Robert Lowell's "July in Washington"
Happy 4th of July 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
Jul 04, 2025•3 min
The Daily Poem
The Daily Poem offers one essential poem each weekday morning. From Shakespeare and John Donne to Robert Frost and Emily Dickinson, The Daily Poem curates a broad and generous audio anthology of the best poetry ever written, read-aloud by David Kern and an assortment of various contributors. Some lite commentary is included and the shorter poems are often read twice, as time permits.
The Daily Poem is presented by Goldberry Studios.
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Episodes
Juliana Horatia Ewing's "Garden Lore"
Juliana Horatia Ewing (August 3, 1841 – May 13, 1885) was an English writer of children's stories. Her writings display a sympathetic insight into children's lives, an admiration for things military, and a strong religious faith. Known as Julie, she was the second of ten children of the Rev. Alfred Gatty, Vicar of Ecclesfield in Yorkshire, and Margaret Gatty, who was herself a children's author. Their children were educated mainly by their mother, but Julie was often the driving force behind the...
Jul 02, 2025•2 min
Tracy K. Smith’s “The Good Life”
Today’s poem is one of those perfect distillations of a concrete emotion. 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
Jun 30, 2025•5 min
G. K. Chesterton’s “The Secret People”
Today’s poem is Chesterton’s ode to the silent majority. 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
Jun 27, 2025•5 min
John Donne’s “A Valediction Forbidding Mourning”
Today’s poem marks a very special day. 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
Jun 25, 2025•3 min
William Blake’s Introduction to Songs of Experience
Today’s poem, introducing the counterpart to “Songs of Innocence,” is a dialogue that immediately deepens the mood of the more “mature” lyrics that will follow. 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
Jun 23, 2025•3 min
John Keats’ “Happy is England”
Sweet is the home you leave. 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
Jun 20, 2025•3 min
Samuel Taylor Coleridge's "Frost at Midnight"
Today’s poem is a somber, paternal retrospective from the Ancient Mariner 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
Jun 18, 2025•6 min
Lord Byron's "She Walks in Beauty"
Today’s poem kicks off a short trek through English poetry. 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
Jun 16, 2025•7 min
Simon Curtis's "Satie, at the End of Term"
My friend Simon Curtis, who has died aged 70, was one of the small band of people who work tirelessly, for no pay and few thanks, to promote poetry. An excellent poet himself, he edited two magazines and helped many struggling writers into print. His heroes were Wordsworth, Hardy and Causley. His own poetry, which rhymed and was perfectly accessible, was distinguished by, in his words, its "shrewd, ironic and Horatian tone". It ranged from accomplished light verse, which was often very funny, to...
Jun 13, 2025•3 min
Theodore Roethke's "Cuttings"
Today’s poem grows on 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
Jun 11, 2025•5 min
David Wojahn's "Pentecost"
David Wojahn grew up in St. Paul, Minnesota. He studied at the University of Minnesota and the University of Arizona. Ever since his first collection, Icehouse Lights , was chosen for the Yale Series of Younger Poets award in 1981, Wojahn has been one of American poetry’s most thoughtful examiners of culture and memory. His work often investigates how history plays out in the lives of individuals, and poet Tom Sleigh says that his poems “meld the political and personal in a way that is unparalle...
Jun 09, 2025•4 min
Bert Leston Taylor's "Canopus"
A little light verse for anyone who wants to rise (far) above the noise for a moment. Happy reading. Bert Leston Taylor (November 13, 1866 – March 19, 1921) was an American columnist, humorist, poet, and author. Bert Leston Taylor became a journalist at seventeen, a librettist at twenty-one, and a successfully published author at thirty-five. At the height of his literary career, he was a central literary figure of the early 20th century Chicago renaissance as well as one of the most celebrated ...
Jun 06, 2025•3 min
Edna St. Vincent Millay's "Conscientious Objector"
Death has been personified and analogized in myriad ways, but none perhaps so withering as today’s imagining of death as a fascist bureaucrat. 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
Jun 04, 2025•4 min
Jeanne Murray Walker's "The Music Before the Music"
Jeanne Murray Walker was born in a village of 900 people in northern Minnesota. She was first published by The Atlantic Monthly at age 19. Today she’s the prize-winning author of nine books of poetry. Jeanne serves as a Mentor in the Seattle Pacific University low residency MFA Program and travels widely to give readings and workshops. - bio via Paraclete Press This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit dailypoempod.subst...
Jun 02, 2025•5 min
Hilaire Belloc's "Lord Finchley"
Today’s poem is a comical maxim that typifies the heavy lifting light verse is capable of. 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
May 30, 2025•3 min
Timothy Murphy's "Mentor"
Poet Timothy Murphy was born in Hibbing, Minnesota, and graduated from Yale University, where he participated in the Scholar of the House program. He was a partner in a large-scale hog farm and a businessperson. His books include the poetry collections The Deed of Gift (1998), Very Far North (2002), Mortal Stakes • Faint Thunder (2011), Hunter's Log (2011), and Devotions (2017) as well as a memoir, Set the Ploughshare Deep: A Prairie Memoir (2000). He has also translated Beowulf. Though hunting ...
