collection of verse, A Map of the Night. Reviewing the book for the Seattle Times, Sheila Farr found many poems shot through with nostalgia, adding “the book feels like a summing-up.” Conceding that “not all the work reaches the high plane of Wagoner’s reputation,” Farr described its “finest moments” as those which “resonate with the title, venturing into darkness and helping us recognize its familiar places.”In addition to his numerous books of poetry, David Wagoner was also a successful novelist, writing both mainstream fiction and regional Western fiction. Offering a steady mix of drama seasoned with occasional comedy, Wagoner’s tales often involve a naive central character’s encounter with and acceptance of human failing and social corruption. In the Contemporary Authors Autobiography Series, Wagoner described his first novel, The Man in the Middle (1954), as “a thriller with some Graham Greene overtones about a railroad crossing watchmen in violent political trouble in Chicago,” his second novel, Money, Money, Money (1955), as a story about “a young tree surgeon who can’t touch, look at, or even think about money, though he has a lot of it,” his third novel, Rock (1958) as a tale of “teenage Chicago delinquents,” and his fifth novel, Baby, Come On Inside (1968) as a story “about an aging popular singer who’d lost his voice.” As a popular novelist, however, Wagoner is best known for The Escape Artist (1965), the story of an amateur magician and the unscrupulous adults who attempt to exploit him, which was adapted as a film in 1981. Wagoner produced four successful novels as a Western “regional” writer. Structurally and thematically, they bear similarities to his other novels. David W. Madden noted in Twentieth-Century Western Writers: “Central to each of these [Western] works is a young protagonist’s movement from innocence to experience as he journeys across the American frontier encountering an often debased and corrupted world. However, unlike those he meets, the hero retains his fundamental optimism and incorruptibility.”Although Wagoner wrote numerous novels, his reputation rests on his numerous, exquisitely crafted poetry collections, and his dedication as a teacher. Harold Bloom said of Wagoner: “His study of American nostalgias is as eloquent as that of James Wright, and like Wright’s poetry carries on some of the deepest currents in American verse.” And Leonard Neufeldt called Wagoner “simply, one of the most accomplished poets currently at work in and with America…His range and mastery of subjects, voices, and modes, his ability to work with ease in any of the modes (narrative, descriptive, dramatic, lyric, anecdotal) and with any number of species (elegy, satirical portraiture, verse editorial, apostrophe, jeremiad, and childlike song, to name a few) and his frequent combinations of a number of these into astonishingly compelling orchestrations provide us with an intelligent and convincing definition of genius.”Wagoner died in late 2021 at age 95.-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

Transcribed - Published: 24 March 2025

Sarah Lindsay was born in Cedar Rapids, Iowa and earned her BA from St. Olaf College and MFA from the University of North Carolina-Greensboro. She is the author of the full-length poetry collections Primate Behavior (Grove Press, 1997), which was a finalist for the National Book Award, Mount Clutter (Grove Press, 2002), Twigs and Knucklebones (Copper Canyon Press, 2008), and Debt to the Bone-Eating Snotflower (Copper Canyon Press, 2013).Her honors and awards include a Pushcart Prize, the Carolyn Kizer Prize, and J. Howard and Barbara M.J. Wood Prize as well as a Lannan Literary Fellowship. She lives in Greensboro, North Carolina, where she works as a copy editor.-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

