The Daily Poem

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 subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit dailypoempod.substack.com/subscribe

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 to bonus episodes, visit dailypoempod.substack.com/subscribe

Today's poem, introducing the counterpart to “Songs of Innocence,” is a dialogue that immediately deepens the mood of the more “mature” lyrics that will follow. 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

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 episodes, visit dailypoempod.substack.com/subscribe

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 this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit dailypoempod.substack.com/subscribe

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 subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit dailypoempod.substack.com/subscribe

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. An excellent poet himself, he edited two magazines and helped many struggling writers into print.His heroes were Wordsworth, Hardy and Causley. His own poetry, which rhymed and was perfectly accessible, was distinguished by, in his words, its "shrewd, ironic and Horatian tone". It ranged from accomplished light verse, which was often very funny, to deeply affecting poems about family bereavement. He appeared in the Faber Poetry Introduction 6 (1985).Simon was born in Burnley, Lancashire, the son of Susan, an English teacher, and the Rev Douglas Curtis, a vicar, and grew up in Northamptonshire. Armed with an English degree from Cambridge University, and a PhD from Essex, on Darwin as writer and scientist, he became a lecturer in comparative literature at Manchester University. He was active in the Hardy Society, editing the Thomas Hardy Journal for several years, worked quietly for the Campaign to Protect Rural England, and spent a lot of time caring for his mother, who lived to a great age.Eventually, he moved to Plymouth and in 2010 took over from me as the editor of the little magazine The Interpreter's House, which he made, in Hardy's phrase, "a house of hospitalities". We were both determined that it shouldn't be just a platform for the editor's friends but should be open to good poets of all stripes.But early in 2013 all plans had to be shelved as this active outdoor man was diagnosed with incurable cancer. Though paralysed below the waist, he remained positive, continued to watch the yellowhammers outside his window and never allowed his many visitors to feel downhearted. Shoestring Press rushed out a volume of his new and selected poems, Comet Over Greens Norton, which contains all his best work.Simon was old-fashioned in the best kind of ways, a former 1960s student who canvassed for Labour but who dressed conservatively and retained a stiff upper lip and immaculate manners. He hated pollution, literary infighting, and public greed and waste. He loved bird-watching, football, woodcuts and the Lake District.-bio via Merryn Williams' 2014 Obituary for Curtis in The Guardian 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

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 episodes, visit dailypoempod.substack.com/subscribe

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, Icehouse Lights, was chosen for the Yale Series of Younger Poets award in 1981, Wojahn has been one of American poetry's most thoughtful examiners of culture and memory. His work often investigates how history plays out in the lives of individuals, and poet Tom Sleigh says that his poems “meld the political and personal in a way that is unparalleled by any living American poet.”Wojahn's book World Tree (2011) received the Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize from the Academy of American Poets. His collection Interrogation Palace: New and Selected Poems 1982–2004 (2006), which Peter Campion called “superb” and “panoramic” in a review for Poetry, showcases Wojahn's formal range, the scope of his personal narratives, and his intense, imaginative monologues and character sketches, such as his sonnets on pop culture icons and rock-and-roll musicians in Mystery Train (1990). He is also celebrated for the emotional resonance of his poetry—the ability to, in the words of poet Jean Valentine, “follow … tragedy to its grave depths, with dignity and unsparingness, and egolessness.”In addition to his books of poetry, Wojahn is the author of From the Valley of Making: Essays on the Craft of Poetry (2015) and Strange Good Fortune (2001), a collection of essays on contemporary poetry. He coedited A Profile of Twentieth Century American Poetry (1991), and edited a posthumous collection of his wife Lynda Hull's poetry, The Only World (1995).Wojahn has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, the Illinois Arts Council, and the Indiana Arts Commission. He teaches poetry at Virginia Commonwealth University and in the low residency MFA in Writing program at the Vermont College of Fine Arts.-bio via Poetry Foundation 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

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, 1921) was an American columnist, humorist, poet, and author.Bert Leston Taylor became a journalist at seventeen, a librettist at twenty-one, and a successfully published author at thirty-five. At the height of his literary career, he was a central literary figure of the early 20th century Chicago renaissance as well as one of the most celebrated columnists in the United States.-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

