Today’s episode features selections from Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s fifty-year retrospective on his own graduation, the lengthy speech-in-verse, “Morituri Salutamus: Poem for the Fiftieth Anniversary of the Class of 1825 in Bowdoin College.” Come back tomorrow to hear the poem in full. 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 24, 2024•9 min
Today’s poem from Christina Rossetti is not about high school or college, but it might still be about graduation. 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, 2024•6 min
Konstantinos Petrou Kavafis, known, especially in English, as Constantine P. Cavafy and often published as C. P. Cavafy, was a Greek poet, journalist, and civil servant from Alexandria. A major figure of modern Greek literature, he is sometimes considered the most distinguished Greek poet of the 20th century. - 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...
May 22, 2024•9 min
Matthew Zapruder is the author of six collections of poetry, most recently I Love Hearing Your Dreams , forthcoming from Scribner in September 2024 , as well as two books of prose: Why Poetry (Ecco, 2017) and Story of a Poem (Unnamed, 2023). He is editor at large at Wave Books, where he edits contemporary poetry, prose, and translations. From 2016-7 he held the annually rotating position of Editor of the Poetry Column for the New York Times Magazine, and was the Editor of Best American Poetry 20...
May 21, 2024•9 min
About the creative process itself, John Ciardi argued in the Writer that “it isn’t easy to make a poem,” adding, “It is better than easy: it is joyously, consumingly difficult. As it is difficult, too, though without joy, to face one’s failures.” Noting that the creation of successful verse requires definite skill, he wrote: “I insist that a poet needs at least as much training as does a concert pianist. More, I think, but that is already too much for the ignorantly excited.” Believing that “the...
May 20, 2024•10 min
Today’s poems are all about the ineffable experience of spring. Happy reading! The 17th-century Japanese haiku master Bashō was born Matsuo Kinsaku near Kyoto, Japan, to a minor samurai and his wife. Soon after the poet’s birth, Japan closed its borders, beginning a seclusion that allowed its native culture to flourish. It is believed that Bashō’s siblings became farmers, while Bashō, at Ueno Castle in the service of the local lord’s son, grew interested in literature. After the young lord’s ear...
May 17, 2024•10 min
Today’s poem–an unambiguous paean to spring–suggests Thomas Nashe and T. S. Eliot had very different feelings about the month of April. Happy reading! Thomas Nashe (1567 - c. 1601) –English pamphleteer, poet, dramatist, and novelist– was the first of the English prose eccentrics. Nashe wrote in a vigorous combination of colloquial diction and idiosyncratic coined compounds that was ideal for controversy. Among his works are the satire Pierce Penilesse His Supplication to the Divell (1592); the m...
May 16, 2024•8 min
Today’s poem is a more complicated take on spring. 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 15, 2024•8 min
E.E. Cummings, in full Edward Estlin Cummings, (born October 14, 1894, Cambridge, Massachusetts, U.S.—died September 3, 1962, North Conway, New Hampshire), American poet and painter who first attracted attention, in an age of literary experimentation, for his unconventional punctuation and phrasing. Cummings’s name is often styled “e.e. cummings” in the mistaken belief that the poet legally changed his name to lowercase letters only. Cummings used capital letters only irregularly in his verse an...
May 14, 2024•7 min
What started as an early spring is now not long for this world. In an attempt to stave off an early summer , we have a week of poems dedicated to the fairest of the seasons. Happy reading. Phillis Levin (born 1954) is the author of four poetry collections, including May Day (Penguin, 2008). She also served as editor for The Penguin Book of the Sonnet (2001) and teaches at Hofstra University. - bio via Library of Congress This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscrib...
May 13, 2024•8 min
Today’s poem is a Robert Frost classic of which everyone always remembers the wrong part. 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 10, 2024•5 min
Robert Southey was an English poet of the Romantic school, and Poet Laureate from 1813 until his death. Like the other Lake Poets, William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Southey began as a radical but became steadily more conservative as he gained respect for Britain and its institutions. Other romantics such as Byron accused him of siding with the establishment for money and status. He is remembered especially for the poem "After Blenheim" and the original version of "Goldilocks and th...
May 09, 2024•10 min
Today’s poem goes out to all the ‘pilgrim souls.’ 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 08, 2024•5 min
In today’s poem, John Keats isn’t worried about authenticity–and that’s just fine. 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, 2024•9 min
Today’s poem reminds us how much is sometimes riding on the proper grammatical distinctions. Born in Cumberland, British Romantic poet and prose writer Dorothy Wordsworth was the third of five children. Her mother died when Wordsworth was six, and she moved to Halifax to live with her aunt. In 1781 she enrolled in Hipperholme Boarding School. When her father died in 1783, the family’s financial situation worsened and the children were sent to live with their uncles. Wordsworth changed schools, e...