Transcribed - Published: 21 March 2025

Siegfried Sassoon was born on 8 September 1886 in Kent. His father was part of a Jewish merchant family, originally from Iran and India, and his mother part of the artistic Thorneycroft family. Sassoon studied at Cambridge University but left without a degree. He then lived the life of a country gentleman, hunting and playing cricket while also publishing small volumes of poetry.In May 1915, Sassoon was commissioned into the Royal Welsh Fusiliers and went to France. He impressed many with his bravery in the front line and was given the nickname 'Mad Jack' for his near-suicidal exploits. He was decorated twice. His brother Hamo was killed in November 1915 at Gallipoli.In the summer of 1916, Sassoon was sent to England to recover from fever. He went back to the front, but was wounded in April 1917 and returned home. Meetings with several prominent pacifists, including Bertrand Russell, had reinforced his growing disillusionment with the war and in June 1917 he wrote a letter that was published in the Times in which he said that the war was being deliberately and unnecessarily prolonged by the government. As a decorated war hero and published poet, this caused public outrage. It was only his friend and fellow poet, Robert Graves, who prevented him from being court-martialled by convincing the authorities that Sassoon had shell-shock. He was sent to Craiglockhart War Hospital in Edinburgh for treatment. Here he met, and greatly influenced, Wilfred Owen. Both men returned to the front where Owen was killed in 1918. Sassoon was posted to Palestine and then returned to France, where he was again wounded, spending the remainder of the war in England. Many of his war poems were published in 'The Old Huntsman' (1917) and 'Counter-Attack' (1918).After the war Sassoon spent a brief period as literary editor of the Daily Herald before going to the United States, travelling the length and breadth of the country on a speaking tour. He then started writing the near-autobiographical novel 'Memoirs of a Fox-hunting Man' (1928). It was an immediate success, and was followed by others including 'Memoirs of an Infantry Officer' (1930) and 'Sherston's Progress' (1936). Sassoon had a number of homosexual affairs but in 1933 surprised many of his friends by marrying Hester Gatty. They had a son, George, but the marriage broke down after World War Two.He continued to write both prose and poetry. In 1957, he was received into the Catholic church. He died on 1 September 1967.-bio via BBC 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

Transcribed - Published: 19 March 2025

The life of this week’s final Scriblerian, Thomas Parnell, rounds out the picture of the entire Scriblerus club as a fraternity of wildly brilliant men all carrying some great pain or wound. Some of them clearly write out of that wound, while others seem to write in spite of it. Parnell straddles the line, and today’s poem is a fine example of his blending of bright energy with a sharp edge. Happy reading.Thomas Parnell (11 September 1679 – 24 October 1718) was an Anglo-Irish poet and clergyman who was a friend of both Alexander Pope and Jonathan Swift.He was born in Dublin, the eldest son of Thomas Parnell (died 1685) of Maryborough, Queen's County (now Portlaoise, County Laois), a prosperous landowner who had been a loyal supporter of Oliver Cromwell during the English Civil War and moved from Congleton, Cheshire to Ireland after the Restoration of Charles II. His mother was Anne Grice of Kilosty, County Tipperary: she also owned property in County Armagh, which she left to Thomas at her death in 1709. His parents married in Dublin in 1674. Thomas was educated at Trinity College, Dublin and collated as Archdeacon of Clogher in 1705. In the last years of the reign of Queen Anne of England he was a popular preacher, but her death put an end to his hope of career advancement. He married Anne (Nancy) Minchin, daughter of Thomas Minchin, who died in 1712, and had three children, two of whom died young. The third child, a girl, is said to have reached a great age. The marriage was a very happy one, and it has been said that Thomas never recovered from Nancy's early death.He spent much of his time in London, where he participated with Pope, Swift and others in the Scriblerus Club, contributing to The Spectator and aiding Pope in his translation of The Iliad. He was also one of the so-called "Graveyard poets": his 'A Night-Piece on Death,' widely considered the first "Graveyard School" poem, was published posthumously in Poems on Several Occasions, collected and edited by Alexander Pope and is thought by some scholars to have been published in December 1721. It is said of his poetry, "it was in keeping with his character, easy and pleasing, enunciating the common places with felicity and grace."-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

Transcribed - Published: 14 March 2025

Today’s poem throws unambiguous shade on one of 18th-century England’s most divisive politicians, and marks out Swift as one of the gutsiest Scriblerians. 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

Transcribed - Published: 12 March 2025

Alexander Pope (1688-1744) was notorious for embroiling himself in literary-political controversy–his sharp pen writing scathing checks his 4’6” frame couldn’t necessarily cash. Today’s poem is selected from his response to a friend who suggested he tone it down. 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

Transcribed - Published: 10 March 2025

Great poets write as much by ear as by sight, and often turn to sonic phenomena for inspiration. The ringing of bells is one of the most time-honored of those sounds, and in today’s poem Wilbur deepens the sound-image through the added dimension of distance. 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

