Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1860-1935) wrote fiction and nonfiction works including several collections of poetry and her most famous short story, “The Yellow Wallpaper” (1892). Her poems address the issues of women’s suffrage and the injustices of women’s lives. She was also the author of Women and Economics (1898), Concerning Children (1900), The Home: Its Work and Influence (1903) , Human Work (1904), and The Man-Made World; or, Our Androcentric Culture (1911). A prolific writer, she founded, w...
Nov 07, 2024•7 min
“The line through the hole in the dark…trembling/with its high connections.” Robert Morgan (born 1944) is an American poet , short story writer , non-fiction author, biographer , and novelist . He studied at North Carolina State University as an engineering and mathematics major, transferred to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill as an English major, graduating in 1965, and completed an MFA degree at the University of North Carolina Greensboro in 1968. He has taught at Cornell Univer...
Nov 06, 2024•9 min
Today’s poem is about politics (but this, too, shall pass). 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
Nov 05, 2024•9 min
Today’s poem is a reluctant reckoning with the present absence created by grief. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit dailypoempod.substack.com/subscribe
Nov 05, 2024•12 min
Luci Shaw was born in 1928 in London, England, and has lived in Canada, Australia and the U.S.A. A graduate of Wheaton College, she became co-founder and later president of Harold Shaw Publishers, and since 1988 has been a Writer in Residence at Regent College, Vancouver, Canada. Shaw has lectured in North America and abroad on topics such as art and spirituality, the Christian imagination, poetry-writing, and journal-writing as an aid to artistic and spiritual growth. A charter member of the Ch...
Nov 01, 2024•7 min
In today’s poem, while everyone else is dressing up to become something terrible, the acerbic Jonathan Swift gives us a domestic horror story in reverse. Happy reading. Anglo-Irish poet, satirist, essayist, and political pamphleteer Jonathan Swift was born in Dublin, Ireland. He spent much of his early adult life in England before returning to Dublin to serve as Dean of St. Patrick’s Cathedral, Dublin for the last 30 years of his life. It was this later stage when he would write most of his grea...
Oct 31, 2024•4 min
Today’s poem is the stuff real nightmares are made of. Happy reading. Nesbitt’s poetry for children is “irrepressible, unpredictable, and raucously popular,” in the words of former Children’s Poet Laureate J. Patrick Lewis. Nesbitt’s poems frequently deal with humorous, relatable situations that verge on the madcap. He is the author of numerous books of poetry for children, including Believe It or Not, My Brother Has a Monster (2015), The Biggest Burp Ever (2014), Kiss, Kiss Good Night (2013), T...
Oct 30, 2024•3 min
Today’s poem is some of the greatest ironic advice ever offered on the stage–do as Polonius says, not as he does, and you’ll be just fine. 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
Oct 29, 2024•4 min
Bob Hicok was born in 1960 in Michigan and worked for many years in the automotive die industry. A published poet long before he earned his MFA, Hicok is the author of several collections of poems, including The Legend of Light , winner of the Felix Pollak Prize in Poetry in 1995 and named a 1997 ALA Booklist Notable Book of the Year; Plus Shipping (1998); Animal Soul (2001), a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award; Insomnia Diary (2004); This Clumsy Living (2007), which received t...
Oct 28, 2024•17 min
Today’s poem commemorates the Council of Elrond, testifies to the love (and fussiness) of hobbits, and even boasts a possible Shakespearean connection. 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
Oct 25, 2024•7 min
Poet and translator Henry Taylor was born in Lincoln, Virginia on June 21, 1942. He earned a BA from the University of Virginia and an MA from Hollins University. Taylor’s many poetry collections include Crooked Run (2006); Understanding Fiction: Poems 1986-1996 ; The Flying Change (1985), for which he received the Pulitzer Prize; An Afternoon of Pocket Billiards (1975); and The Horse Show at Midnight (1966). He has translated works from Bulgarian, French, Hebrew, Italian, and Russian. His trans...
Oct 24, 2024•4 min
Today’s poem is a particularly novel example of an ancient writerly tradition: writing about how hard it is to write. Happy reading. On February 9, 1874, Amy Lowell was born at Sevenels, a ten-acre family estate in Brookline, Massachusetts. Her family was Episcopalian, of old New England stock, and at the top of Boston society. Lowell was the youngest of five children. Her elder brother Abbott Lawrence, a freshman at Harvard at the time of her birth, went on to become president of Harvard Colleg...
