The Daily Poem

Miroslav Holub's "Napoleon"

18 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Today’s brief poem goes out to teachers everywhere as they return to work. Good luck and happy reading.“Poet Seamus Heaney described Holub’s wri...

John Keats' "To Sleep"

15 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

“To die, to sleep.” Sometimes the space between the two seems as slight as that intervening comma. Happy reading. This is a public episode. If yo...

William Shakespeare's "Sonnet 94: They that have power to hurt..."

13 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

I might say today’s poem is all subtext–if it weren’t for all the text. Ambiguous praise, sincere romantic angst, just the right amount of bitte...

Live: William Carlos Williams' "The Fool's Song"

11 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

This special, live edition of The Daily Poem was recorded at the Close Reads 10th Anniversary celebration last weekend in Concord, NC. Happy reading! ...

Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings' "Prize Jelly"

08 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Best known as the author of The Yearling and Cross Creek, Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings enjoyed a long side-hustle as an occasional poet. Happy reading. Th...

Malcolm Guite's "Transfiguration"

06 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Today’s poem comes from Guite’s excellent collection, Sounding the Seasons (now in a new edition with over 100 sonnets!). Blessed feast and happy ...

Terrence Hayes’ “The Same City”

04 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Hayes has said he longs for a language that can circumvent idea and communicate pure emotion—in today’s poem that quest is dramatized in a powerfu...

Billy Collins' "On Turning Ten"

01 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Happy tenth birthday to the Close Reads podcast, and happy reading! This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or ...

Philip Appleman's "Anniversary"

31 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Today’s poem is one of “promises kept, and / promises / still to keep.” Happy reading. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this w...

John Donne's "The Anniversary"

30 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Today’s poem looks forward to a long and prosperous “reign.” Happy reading. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other s...

Rhina P. Espaillat's "Gardening"

28 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

This week’s poems are arranged around the themes of retrospection and anniversaries in honor of the Close Reads Podcast celebrating its tenth year. ...

Carole Boston Weatherford's "Sidewalk Chalk"

25 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Today’s poem is a little hopscotch down memory lane. Happy reading.Weatherford is author of over seventy books including fiction, non-fiction, and p...

Wendell Berry's "A Parting"

23 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Today’s bittersweet poem glimpses the life of Arthur Rowanberry across time and beyond. Happy reading. This is a public episode. If you'd like to di...

Karina Borowicz's "September Tomatoes"

21 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Karina Borowicz was born in New Bedford, Massachusetts. She earned a BA in history and Russian from the University of Massachusetts and an MFA from th...

Robert Graves' "Epitaph on an Unfortunate Artist"

18 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Today’s poem is a cautionary tale about achieving popular successes. Happy reading.“Mark Ford summarized Graves’s ‘wholesale rejection of 20th...

William Wordsworth's "The Tables Turned"

16 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Today’s poem is an invitation to an encounter with the Real. Happy reading. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subsc...

Vachel Lindsay's "Abraham Lincoln Walks at Midnight"

14 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Today’s poem is neither the first nor last to mythologize America’s sixteenth president. What is it about Lincoln that makes him so attractive to ...

Roger Woddis' "Ethics for Everyman"

11 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Today’s poem–from British humorist Roger Woddis–is a witty-yet-withering sendup of double-morality. Happy reading. This is a public episode. If ...

"Old English Riddle no. 26" (trans. Roy M. Liuzza)

09 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Today’s poem comes from the largest surviving trove of Anglo Saxon poetry–the Exeter Book. Happy riddling! This is a public episode. If you'd like...

Louise Imogen Guiney's "John Brown: A Paradox"

07 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Louise Imogen Guiney is known for her lyrical, Old English-style poems that often recall the literary conventions of seventeenth-century English poetr...

Robert Lowell's "July in Washington"

04 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

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, v...

Juliana Horatia Ewing's "Garden Lore"

02 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Juliana Horatia Ewing (August 3, 1841 – May 13, 1885) was an English writer of children's stories. Her writings display a sympathetic insight into c...

Tracy K. Smith’s “The Good Life”

30 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

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 wit...

G. K. Chesterton’s “The Secret People”

27 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

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 subscri...

John Donne’s “A Valediction Forbidding Mourning”

25 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

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 t...