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 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

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's the prize-winning author of nine books of poetry. Jeanne serves as a Mentor in the Seattle Pacific University low residency MFA Program and travels widely to give readings and workshops.-bio via Paraclete Press 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

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 discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit dailypoempod.substack.com/subscribe

Poet Timothy Murphy was born in Hibbing, Minnesota, and graduated from Yale University, where he participated in the Scholar of the House program. He was a partner in a large-scale hog farm and a businessperson. His books include the poetry collections The Deed of Gift (1998), Very Far North (2002), Mortal Stakes • Faint Thunder (2011), Hunter's Log (2011), and Devotions (2017) as well as a memoir, Set the Ploughshare Deep: A Prairie Memoir (2000). He has also translated Beowulf. Though hunting and farming are essential subjects for his writing, myths and legends influence his work as well. He passed away in June 2018.-bio via Poetry Foundation 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

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 earnestly patriotic without becoming jingoistic. Perhaps the balance is a reflection of the steadiness of the Canadian veteran who penned it. 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

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 like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit dailypoempod.substack.com/subscribe

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 reminiscences of graduation season. 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

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 City, Michigan. When he was seven years old, his mother died in childbirth, and his father passed away three years later. He grew up in an orphanage in Mooseheart, Illinois, and on an uncle's farm. In the late 1950s, he joined the U.S. Army and, after serving his full enlistment, was honorably discharged in 1960.In the early 1960s, Knott moved to Chicago, where he worked as a hospital orderly. There, he became involved in the poetry scene and worked with John Logan, Paul Carroll, Charles Simic, and other poets. He published his first book, The Naomi Poems, Book One: Corpse and Beans (Big Table, 1968), under the pseudonym Saint Geraurd in 1968. He also published Nights of Naomi (Barn Dream Press, 1971) and Auto-necrophilia (Big Table, 1971) under the same name.Knott went on to publish several poetry collections under his own name, including I Am Flying into Myself: Selected Poems, 1960–2014 (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2017), edited by Thomas Lux; Laugh at the End of the World: Collected Comic Poems 1969–1999 (BOA Editions, 2000); Becos (Random House, 1983); and Love Poems to Myself (Barn Dream Press, 1974). He also self-published many books and posted all of his poems online, where they could be read for free.Of his work, Lux writes, “As dense as some of his poems can be, they rarely defeat comprehensibility. Some are so lucid and straightforward, they are like a punch in the gut, or one's first great kiss…. His intense focus on every syllable, and the sound of every syllable in relation to nearby sounds, is so skilled that the poems often seem casual: Art hides art.”Knott taught at Emerson College for over twenty-five years. He received the Iowa Poetry Prize, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and two fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, among other honors and awards. He died on March 12, 2014, in Bay City, Michigan.-bio via Academy of American Poets 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

Today's poem explains why some Australians wear beards.Andrew Barton "Banjo" Paterson, CBE (17 February 1864 – 5 February 1941) was an Australian bush poet, journalist and author, widely considered one of the greatest writers of Australia's colonial period.Born in rural New South Wales, Paterson worked as a lawyer before transitioning into literature, where he quickly gained recognition for capturing the life of the Australian bush. A representative of the Bulletin School of Australian literature, Paterson wrote many of his best known poems for the nationalist journal The Bulletin, including "Clancy of the Overflow" (1889) and "The Man from Snowy River" (1890). His 1895 ballad "Waltzing Matilda" is regarded widely as Australia's unofficial national anthem and, according to the National Film and Sound Archive, has been recorded more than any other Australian song.-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