Transcribed - Published: 7 March 2025

Today’s poem runs the gamut of Italian renaissance poetry, the Book of Common Prayer, and the depths and heights of the human soul. It opens with an allusion to the Italian poet Guido Cavalcanti, turns to the Purgatorio of Cavalcanti’s great disciple, Dante, and draws in the Anglican penitential office and lectionary readings for Ash Wednesday, all while following Eliot’s speaker through despair into hope. 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

Transcribed - Published: 5 March 2025

Today’s poem finds the meeting place between the bump on the log and the one on the camel. 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

Transcribed - Published: 28 February 2025

Today’s poem plays nicely against Hughes’ more famous meditation on “dreams” (the deferred kind, in “Harlem”). Rather than emphasizing the danger of a dream under pressure, here he stresses the importance of a dream to men and women under pressure. 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

Transcribed - Published: 26 February 2025

Today’s poem features a simple but satisfying sleight of hand. Happy reading.Richard Henry Horne (1802-1884), poet, was born on 31 December 1802 at Edmonton, near London, the eldest of three sons of James Horne (d.1810), quarter-master in the 61st Regiment; his grandfather was Richard Horne, secretary to Earl St Vincent. Richard was brought up at the home of his rich paternal grandmother and attended John Clarke's School where John Keats was also a pupil. In April 1819 Horne entered Sandhurst Military College but left in December 1820. In 1823 after reading Shelley's Queen Mab, he decided to become a poet.In 1825 Horne sailed as midshipman in the Libertad to fight for Mexican independence. After two years in America he returned to London, where in 1833 he published his first book Exposition of the False Medium and Barriers Excluding Men of Genius from the Public. In the next decade he published three poetic dramas, contributed prolifically to literary magazines, edited the Monthly Repository in 1836-37 and served on the royal commission on child employment in factories in 1841. His most famous year was 1843 when he published his epic Orion at a farthing a copy to show his contempt for public taste. It ran to six editions in a year and made him a celebrity. During the Irish famine he was correspondent for the Daily News. In 1847 he married Catherine, daughter of David Foggo.In 1852 Horne faced a crisis: his marriage was failing; he was impoverished; he was discontented in his work on Charles Dickens's Household Words; and he was torn between the practical and poetic sides of his nature. Tempted by dreams of fortune on the Australian goldfields and a chance to escape, Horne arrived at Melbourne in September. He soon became commander of the private gold escort and in 1853 assistant gold commissioner at Heathcote and Waranga. He was erratic in both posts and was dismissed in November 1854. By 1855 his English ties were severed, his wife having requested a formal separation. In Melbourne he became clerk to (Sir) Archibald Michie, and lived with a Scottish girl; their son, born in 1857, died after seven months. In September 1856 as a radical Horne contested Rodney in the Legislative Assembly but lost. As a commissioner of sewerage and water supply in 1857 when Melbourne's new reservoir was under public attack, he did little to appease the critics. By 1860 he was again unemployed and living at St Kilda with a female companion. He was well known at Captain Kenney's swimming baths, lectured at Mechanics' Institutes on 'The Causes of Success in Life' and failed to win the Belfast (Port Fairy) seat. He helped to found the Tahbilk vineyard on the Goulburn River. In 1862-63 the Royal Literary Fund assisted him.In June 1863 Horne was made warden of the Victorian Blue Mountain goldfield near Trentham: 'my Siberia'. Again he began to write seriously and found tranquillity. On visits to Melbourne he held court at Henry Dwight's bookshop, and became friendly with George Gordon McCrae and Marcus Clarke. In 1864 he published a lyrical drama, Prometheus the Fire-Bringer, and in 1866 for the Melbourne Intercolonial Exhibition a masque, The South Sea Sisters; it contained a rhythmic representation of an Aboriginal corroboree which brought acclaim. In 1867 he celebrated the arrival of the Duke of Edinburgh with a cantata, Galatea Secunda, signing himself Richard Hengist Horne, the name by which he was henceforth known. In Australia he produced no significant poetry but some good prose: Australian Facts and Prospects(London, 1859), and an essay, 'An Election Contest in Australia' in Cornhill, 5 (1862). Disillusioned, he sailed in June 1869 for England where he became a literary doyen, producing many new works all artistically worthless. His poverty was relieved in 1874 by a government pension, and he died at Margate on 13 March 1884.-bio via Australian Dictionary of Biography 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