William Blake’s Introduction to Songs of Experience

23 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Today’s poem, introducing the counterpart to “Songs of Innocence,” is a dialogue that immediately deepens the mood of the more “mature” lyri...

John Keats’ “Happy is England”

20 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

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 epis...

Samuel Taylor Coleridge's "Frost at Midnight"

18 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

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 th...

Lord Byron's "She Walks in Beauty"

16 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

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 subscr...

Simon Curtis's "Satie, at the End of Term"

13 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

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. A...

Theodore Roethke's "Cuttings"

11 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

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 epis...

David Wojahn's "Pentecost"

09 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

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,...

Bert Leston Taylor's "Canopus"

06 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

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...

Edna St. Vincent Millay's "Conscientious Objector"

04 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

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...

Jeanne Murray Walker's "The Music Before the Music"

02 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

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’...

Hilaire Belloc's "Lord Finchley"

30 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

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...

Timothy Murphy's "Mentor"

28 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Poet Timothy Murphy was born in Hibbing, Minnesota, and graduated from Yale University, where he participated in the Scholar of the House program. He ...

John McCrae's "In Flanders Fields"

26 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

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 earn...

Seamus Heaney's "Scaffolding"

23 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

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 ...

Emily Dickinson's "The saddest noise, the sweetest noise"

21 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

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 ...

Bill Knott's "An Instructor's Dream"

19 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

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 Cit...

Andrew Barton Paterson's "The Man From Ironbark"

16 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Today’s poem explains why some Australians wear beards.Andrew Barton "Banjo" Paterson, CBE (17 February 1864 – 5 February 1941) was an Australian ...

Fernando Valverde's "Edgar Allan Poe Is Reached at the Baltimore Harbor by the Shadows That Pursue Him"

14 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Fernando Valverde (Granada, 1980) has been voted the most relevant Spanish-language poet born since 1970 by nearly two hundred critics and researchers...

Marya Zaturensky's "The Girl Takes Her Place Among the Mothers"

12 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

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 Pulitze...

Henry Sambrooke Leigh's "The Twins"

09 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

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. H...

Gerard Manley Hopkins' "Binsey Poplars"

07 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

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 whil...

William Cowper's "The Poplar Field"

05 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

“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 ...

Larry K. Richman's "The Joys of House Wrecking"

02 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

“The work of destruction is quick, easy and exhilarating; the work of creation slow, laborious and dull.” -Roger ScrutonLarry Richman (1934-2023)...

Geoffrey Chaucer's "Prologue" to The Canterbury Tales"

30 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Though J. R. R. Tolkien translated portions of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, he did not live to complete the project. Fortunately another Inkling, Nev...

John Keats' "This Living Hand"

28 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

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 subscribe...

E. E. Cummings' "anyone lived in a pretty how town"

25 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Today’s poem–in which men and women are the two halves of a bell’s tone–voices the rhythms and joys of life in an unconventional way that has ...

Walter de la Mare's "Good-bye"

23 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

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 li...

Scott Cairns' "Coracle"

21 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

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...

T. S. Eliot’s “East Coker IV”

18 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

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 ge...

Carl Sandburg's "Buffalo Dusk"

16 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

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...

J. R. R. Tolkien's "When Spring Unfolds the Beechen Leaf"

14 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

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...

Franz Wright's "The Raising of Lazarus"

11 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

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 c...

Robert Browning's "Home Thoughts from Abroad"

09 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Browning’s 1845 poem captures the affections of every transplant and ex-pat, conjuring the momentary return to a faraway home. Happy reading. This i...

Mary Oliver's "Breakage"

07 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

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 t...

Samuel Taylor Coleridge's "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" (selections)

04 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Today’s selections are characteristic passages from (maybe) the greatest and (certainly) strangest poem in Lyrical Ballads–Coleridge’s Ancient M...

Samuel Taylor Coleridge's "The Dungeon"

02 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

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 p...

William Wordsworth's "Tintern Abbey"

31 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

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 Re...

Hilaire Belloc's "The Scorpion"

28 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

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...

Oliver Goldsmith's "An Elegy on the Death of a Mad Dog"

26 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Oliver Goldsmith (born Nov. 10, 1730, Kilkenny West, County Westmeath, Ire.—died April 4, 1774, London) was an Anglo-Irish essayist, poet, novelist,...

