The Daily Poem
Episodes
John Donne's "The Relic"
01 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
John Donne muses on the ineffability of a chaste love and devises a brilliant (or, at any rate, novel) scheme for reuniting with his loved one in the ...
J. R. R. Tolkien's "The Last of the Old Gods"
29 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Tolkien was no believer in the power of geo-political solutions to better the state of man, convinced that his duty was to fight “the long defeat”...
Ralph Waldo Emerson's "Fable"
26 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Emerson spent a lot of time observing the natural world. In today’s poem, he couples that pastime with an art form that specializes in human nature....
Geoffrey Hill's "Genesis"
24 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In today’s poem, a young Geoffrey Hill is looking for a story to believe in. Happy reading.Known as one of the greatest poets of his generation writ...
Prince Hal's soliloquy from Henry IV, pt.1 ("herein will I imitate the sun")
22 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In today’s poem, Shakespeare puts the theatre in political theater via a candid moment with the future King Henry V in Henry IV pt. 1, Act 1, Scene ...
Phineas Fletcher's "A Litany"
19 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Today’s poem is a short meditation on grief made enduringly-famous after Orlando Gibbons set it to music. You can hear an arrangement of that piece ...
Richard Wilbur's "The Writer"
17 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Today’s poem goes out to 6-year-od girls and their dads. Happy reading! This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribe...
Alfred Tennyson's "In Memoriam..." 1-3
15 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In today’s poem, a young Tennyson begins the long wrestling with grief. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribe...
Kenn Nesbitt's "Our Teacher's Not a Zombie"
12 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Today’s poem may or may not be based on actual events. Happy reading! This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers...
Donald Hall's "An Old Life"
10 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In the latter years of his career and life, Donald Hall became something of an expert on growing old (his essay collections Essays After Eighty and A ...
Gwendolyn Brooks' "The Bean Eaters"
08 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In today’s poem, better is a dinner of herbs where love and memory are, than great riches. Happy reading. This is a public episode. If you'd like to...
Lucy Maud Montgomery's "A Request"
05 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Today’s poem is channeling Anne Shirley in the autumn of her years. Happy reading. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with othe...
Linda Pastan's "Something About the Trees"
03 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Today’s poem takes full advantage of the pantoum form’s naturally-contemplative structure–the repeating lines carrying us back and forth between...
Jane Kenyon's "Three Songs at the End of Summer"
01 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In today’s poem, Kenyon wrestles with the Solomonic thesis that “the end of a thing is better than its beginning.” Happy reading. This is a publ...
Ogden Nash's "The People Upstairs"
29 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Noisy upstairs neighbors have been consternating mankind for as long as second-floors have existed. The all-too-familiar phenomenon has inspired novel...
Emily Dickinson's "How soft a Caterpillar steps —"
27 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Philosopher Thomas Nagel famously argued that it is impossible to know what it’s like to be a bat. Dickinson, on the other hand, claims to know what...
Randall Jarrell's "The Lost World"
25 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Today’s poem is the first half of Randall Jarrell’s reverie about his Los Angeles childhood–and one of the most effortless examples of terza rim...
Rudyard Kipling’s “The Ballad of the Clampherdown”
22 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Today’s poem is the satirical saga of an anachronistic naval battle. Heave ho and happy reading! This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss ...
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's "The Fire of Drift-wood"
20 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Nothing feels better and hurts worse than nostalgia. Happy reading. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or ...
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...