Transcribed - Published: 24 February 2025

Today’s poem is the best-remembered work of the beloved “nonsense poet” Edward Lear–a silly lyric about a serious love. The episode also features a few guest readers. Happy reading.Edward Lear, the British poet and painter known for his absurd wit, was born on May 12, 1812, in Highgate, England, a suburb of London, and began his career as an artist at age fifteen. His father, a stockbroker of Danish origin, was sent to debtor’s prison when Lear was thirteen, forcing the young Lear to earn a living. Lear quickly gained recognition for his work and, in 1832, was hired by the London Zoological Society to execute illustrations of birds. In the same year, the Earl of Derby invited him to reside at his estate; Lear ended up staying until 1836.Lear’s first book of poems, A Book of Nonsense (Routledge, Warne, and Routledge, 1846) was composed for the grandchildren of the Derby household. Around 1836, Lear decided to devote himself exclusively to landscape painting, although he continued to compose light verse. Between 1837 and 1847, Lear traveled extensively throughout Europe and Asia.After his return to England, Lear’s travel journals were published in several volumes as The Illustrated Travels of a Landscape Painter. Popular and respected in his day, Lear’s travel books have largely been ignored in the twentieth century. Rather, Lear is remembered for his humorous poems, such as “The Owl and the Pussycat,” and as the creator of the form and meter of the modern limerick. Like his younger peer Lewis Carroll, Lear wrote many deeply fantastical poems about imaginary creatures, such as “The Dong with the Luminous Nose.” His books of humorous verse also include Nonsense Songs, Stories, Botany, and Alphabets (James R. Osgood and Company, 1871) and Laughable Lyrics: a Fourth Book of Nonsense Poems, Songs, Botany, Music, &c.(Robert John Bush, 1877).Edward Lear died on January 29, 1888, in San Remo, Italy, at the age of seventy-six.-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

Transcribed - Published: 21 February 2025

Today’s poem will leave you “knowing very well what it was all about.” Happy reading.Gary Soto was born in Fresno, California on April 12, 1952, to working-class Mexican American parents. As a teenager and college student, he worked in the fields of the San Joaquin Valley, chopping beets and cotton and picking grapes. He was not academically motivated as a child, but he became interested in poetry during his high school years. He attended Fresno City College and California State University–Fresno, and he earned an MFA from the University of California–Irvine in 1976.His first collection of poems, The Elements of San Joaquin (University of Pittsburgh Press), won the United States Award of the International Poetry Forum in 1976 and was published in 1977. Since then, Soto has published numerous books of poetry, including You Kiss by th’ Book: New Poems from Shakespeare’s Line (Chronicle Books, 2016), A Simple Plan (Chronicle Books, 2007), and New and Selected Poems (Chronicle Books, 1995), which was a finalist for the National Book Award.Soto cites his major literary influences as Edward Field, Pablo Neruda, W. S. Merwin, Gabriel García Márquez, Christopher Durang, and E. V. Lucas. Of his work, the writer Joyce Carol Oates has said, “Gary Soto’s poems are fast, funny, heartening, and achingly believable, like Polaroid love letters, or snatches of music heard out of a passing car; patches of beauty like patches of sunlight; the very pulse of a life.”Soto has also written three novels, including Amnesia in a Republican County (University of New Mexico Press, 2003); a memoir, Living Up the Street (Strawberry Hill Press, 1985); and numerous young adult and children’s books. For the Los Angeles Opera, he wrote the libretto to Nerdlandia, an opera.Soto has received the Andrew Carnegie Medal and fellowships from the California Arts Council, the Guggenheim Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts. He lives in Northern California.-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

Transcribed - Published: 19 February 2025

Today’s poem is a meditation on speech in the voice of a president. Perfect for an obligatory federal holiday. 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

Transcribed - Published: 17 February 2025

Today’s poem looks back on a lifetime of maturing love. 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

Transcribed - Published: 14 February 2025

Today’s poem, reminiscent of yesterday’s “From a Railway Carriage,” was written by Auden for use in the 1936 documentary short film, Night Mail, and combines the powerful deep magics of locomotive travel and receiving letters. Bon voyage! 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