Fernando Valverde (Granada, 1980) has been voted the most relevant Spanish-language poet born since 1970 by nearly two hundred critics and researchers from more than one hundred international universities (Harvard, Oxford, Columbia, Princeton, Bologna, Salamanca, UNAM and the Sorbonne).His books have been published in different countries in Europe and America and translated into several languages. He has received some of the most prestigious awards for poetry in Spanish, including the Federico García Lorca, the Emilio Alarcos del Principado de Asturias and the Antonio Machado. His last book, The Insistence of Harm, received the Book of the Year award from the Latino American Writers Institute of the City University of New York.For ten years he has worked as a journalist for the Spanish newspaper El País. He directs the International Festival of Poetry in Granada and is a professor at the University of Virginia (Charlottesville, EEUU).His last bilingual book, America, has been published by Copper Canyon Press with translation by Carolyn Forché.In 2022, Fernando Valverde published the first biography of the poet Percy B. Shelley in Spanish and in 2024 he published a monumental biography of Lord Byron. Valverde is considered one of the greatest specialists in Romanticism today.-bio via FernandoValverde.com 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

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 Pulitzer Prize winner, was born on September 12, 1902, in Kiev, Russia (now Ukraine). She emigrated to the United States with her family in 1909 and was educated in New York public schools; attended Valparaiso University, 1922–23; graduated from University of Wisconsin, 1925. The same year she married Horace Gregory (a poet and critic), and had two children: Joanna and Patrick.Zaturensky won the John Reed Memorial Award from Poetry magazine (1922), the Shelley Memorial Award (1935), the Guarantors Award from Poetry magazine (1937), and finally the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1938. 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

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. Happy reading.Leigh, son of James Mathews Leigh, was born in London on 29 March 1837. At an early age he engaged in literary pursuits. From time to time appeared collections of his lyrics, under the titles of Carols of Cockayne, 1869 (several editions); Gillott and Goosequill, 1871; A Town Garland: a Collection of Lyrics, 1878; and Strains from the Strand: Trifles in Verse, 1882. His verse was always fluent, but otherwise of very slender merit.For the stage he translated many French comic operas. His first theatrical essay was in collaboration with Charles Millward in a musical spectacle for the Theatre Royal in Birmingham. His ‘Falsacappa,' music by Offenbach, was produced at the Globe Theatre on 22 April 1871; ‘Le Roi Carotte' at the Alhambra on 3 June 1872; ‘Bridge of Sighs,' opera-bouffe, at the St. James's, 18 Nov. 1872; ‘White Cat,' a fairy spectacle, at the Queen's, Long Acre, on 2 Dec. 1875; ‘Voyage dans la Lune,' opera-bouffe, at the Alhambra, on 15 April 1876; ‘Fatinitza,' opera-bouffe (the words were printed), adapted from the German, at the Alhambra on 20 June 1878; ‘The Great Casimir,' a vaudeville, at the Gaiety, on 27 Sept. 1879; ‘Cinderella,' an opera, with music by J. Farmer, at St. James's Hall, on 2 May 1884 (the words were published in 1882); ‘The Brigands,' by H. Meilhac and L. Halévy, adapted to English words by Leigh, was printed in 1884. For ‘Lurette,' a comic opera, Avenue, 24 March 1883, he wrote the lyrics; and with Robert Reece he produced ‘La Petite Mademoiselle,' comic opera, Alhambra, on 6 October 1879. He edited ‘Jeux d'Esprit written and spoken by French and English Wits and Humorists,' in 1877, and wrote Mark Twain's ‘Nightmares' in 1878.His last theatrical venture—a complete failure—was ‘The Prince Methusalem,' a comic opera, brought out at the Folies Dramatiques (now the Kingsway), Great Queen Street, London, on 19 May 1883. He was a Spanish, Portuguese, and French scholar, a brilliant and witty conversationalist, and a humorous singer.He died in his rooms in Lowther's private hotel, 35 Strand, London, on 16 June 1883, and was buried in Brompton cemetery on 22 June.-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

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 while achieving a (superior?) effect of its own. 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

“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 reading.William Cowper (1731-1800) was a renowned 18th century poet, hymnographer, and translator of Homer. His most famous works include his 5000-line poem ‘The Task' and some charming and light-hearted verses, not least ‘The Diverting History of John Gilpin'. Phrases he coined such as ‘Variety is the spice of life' are still in popular use today. While living in Olney he collaborated on ‘The Olney Hymns' with his friend John Newton. -bio via the Cowper and Newton Museum 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

