Mary Jo Salter is the author of eight books of poetry including The Surveyors (2017) and, most recently Zoom Rooms: Poems (2022) . She is also a lyricist whose song cycle “Rooms of Light: The Life of Photographs" was composed by Fred Hersch. Her children’s book The Moon Comes Home appeared in 1989; her play Falling Bodies premiered in 2004. She is also a co-editor of The Norton Anthology of Poetry (4th edition, 1996; 5th edition, 2005; 6th edition, 2018). This is a public episode. If you'd like ...
Dec 08, 2023•5 min
Czesław Miłosz (30 June 1911 – 14 August 2004) was a Polish-American poet, prose writer, translator, and diplomat. He primarily wrote his poetry in Polish. Regarded as one of the great poets of the 20th century, he won the 1980 Nobel Prize in Literature. In its citation, the Swedish Academy called Miłosz a writer who "voices man's exposed condition in a world of severe conflicts". Miłosz survived the German occupation of Warsaw during World War II and became a cultural attaché for the Polish gov...
Dec 07, 2023•5 min
"The spirit of the smithy is so close to the spirit of song that it has mixed in a million poems, and every blacksmith is a harmonious blacksmith. Even the village children feel that in some dim way the smith is poetic, as the grocer and the cobbler are not poetic, when they feast on the dancing sparks and deafening blows in the cavern of that creative violence.” -G. K. Chesterton This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visi...
Dec 06, 2023•5 min
Robert or "Rabbie" Burns (born 25 January 1759, died 21 July 1796) hailed from Alloway, Scotland. Like his father, Burns was a tenant farmer. However, toward the end of his life he became an excise collector in Dumfries, where he died in 1796; throughout his life he was also a practicing poet. His poetry recorded and celebrated aspects of farm life, regional experience, traditional culture, class culture and distinctions, and religious practice. He is considered the national poet of Scotland. Al...
Dec 05, 2023•10 min
“Rilke’s most immediate and obvious influence has been upon diction and imagery. [He expressed ideas with] physical rather than intellectual symbols. While Shakespeare, for example, thought of the non-human world in terms of the human, Rilke thinks of the human in terms of the non-human, of what he calls Things.” -W.H. Auden 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...
Dec 04, 2023•6 min
James Whitcomb Riley (born October 7, 1849; died July 22, 1916) was author of numerous beloved poetry volumes, and widely known for books such as The Old Swimmin’-Hole and ’Leven More Poems, Riley Child-Rhymes, Out to Old Aunt Mary’s, and An Old Sweetheart. Born in Indiana in 1849, he was drawn to poetry even before he was able to read. Neglectful of his studies, Riley preferred to take walks in the countryside, read books of his own choosing, and create rhymes, the first of which he sent to his...
Dec 01, 2023•4 min
In today’s poem, Mary Oliver helps us develop affinity for the unfamiliar. 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
Nov 30, 2023•4 min
A. E. Stallings is a poet and translator mining the classical world and traditional poetic techniques to craft works that evoke startling insights about contemporary life. In both her original poetry and translations, Stallings exhibits a mastery of highly structured forms (such as sonnets, couplets, quatrains, and sapphics) and consummate skill in creating new combinations of meter, rhyme, and syntax into distinctive, emotionally compelling verse. Trained in classical Latin and Greek and curren...
Nov 30, 2023•7 min
Poet, Painter, Prophet–Blake “neither wrote nor drew for the many, hardly for work’y-day men at all, rather for children and angels; himself ‘a divine child,’ whose playthings were sun, moon, and stars, the heavens and the earth.” - from Alexander Gilchrist’s Life of William Blake (1863) 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...
Nov 28, 2023•7 min
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 of essays Alone with America: Essays on the Art of Poetry in the United States since 1950 (1969) wa...
Nov 27, 2023•7 min
William Procter Matthews III (November 11, 1942 – November 12, 1997) was born in Cincinnati, Ohio. He earned a BA from Yale and MFA from the University of North Carolina. The author of eleven books of poetry, Matthews earned a reputation as a master of well-turned phrases, wise sayings, and rich metaphors. Much of Matthews’s poetry explores the themes of life cycles, the passage of time, and the nature of human consciousness. His collection Time & Money (1996) won the National Book Critics C...
Nov 24, 2023•6 min
Happy Thanksgiving from The Daily Poem! 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
Nov 23, 2023•4 min
Today we pay tribute, with poems by Andrea Cohen and Elizabeth Alexander, to the indispensable golden wonder. 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
Nov 22, 2023•5 min
Sir William Schwenck Gilbert (18 November 1836 – 29 May 1911) was an English dramatist, librettist, poet and illustrator best known for his collaboration with composer Arthur Sullivan, which produced fourteen comic operas. The most famous of these include H.M.S. Pinafore , The Pirates of Penzance and one of the most frequently performed works in the history of musical theatre, The Mikado . The popularity of these works was supported for over a century by year-round performances of them, in Brita...
Nov 21, 2023•7 min
John Orley Allen Tate (November 19, 1899 – February 9, 1979) was a poet, critic, biographer, and novelist. Born and raised in Kentucky, he earned his BA from Vanderbilt University, where he was the only undergraduate to be admitted to the Fugitives, an informal group of Southern intellectuals that included John Crowe Ransom , Donald Davidson , Merrill Moore , and Robert Penn Warren . Tate is now remembered for his association with the Fugitives and Southern Agrarians, writers who critiqued moder...