Transcribed - Published: 12 February 2025

Today’s poem grew out of an elaborate game of make-believe between the Brontë siblings, and gives some idea of the mature verse that might have been if Anne had not died young. Happy(?) reading.Anne Brontë (17 January 1820 – 28 May 1849) was an English novelist and poet, the youngest member of the Brontë literary family.Anne Brontë was the daughter of Maria (néeBranwell) and Patrick Brontë, a poor Irish clergyman in the Church of England. Anne lived most of her life with her family at the parish of Haworth on the Yorkshire Dales. Otherwise, she attended a boarding school in Mirfield between 1836 and 1837, and between 1839 and 1845 lived elsewhere working as a governess. In 1846, she published a book of poems with her sisters and later two novels, initially under the pen name Acton Bell. Her first novel, Agnes Grey, was published in 1847 at the same time as Wuthering Heights by her sister Emily Brontë. Anne's second novel, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, was published in 1848. The Tenant of Wildfell Hall is often considered one of the first feminist novels.Anne died at 29, most likely of pulmonary tuberculosis. After her death, her sister Charlotte edited Agnes Grey to fix issues with its first edition, but prevented republication of The Tenant of Wildfell Hall. As a result, Anne is not as well known as her sisters. Nonetheless, both of her novels are considered classics of English 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

Transcribed - Published: 10 February 2025

Today’s poem is the final stanza of Tennyson’s “Ulysses,” in which the hero of the Trojan war persuades his aging compatriots to wring out the last of their energies in a quest for the ends of the earth–“to strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.” 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

Transcribed - Published: 7 February 2025

Poet’s don’t typically compete for “coolest book cover,” and it’s probably because Zbigniew Herbert won years ago. Today’s poem is his tender look at poverty, pleasure, and irretrievable loss. Zbigniew Herbert was born on October 29, 1924, in Poland in the city of Lvov, which is now a part of the Ukraine. His grandfather was an Englishman who settled in Lvov to teach English. His father, a former member of the Legions that had fought for restoration of Poland’s independence, was a bank manager. Herbert’s formal education began in Lvov and continued under German occupation in the form of clandestine study at the underground King John Casimir University, where he majored in Polish literature. He was a member of the underground resistance movement. In 1944, he moved to Krakow, and three years later he graduated from the University of Krakow with a master’s degree in economics. He also received a law degree from Nicholas Copernicus University in Torun and studied philosophy at the University of Warsaw under Henryk Elzenberg.During the 1950s, Herbert worked at many low-paying jobs because he refused to write within the framework of official Communist guidelines. After widespread riots against Soviet control in 1956 brought about a political “thaw,” Herbert became an administrator at the Union of Polish Composers and published his first collection, Struna swiatla [The Chord of Light] (Czytelnik, 1956). The book immediately placed him among the most prominent representatives of the “Contemporaries” (young poets and writers associated with the weekly Contemporary Times).In 1957, Herbert published his second collection of verse, Hermes, pies i gwiazda [Hermes, the Dog and the Star] (Czytelnik). Four years later, he published his third book of poems, Studium przedmiotu [Study of the Object] (Czytelnik, 1961). In 1968, his Selected Poems, translated into English by Czeslaw Milosz and Peter Dale Scott, was released in both the United States and England, making Herbert one of the most popular contemporary poets in the English-speaking world. In 1971, he released the first Polish edition of Selected Poems.Herbert’s 1983 collection, Raport z oblezonego miasta i inne wiersze [Report from the Besieged City] (Instytut Literacki), dealt with the ethical problems Poland faced while under martial law. The book was issued simultaneously through an emigré publishing house and as an underground edition in Poland. He also published a number of essay collections and works of drama. In 1962, he released his famous work, Barbarzyńca wogrodzie [Barbarian in the Garden] (Czytelnik), which was eventually translated into numerous languages.Herbert’s numerous awards include the Kościelski Foundation Prize, the Austrian Lenau Prize, the Alfred Jurzykowski Prize, the Herder Prize, the Petrarch Prize, the Bruno Schulz Prize, and the Jerusalem Prize for the Freedom of the Individual in Society.Herbert was a coeditor of the poetry journal Poezja from 1965 to 1968 but resigned in protest of antisemitic policies. He traveled widely throughout the West and lived in Paris, Berlin, and the United States, where he taught briefly at the University of California, Los Angeles. He died in Warsaw on July 28, 1998.-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