May 28, 2025•5 min
John McCrae's "In Flanders Fields"
Today’s poem has become one of the most famous 20th-century war poems–in part because of its ability to grant fallen soldiers a voice that is earnestly patriotic without becoming jingoistic. Perhaps the balance is a reflection of the steadiness of the Canadian veteran who penned it. 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...
May 26, 2025•3 min
Seamus Heaney's "Scaffolding"
Today’s poem is a Heaney favorite, and goes out to all of the couples tying the knot this summer. 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
May 23, 2025•2 min
Emily Dickinson's "The saddest noise, the sweetest noise"
The uniting, in today’s poem, of Spring and sadness is not immediately intuitive. However, it makes more natural sense amidst the many partings and reminiscences of graduation season. 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
May 21, 2025•4 min
Bill Knott's "An Instructor's Dream"
Today’s poem shows us a teacher wrestling with the notion of “graduation.” Happy reading. Bill Knott was born on February 17, 1940, in Carson City, Michigan. When he was seven years old, his mother died in childbirth, and his father passed away three years later. He grew up in an orphanage in Mooseheart, Illinois, and on an uncle’s farm. In the late 1950s, he joined the U.S. Army and, after serving his full enlistment, was honorably discharged in 1960. In the early 1960s, Knott moved to Chicago,...
May 19, 2025•5 min
Andrew Barton Paterson's "The Man From Ironbark"
Today’s poem explains why some Australians wear beards. Andrew Barton "Banjo" Paterson, CBE (17 February 1864 – 5 February 1941) was an Australian bush poet, journalist and author, widely considered one of the greatest writers of Australia's colonial period. Born in rural New South Wales, Paterson worked as a lawyer before transitioning into literature, where he quickly gained recognition for capturing the life of the Australian bush. A representative of the Bulletin School of Australian literat...
May 16, 2025•5 min
Fernando Valverde's "Edgar Allan Poe Is Reached at the Baltimore Harbor by the Shadows That Pursue Him"
Fernando Valverde (Granada, 1980) has been voted the most relevant Spanish-language poet born since 1970 by nearly two hundred critics and researchers from more than one hundred international universities (Harvard, Oxford, Columbia, Princeton, Bologna, Salamanca, UNAM and the Sorbonne). His books have been published in different countries in Europe and America and translated into several languages. He has received some of the most prestigious awards for poetry in Spanish, including the Federico ...
May 14, 2025•4 min
Marya Zaturensky's "The Girl Takes Her Place Among the Mothers"
Today’s poem goes out to all the mothers–we wouldn’t be here without you! Happy reading. Marya Zaturensky, Russian-born American poet and Pulitzer Prize winner, was born on September 12, 1902, in Kiev, Russia (now Ukraine). She emigrated to the United States with her family in 1909 and was educated in New York public schools; attended Valparaiso University, 1922–23; graduated from University of Wisconsin, 1925. The same year she married Horace Gregory (a poet and critic), and had two children: J...
May 12, 2025•7 min
Henry Sambrooke Leigh's "The Twins"
Today’s poem is one of the few enduring works of a poet and playwright who burned brightly during his heyday and then blinked out almost entirely. Happy reading. Leigh, son of James Mathews Leigh, was born in London on 29 March 1837. At an early age he engaged in literary pursuits. From time to time appeared collections of his lyrics, under the titles of Carols of Cockayne , 1869 (several editions); Gillott and Goosequill , 1871; A Town Garland: a Collection of Lyrics , 1878; and Strains from th...
May 09, 2025•3 min
Gerard Manley Hopkins' "Binsey Poplars"
Today’s poem owes a strong debt to Cowper’s “The Poplar Field” but also features a few stylistic echoes of Poe’s “Annabel Lee,” all while achieving a (superior?) effect of its own. 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
May 07, 2025•9 min
William Cowper's "The Poplar Field"
“As for man, his days are like grass.” It isn’t much of a stretch, then, when Cowper sees his own mortality in a grove of felled poplars. Happy reading. William Cowper (1731-1800) was a renowned 18th century poet, hymnographer, and translator of Homer. His most famous works include his 5000-line poem ‘The Task’ and some charming and light-hearted verses, not least ‘The Diverting History of John Gilpin’. Phrases he coined such as ‘Variety is the spice of life’ are still in popular use today. Whil...
May 05, 2025•4 min
Larry K. Richman's "The Joys of House Wrecking"
“The work of destruction is quick, easy and exhilarating; the work of creation slow, laborious and dull.” -Roger Scruton Larry Richman (1934-2023) was born in Philadelphia and grew up on a small Bucks County chicken farm north of the city. He attended local schools and then Colorado College, where he was inducted into Phi Beta Kappa and graduated with a BA in English in 1957. From Duke University, he received an MA in 1959 and a PhD in 1970. Larry went on to teach English at the Beaufort and Flo...
May 02, 2025•5 min
Geoffrey Chaucer's "Prologue" to The Canterbury Tales"
Though J. R. R. Tolkien translated portions of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales , he did not live to complete the project. Fortunately another Inkling, Nevill Coghill, succeeded where Tolkien could not, and produced the modernized verse-rendering that today’s selection comes from. 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...
Apr 30, 2025•6 min
John Keats' "This Living Hand"
Today’s poem has a way of reaching out and grabbing 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
Apr 28, 2025•5 min
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