“The work of destruction is quick, easy and exhilarating; the work of creation slow, laborious and dull.” -Roger ScrutonLarry Richman (1934-2023) was born in Philadelphia and grew up on a small Bucks County chicken farm north of the city. He attended local schools and then Colorado College, where he was inducted into Phi Beta Kappa and graduated with a BA in English in 1957. From Duke University, he received an MA in 1959 and a PhD in 1970.Larry went on to teach English at the Beaufort and Florence Centers of the University of South Carolina, Washington & Lee University, Agnes Scott College, Virginia Intermont College, and Virginia Highlands Community College, from which he retired as professor emeritus of English in 1998. He also served briefly as adjunct faculty for Vermont College.Larry was one of the founding editors of a nationally distributed poetry quarterly, The Sow's Ear Poetry Review. He and his wife, Ann, were editor-publishers of the Sow's Ear Press, which published 30 collections by poets from the upper South between 1994 and 2003. He was also one of the founders and the associate editor and advertising director of The Plow, an Appalachian alternative newsmagazine published by the nonprofit Appalachian Information. The magazine ran for four years in the late 1970s, producing a total of 72 issues. 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

Though J. R. R. Tolkien translated portions of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, he did not live to complete the project. Fortunately another Inkling, Nevill Coghill, succeeded where Tolkien could not, and produced the modernized verse-rendering that today's selection comes from. 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

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 subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit dailypoempod.substack.com/subscribe

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 to be heard and understood with the body before the mind. 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

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 literature's chief exemplars of the romantic imagination. His complete works form a sustained treatment of romantic themes: dreams, death, rare states of mind and emotion, fantasy worlds of childhood, and the pursuit of the transcendent.As a youth he attended St. Paul's Cathedral School, and his formal education did not extend beyond this point. Upon graduation he went to work for the Anglo-American (Standard) Oil Company, remaining with the firm for 18 years. De la Mare began writing short stories and poetry while working as a bookkeeper in the company's London office during the 1890s. His first published short story, “Kismet,” appeared in the journal Sketch in 1895. In 1902 he published his first major work, the poetry collection Songs of Childhood, which was recognized as a significant example of children's literature for its creative imagery and variety of meters. Critics often assert that a childlike richness of imagination influenced everything de la Mare wrote, emphasizing his frequent depiction of childhood as a time of intuition, deep emotion, and closeness to spiritual truth. In 1908, following the publication of his novel Henry Brocken and the poetry collection titled Poems, de la Mare was granted a Civil List pension, enabling him to terminate his corporate employment and focus exclusively on writing.….As a poet de la Mare is often compared with Thomas Hardy and William Blake for their respective themes of mortality and visionary illumination. His greatest concern was the creation of a dreamlike tone implying a tangible but nonspecific transcendent reality. This characteristic of the poems has drawn many admirers, though also eliciting criticism that the poet indulged in an undefined sense of mystery without systematic acceptance of any specific doctrine. Some commentators also criticize the poetry for having an archness of tone more suitable for children's verse, while others value this playful quality. It is generally agreed, however, that de la Mare was a skillful manipulator of poetic structure, a skill that is particularly evident in the earlier collections.….For his extravagance of invention de la Mare is sometimes labeled an escapist who retreats from accepted definitions of reality and the relationships of conventional existence. His approach to reality, however, is not escapist; rather, it profoundly explores the world he considered most significant—that of the imagination. In the London Mercury J.B. Priestley favorably concluded in 1924 that de la Mare is “one of that most lovable order of artists who never lose sight of their childhood, but re-live it continually in their work and contrive to find expression for their maturity in it, memories and impressions, its romantic vision of the world.”-bio via Poetry Foundation 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

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 get access to bonus episodes, visit dailypoempod.substack.com/subscribe

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 get access to bonus episodes, visit dailypoempod.substack.com/subscribe

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 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

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 take its final form until he decided to adapt it for inclusion in The Lord of the Rings. 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