Transcribed - Published: 5 February 2025

Today’s poem glides, settles, dances, waves, and soars its way through the unassuming comforts of the familiar. 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

Transcribed - Published: 3 February 2025

Phyllis McGinley (March 21, 1905 – February 22, 1978) was an American author of children's books and poetry. Her poetry was in the style of light verse, specializing in humor, satiric tone and the positive aspects of suburban life. She won a Pulitzer Prize in 1961.McGinley enjoyed a wide readership in her lifetime, publishing her work in newspapers and women's magazines such as the Ladies Home Journal, as well as in literary periodicals, including The New Yorker, The Saturday Review and The Atlantic. She also held nearly a dozen honorary degrees – "including one from the stronghold of strictly masculine pride, Dartmouth College" (from the dust jacket of Sixpence in Her Shoe (copy 1964)). Time Magazine featured McGinley on its cover on June 18, 1965.-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

Transcribed - Published: 31 January 2025

As William Shakespeare was putting the final touchers on Hamlet, George Chapman was beginning (arguably) an even more momentous undertaking: introducing the English-speaking world to Homer’s epics. In a turn of historical irony, the fame of Chapman’s translation continues almost solely in and through today’s poem–but there are worse ways to be remembered. 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

Transcribed - Published: 29 January 2025

Today’s poem was too topical to pass up. Like so many of Oliver’s poems, it is an invitation to attend closely to life’s unexpected gifts. 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

Transcribed - Published: 27 January 2025

Today’s poem, whose full title is “Stilton and Milton; Or Literature in the 17th and 20th Centuries,” has something for book lovers and cheese lovers alike to dig in to. Chesterton once wrote that “poets have been mysteriously silent on the subject of cheese,” and he then set about rectifying that state of affairs through poems like these. 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

Transcribed - Published: 24 January 2025

Today’s poem, though written for the far more infrequent crowning of monarchs, contains plenty of sentiments fitting for a quadrennial presidential inauguration. Happy reading.On a pillar on the west wall of Poets' Corner in Westminster Abbey is a white marble bust to poet and clergyman John Keble. The bust is signed and dated by Thomas Woolner, 1872 and is just inscribed 'JOHN KEBLE'. The memorial was originally much more elaborate and was in the south west tower chapel of the nave (now St George's chapel), placed between Dr Thomas Arnold and William Wordsworth. The bust, on a foliated corbel, was set within a decorated oval frame set with jewels with two small pillars either side of the bust. Above was a decorated cross and below a square tablet with the inscription:In memory of John Keble, author of the Christian Year. Born 1792. Died 1866. In quietness and in confidence shall be your strength. Isaiah xxx.15. He rests in peace at Hursley of which he was Vicar 30 years.When the chapel was redesigned in 1932 the memorials there were all moved - Arnold to the north west nave chapel and Wordsworth to Poets' Corner. Only the bust of Keble was retained and mounted on a new Purbeck marble bracket in the Corner.He was born at Fairford in Gloucestershire on 25th April 1792, son of the Reverend John Keble and his wife Sarah (Maule). After education at home he attended Oxford University. In 1827 he published his popular work The Christian Year. He was professor of poetry at Oxford and became rector of Hursley in Hampshire in 1836. With Newman and Pusey he instigated the Oxford Movement. He married Charlotte Clarke but there were no children. He died on 29th March 1866 and is buried at Hursley. Keble College in Oxford was founded in his memory.-bio via Westminster Abbey 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

Transcribed - Published: 22 January 2025

If hot takes about synonyms are your cup of tea, favorite, darling, jam, or weapon of choice, then today’s poem is for you. 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