May 06, 2024•10 min
Today’s poem is almost too bright for our infirm delight. 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 04, 2024•4 min
Today’s poem features a failed resurrection and a response that spirals through all the customary stages of grief. Hilda Doolittle was born on September 10, 1886, in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. She attended Bryn Mawr College, where she was a classmate of Marianne Moore. Doolittle later enrolled at the University of Pennsylvania, where she befriended Ezra Pound and William Carlos Williams. H.D. published numerous books of poetry , including Flowering of the Rod (Oxford University Press, 1946); Red R...
May 02, 2024•6 min
Clive Staples Lewis (1898–1963) was one of the intellectual giants of the twentieth century and arguably one of the most influential writers of his day. He was a Fellow and Tutor in English Literature at Oxford University until 1954, when he was unanimously elected to the Chair of Medieval and Renaissance Literature at Cambridge University, a position he held until his retirement. Lewis wrote more than thirty books, allowing him to reach a vast audience, and his works continue to attract thousan...
May 01, 2024•5 min
Find somebody to watch the kids while you giggle through today’s poem. Happy reading. Respected editor, publisher, writer and poet, Paul Ruffin often relied upon his experiences growing up in the South as a foundation for his stories. He was born in Millport, Alabama, and grew up outside Columbus, Mississippi. After serving in the U.S. Army, Ruffin earned both his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in English at Mississippi State University. He took post-graduate courses at the University of Southa...
Apr 30, 2024•6 min
Today’s poem ponders what love makes of language. 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 ...
Apr 29, 2024•10 min
Today’s poem is inspired by one of our favorites here at the Daily Poem. Librettist, essayist, translator, and author of ten poetry collections, Scott Cairns is Curators’ Distinguished Professor Emeritus at University of Missouri. His poems and essays have appeared in Poetry, Image, Paris Review, The Atlantic Monthly, The New Republic , and both have been anthologized in multiple editions of Best American Spiritual Writing . He received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2006, and the Denise Levertov Aw...
Apr 26, 2024•9 min
Ted Kooser, who worked in insurance for thirty-five years before becoming U.S. Poet Laureate, turns 85 today. Many happy returns of the day to him, and happy reading to the rest of you! 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 25, 2024•7 min
Have you measured out your life in coffee spoons? Feeling like a pair of ragged claws today? Afraid to eat messy food while other people are watching? Or are you just channeling a little too much Polonius? If so, today’s poem–the classic modernist anthem of insecurity and isolation (and mermaids)–will feel very familiar. Happy reading! (And for an even better reading of this poem, you should discover Jeremy Irons reading Eliot’s complete poems .) This is a public episode. If you'd like to discus...
Apr 24, 2024•9 min
Happy birthday to the Bard! NB : Anyone itching to dig deeper into Shakespeare’s plays should look no further than one of our sister podcasts, The Play’s the Thing! This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit dailypoempod.substack.com/subscribe...
Apr 23, 2024•8 min
Louise Glück was born in New York City in 1943. She is the author of numerous poetry collections, including Winter Recipes from the Collective (2021); Faithful and Virtuous Night (2014), which won the National Book Award; Poems: 1962-2012 (2012), winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize; and The Wild Iris (1992), which won the Pulitzer Prize; and Ararat (1990), which won the Rebekah Johnson Bobbitt National Prize for Poetry from the Library of Congress. In 2020, Glück was awarded the Nobel Pri...
Apr 22, 2024•9 min
Francis Thompson was born in Northwest England in 1859. The son of Catholic converts, as a boy he was initially educated for the priesthood. When he was 18, at his parents' insistence, he entered Owens College in Manchester to follow in his father's footsteps and study medicine. But before long, he left for London hoping to pursue what he believed was his true vocation of being a writer. As a result of ill health and subsequent medical treatment, like many before him, Thompson became addicted to...
Apr 19, 2024•12 min
Today’s poem–benign anthem of the resilient human spirit or a hymn to radical autonomy?–has divided audiences for more than a century. Born in Gloucester, England, poet, editor, and critic William Ernest Henley was educated at Crypt Grammar School, where he studied with the poet T.E. Brown, and the University of St. Andrews. His father was a struggling bookseller who died when Henley was a teenager. At age 12 Henley was diagnosed with tubercular arthritis that necessitated the amputation of one ...
Apr 18, 2024•10 min
What do John Donne, Paul Simon, and AC/DC have in common? Today’s poem. Happy reading! This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit dailypoempod.substack.com/subscribe
Apr 17, 2024•7 min
Today it’s Whitman (and Dylan) on the march of progress. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit dailypoempod.substack.com/subscribe
Apr 16, 2024•10 min
Today’s poem imagines what you might do when you’re through paying taxes. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit dailypoempod.substack.com/subscribe
Apr 15, 2024•5 min