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 collections of poetry include The Beforelife (2001); God's Silence (2006); Walking to Martha's Vineyard, which won the Pulitzer Prize in 2004; Wheeling Motel (2009); Kindertotenwald (2011); and F (2013). In his precisely crafted, lyrical poems, Wright addresses the subjects of isolation, illness, spirituality, and gratitude. Of his work, he has commented, “I think ideally, I would like, in a poem, to operate by way of suggestion.”Critic Helen Vendler wrote in the New York Review of Books, “Wright's scale of experience, like Berryman's, runs from the homicidal to the ecstatic ... His best forms of or originality: deftness in patterning, startling metaphors, starkness of speech, compression of both pain and joy, and a stoic self-possession with the agonies and penalties of existence.” Langdon Hammer, in the New York Times Book Review, wrote of God's Silence: “In his best poems, Wright grasps at the ‘radiantly obvious thing' in short-lined short lyrics that turn and twist down the page. The urgency and calculated unsteadiness of the utterances, with their abrupt shifts of direction, jump-cuts and quips, mime the wounded openness of a speaker struggling to find faith.”Wright received a Whiting Fellowship, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts. He translated poetry by Rainer Maria Rilke and Rene Char; in 2008 he and his wife, Elizabeth Oehlkers Wright, co-translated a collection by the Belarusian poet Valzhyna Mort, Factory of Tears. He taught at Emerson College and other universities, worked in mental health clinics, and volunteered at a center for grieving children. His father was the Pulitzer Prize–winning poet James Wright. He died in 2015. 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

Browning's 1845 poem captures the affections of every transplant and ex-pat, conjuring the momentary return to a faraway home. 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

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 to bonus episodes, visit dailypoempod.substack.com/subscribe

Today's selections are characteristic passages from (maybe) the greatest and (certainly) strangest poem in Lyrical Ballads–Coleridge's Ancient Mariner. Happy reading.(Nota bene: If you are ready for your own copy of Lyrical Ballads, the Oxford World Classics edition is a great way to see the developments across early editions.) 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

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 poem uses an abstract description to conjure a very concrete social evil–the state of British prisons at the end of the long 18th century. 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

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 Revisiting the Banks of the Wye during a Tour, July 13, 1798.” Happy reading!Jonathan Kerr of the Wordsworth Trust writes about the revolutionary context of the Lyrical Ballads and the revolutionary nature of the project itself:“Wordsworth and Coleridge's first major literary undertaking and a pioneering work of English Romanticism – came into being at a tumultuous moment in England's history…Not since the English Revolution had the country faced such alarming upheaval and discord within its borders.On first glance it might not seem like the little collection authored by Wordsworth and Coleridge has much to do with this heady and factional atmosphere. Lyrical Ballads came about in the spring and summer of 1798, when the Coleridge and Wordsworth families lived as neighbours in the secluded village of Holford, Somerset. Wordsworth and Coleridge had only known one another a short time, but they became quick friends and mutually-admiring colleagues. The small village provided both poets with a break from the spirited goings-on of cities like London and Bristol, which could often be dangerous places for young men with unorthodox opinions. Coleridge and Wordsworth, both committed reformers through the early years of the French Revolution, knew this is as well as anybody, and their retreat into the country was motivated as much by concerns for their personal security as anything else.…Whether or not Wordsworth and Coleridge continued to sympathize with the revolution abroad, there can be little doubt that with Lyrical Ballads the two were committed to one kind of revolution at least, a revolution in the sphere of poetry and art. Lyrical Ballads is among other things an attempt to purify poetry of the cold conventions which had come to dominate the literary scene, at least according to both poets; in place of this, Wordsworth and Coleridge wanted to bring poetry back to what is most common and recognizable, and also most important, within our emotional, social, and imaginative lives. If this doesn't seem like such an extraordinary undertaking today, this might owe to the remarkable success of Wordsworth and Coleridge's quiet revolution on the literary front.” 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

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 get access to bonus episodes, visit dailypoempod.substack.com/subscribe