Transcribed - Published: 17 January 2025

We that acquaint ourselves with every zone,And pass both tropics and behold the poles,When we come home, are to ourselves unknown,And unacquainted still with our own souls.Today’s poem is Davies’ lengthy meditation on what man can know and what he could stand to learn. Happy reading.Poet and lawyer Sir John Davies was born in Wiltshire and educated at Winchester College and Queen’s College, Oxford, though historians disagree about whether he graduated. In 1588, he enrolled in the Middle Temple, where he studied with John Donne, and was called to the bar in 1595. In addition to his legal study, Davies wrote poetry, notably Orchestra, or, A Poeme of Dancing (1596). Davies’s other works include a series of epigrams drawn from his youthful misadventures; Nosce teipsum (1594), a poetic treatise on the immortality of the soul; and Hymnes of Astraea in Acrosticke Verse (1599),an acrostic poem spelling the words Elisabetha Regina. Davies also contributed poetic dialogues to Francis Davison’s Poetical Rhapsody(1602). His Collected Poems appeared in 1622. It is thought that Davies accompanied King James to Scotland after Queen Elizabeth’s death in 1603. Eventually knighted by the king, Davies was made solicitor general for Ireland and emerged as a champion of legal reform in Ireland. He attempted to lay the grounds for a strong civil society, albeit one that benefited England and English rule in all cases. Davies helped cement pro-English property laws and advocated the expulsion of Catholic priests to shore up Protestantism. He was appointed speaker in the Irish Parliament in 1613 and presided over the first Protestant majority. He returned to England and served in the Parliament of 1621. Charles I appointed Davies lord chief justice in 1626, but he died just before officially taking office. John Donne gave his funeral oration. Davies was buried in St. Martin-in-the-Fields.-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

Transcribed - Published: 15 January 2025

Today’s poems are selected from Ted Kooser’s The Blizzard Voices, a collection of informal verse commemorating the apocalyptic Great Plains blizzard of 1888. He mined histories and first-hand accounts to give “voice” to the men and women who lived through the unprecedented storm. 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

Transcribed - Published: 13 January 2025

Today’s poem is a roller-coaster of machismo and vulnerability in that most singular of places–the poetry section of a small bookstore. Happy reading.Kingsley Amis (1922–1995) was a popular and prolific British novelist, poet, satirist, and critic. Born in suburban South London, the only child of a clerk in the office of the mustard-maker Colman’s, he won an English scholarship to St John’s College, Oxford, where he began a lifelong friendship with fellow student Philip Larkin. Following service in the British Army’s Royal Corps of Signals during World War II, he completed his degree and joined the faculty at the University College of Swansea in Wales. Lucky Jim, his first novel, appeared in 1954 to great acclaim and won a Somerset Maugham Award. Ultimately he published twenty-four novels, including science fiction and a James Bond sequel; more than a dozen collections of poetry, short stories, and literary criticism; restaurant reviews and three books about drinking; political pamphlets and a memoir; and more. Amis received the Booker Prize for his novel The Old Devils in 1986 and was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in 1990.-bio via NYRB 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

Transcribed - Published: 10 January 2025

Today’s poem offers an incisive analogy for analogies. Happy reading.A.E. (Alicia) Stallings is the Oxford Professor of Poetry. She grew up in Decatur, Georgia, and studied classics at the University of Georgia and Oxford University. Her poetry collections include Like (2018), a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize; Olives (2012), which was nominated for a National Book Critics Circle Award; Hapax (2006); and Archaic Smile(1999), winner of the Richard Wilbur Award and finalist for both the Yale Younger Poets Series and the Walt Whitman Award. Her poems have appeared in The Best American Poetry anthologies of 1994, 2000, 2015, 2016, and 2017, and she is a frequent contributor to Poetry and the Times Literary Supplement.Stallings’s poetry is known for its ingenuity, wit, and dexterous use of classical allusion and forms to illuminate contemporary life. In interviews, Stallings has spoken about the influence of classical authors on her own work: “The ancients taught me how to sound modern,” she told Forbes magazine. “They showed me that technique was not the enemy of urgency, but the instrument.”Stallings's latest verse translation is the pseudo-Homeric The Battle Between the Frogs and the Mice (2019), in an illustrated edition with Paul Dry Books, and her latest volume of poetry is a selected poems, This Afterlife (2023, FSG). She is the recipient of fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the MacArthur Foundation. She lives in Athens, Greece, with her husband, the journalist John Psaropoulos.-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