Nov 20, 2023•7 min
In today’s poem Ted Kooser describes his ideal reader. 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
Nov 17, 2023•5 min
In today’s poems, Walt Whitman welcomes the reader. 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
Nov 16, 2023•5 min
In today’s poem, Marianne Moore (November 15, 1887 – February 5, 1972) gets candid about poetry itself. One of American literature’s foremost poets, Marianne Moore’s poetry is characterized by linguistic precision, keen and probing descriptions, and acute observations of people, places, animals, and art. Her poems often reflect her preoccupation with the relationships between the common and the uncommon, advocate discipline in both art and life, and espouse restraint, modesty, and humor. She fre...
Nov 15, 2023•7 min
Today’s poem is Billy Collins’ take on the time-honored poetic trope: the address to the reader. 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
Nov 15, 2023•8 min
Robert Louis Stevenson (born Robert Lewis Balfour Stevenson; 13 November 1850 – 3 December 1894) was a Scottish novelist, essayist, poet and travel writer. He is best known for works such as Treasure Island , Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde , Kidnapped and A Child's Garden of Verses . Born and educated in Edinburgh, Stevenson suffered from serious bronchial trouble for much of his life, but continued to write prolifically and travel widely in defiance of his poor health. As a young man, he...
Nov 13, 2023•4 min
The English writer and Anglican cleric John Donne is considered now to be the preeminent metaphysical poet of his time. He was born in 1572 to Roman Catholic parents, when practicing that religion was illegal in England. His work is distinguished by its emotional and sonic intensity and its capacity to plumb the paradoxes of faith, human and divine love, and the possibility of salvation. Donne often employs conceits, or extended metaphors, to yoke together “heterogenous ideas,” in the words of S...
Nov 10, 2023•9 min
Barbara Ras was born in New Bedford, Massachusetts, and has lived in Costa Rica, Colombia, California, and Texas. She is the author of The Last Skin (2010), winner of the best poetry award from the Texas Institute of Letters; One Hidden Stuff (2006); and Bite Every Sorrow (1998), which was selected by C.K. Williams for the Walt Whitman Award. Of Bite Every Sorrow , C.K. Williams wrote, “the book is a demonstration of what might be called a morality of inclusiveness, a Whitmanesque commitment to ...
Nov 09, 2023•7 min
Ayodeji Malcolm Guite (/ɡaɪt/; born 12 November 1957) is an English poet, singer-songwriter, Anglican priest, and academic. Born in Nigeria to British expatriate parents, Guite earned degrees from Cambridge and Durham universities. His research interests include the intersection of religion and the arts, and the examination of the works of J. R. R. Tolkien, C. S. Lewis and Owen Barfield, and British poets such as Samuel Taylor Coleridge. He was a Bye-Fellow and chaplain of Girton College, Cambri...
Nov 08, 2023•7 min
During his lifetime, Ogden Nash (born August 19, 1902; died May 19, 1971) was the most widely known, appreciated, and imitated American creator of light verse, a reputation that has continued after his death. Few writers of light or serious verse can claim the same extensive dissemination of their poems that Nash’s works enjoy, both with and without citation of the author. Certain Nash lines, such as “If called by a panther, / Don’t anther” and “Candy / Is dandy, / But liquor / Is quicker” have ...
Nov 07, 2023•10 min
Remember, Remember – November 5 was Guy Fawkes Day, an occasion full of complicated remembrances. We mark the day with a traditional English lyric and a November meditation from Malcolm Guite. 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
Nov 07, 2023•10 min
We will turn the clocks back this weekend–in fact, many clocks will turn themselves back–and there is no better occasion to meditate with Robert B. Shaw on the ways we keep time and are kept by it. 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
Nov 03, 2023•7 min
Stevens moved to Connecticut in 1916, having found employment at the Hartford Accident and Indemnity Co., where he became vice president in 1934. He had also begun to establish an identity for himself outside the worlds of law and business. His first book of poems, Harmonium (Alfred A. Knopf), published in 1923, exhibited the influences of both the English Romantics and the French Symbolists, and demonstrated a wholly original style and sensibility: exotic, whimsical, and infused with the light ...
Nov 02, 2023•10 min
Billy Collins spent his tenure as U.S. Poet Laureate launching the Poetry 180 initiative to increase American high school students’ exposure to poetry. In today’s poem he remembers what it was like to be young (and not so young). 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...
Nov 02, 2023•10 min
Poet and critic Robert B. Shaw earned a BA from Harvard University, where he studied with Robert Lowell, and a PhD from Yale University. Influenced by Elizabeth Bishop and Philip Larkin, Shaw’s wry and plainspoken formal verse is often grounded in, or sprung from, the debris of daily life. He is the author of several collections of poetry, including Solving For X (2002), which won the Hollis Summers Poetry Prize; Below the Surface (1999); and The Wonder of Seeing Double (1988). His criticism app...
Nov 01, 2023•10 min
Edward Estlin (E.E.) Cummings was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He attended the Cambridge Latin High School, where he studied Latin and Greek. Cummings earned both his BA and MA from Harvard, and his earliest poems were published in Eight Harvard Poets (1917). As one of the most innovative poets of his time, Cummings experimented with poetic form and language to create a distinct personal style. A typical Cummings poem is spare and precise, employing a few key words eccentrically placed on t...
Oct 30, 2023•11 min