Oliver Goldsmith (born Nov. 10, 1730, Kilkenny West, County Westmeath, Ire.—died April 4, 1774, London) was an Anglo-Irish essayist, poet, novelist, dramatist, and eccentric, made famous by such works as the series of essays The Citizen of the World, or, Letters from a Chinese Philosopher (1762), the poem The Deserted Village (1770), the novel The Vicar of Wakefield (1766), and the play She Stoops to Conquer (1773).Goldsmith was the son of an Anglo-Irish clergyman, the Rev. Charles Goldsmith, curate in charge of Kilkenny West, County Westmeath. At about the time of his birth, the family moved into a substantial house at nearby Lissoy, where Oliver spent his childhood. Much has been recorded concerning his youth, his unhappy years as an undergraduate at Trinity College, Dublin, where he received the B.A. degree in February 1749, and his many misadventures before he left Ireland in the autumn of 1752 to study in the medical school at Edinburgh. His father was now dead, but several of his relations had undertaken to support him in his pursuit of a medical degree. Later on, in London, he came to be known as Dr. Goldsmith—Doctor being the courtesy title for one who held the Bachelor of Medicine—but he took no degree while at Edinburgh nor, so far as anyone knows, during the two-year period when, despite his meagre funds, which were eventually exhausted, he somehow managed to make his way through Europe. The first period of his life ended with his arrival in London, bedraggled and penniless, early in 1756.Goldsmith's rise from total obscurity was a matter of only a few years. He worked as an apothecary's assistant, school usher, physician, and as a hack writer—reviewing, translating, and compiling. Much of his work was for Ralph Griffiths's Monthly Review. It remains amazing that this young Irish vagabond, unknown, uncouth, unlearned, and unreliable, was yet able within a few years to climb from obscurity to mix with aristocrats and the intellectual elite of London. Such a rise was possible because Goldsmith had one quality, soon noticed by booksellers and the public, that his fellow literary hacks did not possess—the gift of a graceful, lively, and readable style. His rise began with the Enquiry into the Present State of Polite Learning in Europe (1759), a minor work. Soon he emerged as an essayist, in The Bee and other periodicals, and above all in his Chinese Letters. These essays were first published in the journal The Public Ledger and were collected as The Citizen of the World in 1762. The same year brought his Life of Richard Nash, of Bath, Esq. Already Goldsmith was acquiring those distinguished and often helpful friends whom he alternately annoyed and amused, shocked and charmed—Samuel Johnson, Sir Joshua Reynolds, Thomas Percy, David Garrick, Edmund Burke, and James Boswell. The obscure drudge of 1759 became in 1764 one of the nine founder-members of the famous Club, a select body, including Reynolds, Johnson, and Burke, which met weekly for supper and talk. Goldsmith could now afford to live more comfortably, but his extravagance continually ran him into debt, and he was forced to undertake more hack work. He thus produced histories of England and of ancient Rome and Greece, biographies, verse anthologies, translations, and works of popular science. These were mainly compilations of works by other authors, which Goldsmith then distilled and enlivened by his own gift for fine writing. Some of these makeshift compilations went on being reprinted well into the 19th century, however.By 1762 Goldsmith had established himself as an essayist with his Citizen of the World, in which he used the device of satirizing Western society through the eyes of an Oriental visitor to London. By 1764 he had won a reputation as a poet with The Traveller, the first work to which he put his name. It embodied both his memories of tramping through Europe and his political ideas. In 1770 he confirmed that reputation with the more famous Deserted Village, which contains charming vignettes of rural life while denouncing the evictions of the country poor at the hands of wealthy landowners. In 1766 Goldsmith revealed himself as a novelist with The Vicar of Wakefield (written in 1762), a portrait of village life whose idealization of the countryside, sentimental moralizing, and melodramatic incidents are underlain by a sharp but good-natured irony. In 1768 Goldsmith turned to the theatre with The Good Natur'd Man, which was followed in 1773 by the much more effective She Stoops to Conquer, which was immediately successful. This play has outlived almost all other English-language comedies from the early 18th to the late 19th century by virtue of its broadly farcical horseplay and vivid, humorous characterizations.During his last decade Goldsmith's conversational encounters with Johnson and others, his foolishness, and his wit were preserved in Boswell's Life of Samuel Johnson. Goldsmith eventually became deeply embroiled in mounting debts despite his considerable earnings as an author, though, and after a short illness in the spring of 1774 he died.-bio via Britannica 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

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 great mystery. 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