Two Poems for the Annunciation

25 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

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 grea...

David Wagoner's "For a Student Sleeping in a Poetry Workshop"

24 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

As the long, exhausting march toward summer begins for many students, the wise and compassionate David Wagoner takes us to the intersection of love an...

Sarah Lindsay's "Zucchini Shofar"

21 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

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 ...

Siegfried Sassoon's "Attack"

19 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

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 mothe...

Seamus Heaney's "Digging"

17 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

“The form of the poem, in other words, is crucial to poetry’s power to do the thing which always is and always will be to poetry’s credit: the p...

Thomas Parnell's "The Book-Worm"

14 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

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 ...

Jonathan Swift's "The Character of Sir Robert Walpole"

12 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

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 Scrib...

Alexander Pope's "Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot"

10 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Alexander Pope (1688-1744) was notorious for embroiling himself in literary-political controversy–his sharp pen writing scathing checks his 4’6”...

Richard Wilbur's "A Dubious Night"

07 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

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 ...

T. S. Eliot's "Ash Wednesday"

05 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

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...

Scott Cairns' "Possible Answers to Prayer"

03 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Librettist, essayist, translator, and author of ten poetry collections, Scott Cairns is Curators’ Distinguished Professor Emeritus at University of ...

Rudyard Kipling's "The Camel's Hump"

28 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

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...

Langston Hughes' "Dreams"

26 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Today’s poem plays nicely against Hughes’ more famous meditation on “dreams” (the deferred kind, in “Harlem”). Rather than emphasizing the...

Richard Henry Horne's "The Plough"

24 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

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 ...

Edward Lear's "The Owl and the Pussy-Cat"

21 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

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 featu...

Gary Soto's "Oranges"

19 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

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,...

Maurice Manning's "A Plank from the Platform"

17 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

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 episo...

Wendell Berry's "Loving You Has Taught Me..."

14 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

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...

W. H. Auden's "Night Mail"

12 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Today’s poem, reminiscent of yesterday’s “From a Railway Carriage,” was written by Auden for use in the 1936 documentary short film, Night Mai...

Anne Brontë's "The North Wind"

10 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

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 bee...

Alfred, Lord Tennyson's "Ulysses" pt. 2

07 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

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...

Zbigniew Herbert's "The Salt of the Earth"

05 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

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 ten...

Ted Kooser's "So This Is Nebraska"

03 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Today’s poem glides, settles, dances, waves, and soars its way through the unassuming comforts of the familiar. Happy reading. This is a public epis...

Phyllis McGinley's "Lament for a Wavering Viewpoint"

31 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

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 ve...

John Keats' "On First Looking Into Chapman's Homer"

29 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

As William Shakespeare was putting the final touchers on Hamlet, George Chapman was beginning (arguably) an even more momentous undertaking: introduci...

Mary Oliver's "First Snow"

27 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

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...

G. K. Chesterton's "Stilton and Milton"

24 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

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 l...

John Keble's "The Accession"

22 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Today’s poem, though written for the far more infrequent crowning of monarchs, contains plenty of sentiments fitting for a quadrennial presidential ...

Yvor Winters' "At the San Francisco Airport"

20 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Though not yet the Dantesque hells that they are today, airports in 1954 were already places of union, separation, and general existential anxiety. Th...

Billy Collins' "Thesaurus"

17 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

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...

John Davies' "Nosce Teipsum: of Human Knowledge"

15 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

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 sti...

Ted Kooser's Blizzard Voices

13 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Today’s poems are selected from Ted Kooser’s The Blizzard Voices, a collection of informal verse commemorating the apocalyptic Great Plains blizza...

Kingsley Amis' "A Bookshop Idyll"

10 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

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 read...

A. E. Stallings' "Scissors"

08 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

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 Decat...

Richard Wilbur's "A Wedding Toast"

06 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

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 su...

Philip Appleman's "To the Garbage Collectors in Bloomington, Indiana, the First Pickup of the New Year"

03 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

If you can see “a World in a Grain of Sand/And a Heaven in a Wild Flower,” what can you see in the trashcan at the curb? Apparently quite a bit, i...