Oct 23, 2024•7 min
Today’s poem, subtitled “a nun takes the veil,” is one of Hopkins’ earliest surviving works. 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
Oct 22, 2024•5 min
Though its author remained otherwise undistinguished, today's poem–with all its ecstasy, agony, and irony–has become almost as essential to the American experience as baseball itself. Happy reading! Ernest Lawrence Thayer was born on August 14, 1863, in Lawrence, Massachusetts. He graduated with a BA in philosophy from Harvard University in 1885, where he was a member of the Hasty Pudding Club and edited the Harvard Lampoon. At Harvard, Thayer met William Randolph Hearst, who would later run the...
Oct 21, 2024•7 min
Today’s poem is an appreciation of little things. 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
Oct 18, 2024•5 min
Today’s poem celebrates the crisp, cool days of early Autumn as the most hospitable season of the year. 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
Oct 17, 2024•5 min
The world-wandering John Masefield waxes Solomonic in 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
Oct 16, 2024•8 min
Today’s poem is for everyone who knows that children keep you young, but also know how old you feel while it’s happening. Hall, taken aback by the success of this poem, expressed some regret that he became “the fellow whose son strapped him into the electric chair,” explaining that its inspiration came from 2 a.m. bottle-feedings that he conducted “with pleasure.” Happy reading. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit ...
Oct 15, 2024•6 min
The title of today’s poem is a mouthful, but it is fittingly emblematic of the poet’s full heart. 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
Oct 14, 2024•10 min
Never have rhyming couplets been so full of pathos as in today’s poem, where they symbolize the bond between father and son, tragically cut short. 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
Oct 11, 2024•7 min
If pumpkin-spice- everything or the sea of puffy vests and Ugg boots at the cider stand are getting you down, let today’s poem remind you of all that is great about Autumn. 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
Oct 10, 2024•4 min
Today’s poem offers a folksy look at the subtleties of terror. Happy reading. David Thompson Watson McCord was born on December 15, 1897, in New York. A poet and fundraiser, McCord grew up in Portland, Oregon. He received both a BA and MA from Harvard University and briefly served in the military at the end of World War I. In 1922, McCord became associate editor for the Harvard Alumni Bulletin , where he served as editor from 1940 to 1946. He was also executive director of the Harvard College Fu...
Oct 09, 2024•6 min
Today’s poem offers a recipe for domestic bliss. 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
Oct 08, 2024•5 min
Though we remember Browning far more readily than we do Landor, this poem dates from a period when their fortunes were reversed and the latter was eager to acquaint the world with the budding talent he had discovered. Walter Savage Landor (30 January 1775 – 17 September 1864) was an English writer, poet, and activist. His best known works were the prose Imaginary Conversations, and the poem "Rose Aylmer," but the critical acclaim he received from contemporary poets and reviewers was not matched ...
Oct 08, 2024•7 min
Today’s poem is a defense of myths and myth-making, inspired by an argument with C. S. Lewis. 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
Oct 04, 2024•14 min
Ronald Stuart Thomas (29 March 1913 – 25 September 2000), published as R. S. Thomas, was a Welsh poet and Anglican priest noted for nationalism, spirituality and dislike of the anglicisation of Wales. John Betjeman, introducing Song at the Year's Turning (1955), the first collection of Thomas's poetry from a major publisher, predicted that Thomas would be remembered long after he himself was forgotten. M. Wynn Thomas said: "He was the Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn of Wales because he was such a trouble...
Oct 03, 2024•9 min
Dorothy Parker (née Rothschild; August 22, 1893 – June 7, 1967) was an American poet and writer of fiction, plays and screenplays based in New York; she was known for her caustic wisecracks, and eye for 20th-century urban foibles. Parker rose to acclaim, both for her literary works published in magazines, such as The New Yorker , and as a founding member of the Algonquin Round Table. Following the breakup of the circle, Parker traveled to Hollywood to pursue screenwriting. Her successes there, i...
Oct 02, 2024•5 min
Today’s poem offers a needful portrait of ‘manly talk.’ Happy reading. Louis Untermeyer was the author, editor or compiler, and translator of more than 100 books for readers of all ages. He will be best remembered as the prolific anthologist whose collections have introduced students to contemporary American poetry since 1919. The son of an established New York jeweler, Untermeyer’s interest in poetry led to friendships with poets from three generations, including many of the century’s major wri...
Oct 01, 2024•5 min
Today’s poem is one of the most-discussed pieces of twentieth-century verse and, love it or hate it, features one of literature’s best extended metaphors for eternal yearnings–the quest for the great and holy city. 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...
Sep 30, 2024•15 min
If the strained relationship between science and Romanticism had an anthem, it might be 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
Sep 27, 2024•6 min