Transcribed - Published: 8 January 2025

Today’s poem draws together marriage and the blessing of water. 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

Transcribed - Published: 6 January 2025

Does today’s poem contain the secret to minimizing regret in 2025? Kinda, sorta. Happy reading.In his youth, Robert Service worked in a shipping office and a bank, and briefly studied literature at the University of Glasgow. Inspired by Rudyard Kipling and Robert Louis Stevenson, Service sailed to western Canada in 1894 to become a cowboy in the Yukon Wilderness. He worked on a ranch and as a bank teller in Vancouver Island six years after the Gold Rush, gleaning material that would inform his poetry for years to come and earn him his reputation as “Bard of the Yukon.” Service traveled widely throughout his life—to Hollywood, Cuba, Alberta, Paris, Louisiana, and elsewhere—and his travels continued to fuel his writing.A prolific writer and poet, Service published numerous collections of poetry during his lifetime, including Songs of a Sourdough or Spell of the Yukon and Other Verses (1907), which went into ten printings its first year, Ballad of a Cheechako (1909) and Ballads of a Bohemian (1921), as well as two autobiographies and six novels. Several of his novels were made into films, and he also appeared as an actor in The Spoilers, a 1942 film with Marlene Dietrich.-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

Transcribed - Published: 2 January 2025

The repetition of the word “unsatisfied” forms a set of bookends in today’s poem. Inside those bookends: earth, sky, and the riches of this world. Beyond them: “The uncontrollable mystery.” 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

Transcribed - Published: 30 December 2024

“the Christmas Tree is a tree of fable,/A phoenix in evergreen”Cecil Day Lewis tackles the leave-taking of Christmas and the emotional upheaval in can work in the hearts of kids from 1 to 92. Happy reading (and don’t take down that tree yet!)Lewis, (born April 27, 1904, Ballintubbert, County Leix, Ire.—died May 22, 1972, Hadley Wood, Hertfordshire, Eng.) was one of the leading British poets of the 1930s; he then turned from poetry of left-wing political statement to an individual lyricism expressed in more traditional forms.The son of a clergyman, Day-Lewis was educated at the University of Oxford and taught school until 1935. His Transitional Poem (1929) had already attracted attention, and in the 1930s he was closely associated with W.H. Auden (whose style influenced his own) and other poets who sought a left-wing political solution to the ills of the day. Typical of his views at that time is the verse sequence The Magnetic Mountain (1933) and the critical study A Hope for Poetry(1934).Day-Lewis was Clark lecturer at the University of Cambridge in 1946; his lectures there were published as The Poetic Image (1947). In 1952 he published his verse translation of Virgil’s Aeneid, which was commissioned by the BBC. He also translated Virgil’s Georgics (1940) and Eclogues (1963). He was professor of poetry at Oxford from 1951 to 1956. The Buried Day (1960), his autobiography, discusses his acceptance and later rejection of communism. Collected Poemsappeared in 1954. Later volumes of verse include The Room and Other Poems (1965) and The Whispering Roots (1970). The Complete Poems of C. Day-Lewis was published in 1992.At his death he was poet laureate, having succeeded John Masefield in 1968. Under the pseudonym of Nicholas Blake he also wrote detective novels, including Minute for Murder (1948) and Whisper in the Gloom (1954).-bio via Britannica 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

Transcribed - Published: 27 December 2024

“To those who have seen/The Child, however dimly, however incredulously,/The Time Being is, in a sense, the most trying time of 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

Transcribed - Published: 26 December 2024

Christ is born! Merry Christmas and happy reading! Today’s poem is a selection from Auden’s superb long poem, For the Time Being: A Christmas Oratorio. 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

Transcribed - Published: 25 December 2024

J. R. R. Tolkien loved Christmas–we can find ample proof of this in his Letters From Father Christmas, but also in his choosing December 25 as the day the fellowship of the Ring should set out from Rivendell and begin the destruction of evil in Middle Earth. Today’s poem, once lost to history but rediscovered and included in his Collected Poems, is his most explicit tribute to the Nativity. 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

Transcribed - Published: 24 December 2024