As the long, exhausting march toward summer begins for many students, the wise and compassionate David Wagoner takes us to the intersection of love and weakness. Happy reading.David Wagoner was recognized as the leading poet of the Pacific Northwest, often compared to his early mentor Theodore Roethke, and highly praised for his skillful, insightful and serious body of work. He won numerous prestigious literary awards including the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize, two Pushcart Prizes, and the Academy of Arts and Letters Award, and was nominated twice for the National Book Award. The author of ten acclaimed novels, Wagoner's fiction has been awarded the Sherwood Anderson Foundation Award. Professor emeritus at the University of Washington, Wagoner enjoyed an excellent reputation as both a writer and a teacher of writing. He was selected to serve as chancellor of the Academy of American Poets in 1978, replacing Robert Lowell, and was the editor of Poetry Northwest until 2002.Born in Ohio and raised in Indiana, Midwesterner Wagoner was initially influenced by family ties, ethnic neighborhoods, industrial production and pollution, and the urban environment. His move to the Pacific Northwest in 1954, at Roethke's urging, changed both his outlook and his poetry. Writing in the Contemporary Authors Autobiography Series, Wagoner recalls: “when I drove down out of the Cascades and saw the region that was to become my home territory for the next thirty years, my extreme uneasiness turned into awe. I had never seen or imagined such greenness, such a promise of healing growth. Everything I saw appeared to be living ancestral forms of the dead earth where I'd tried to grow up.” Wagoner's poetry often mourns the loss of a natural, fertile wilderness, though David K. Robinson, writing in Contemporary Poetry, described the themes of “survival, anger at those who violate the natural world” and “a Chaucerian delight in human oddity” at work in the poems as well. Critics have also praised Wagoner's poetry for its crisp descriptive detail and metaphorical bent. However, Paul Breslin in the New York Times Book Review pronounced David Wagoner to be “predominantly a nature poet…as Frost and Roethke were nature poets.”Wagoner's first books, including Dry Sun, Dry Wind (1953), A Place to Stand (1958), and Poems (1959), demonstrate an early mastery of his chosen subject matter and form. Often comprised of observations of nature, Wagoner links his speakers' predicaments and estrangement to the larger imperfection of the world. In Wagoner's second book, A Place to Stand,Roethke's influence is clear, and the book uses journey poems to represent the poet's own quest back to his beginnings. Wagoner's fourth book, The Nesting Ground (1963), reflects his relocation physically, aesthetically and emotionally; the Midwest is abandoned for the lush abundance of the Pacific Northwest, and Wagoner's style is less concerned with lamentation or complaint and more with cataloguing the bounty around him. James K. Robinson called the title poem from Staying Alive (1966) “one of the best American poems since World War II.” In poems like “The Words,” Wagoner discovers harmony with nature by learning to be open to all it has to offer: “I take what is: / The light beats on the stones, / the wind over water shines / Like long grass through the trees, / As I set loose, like birds / in a landscape, the old words.” Robert Cording, who called Staying Alive “the volume where Wagoner comes into his own as a poet,” believed that for Wagoner, taking what is involves “an acceptance of our fragmented selves, which through love we are always trying to patch together; an acceptance of our own darkness; and an acceptance of the world around us with which we must reacquaint ourselves.”Collected Poems 1956-1976 (1976) was nominated for the National Book Award and praised by X. J. Kennedy in Parnassus for offering poems which are “beautifully clear; not merely comprehensible, but clear in the sense that their contents are quickly visible.” Yet it was Who Shall Be the Sun? (1978),based upon Native American myth and legend, which gained critical attention. Hayden Carruth, writing in Harper's Magazine, called the book “a remarkable achievement,” not only for its presentation of “the literalness of shamanistic mysticism” but also for “its true feeling.” Hudson Review's James Finn Cotter also noted how Wagoner “has not written translations but condensed versions that avoid stereotyped language….The voice is Wagoner's own, personal, familiar, concerned. He has achieved a remarkable fusion of nature, legend and psyche in these poems.”In Broken Country (1979), also nominated for the National Book Award, shows Wagoner honing the instructional backpacking poems he had first used in Staying Alive. Leonard Neufeldt, writing in New England Review,called “the love lyrics” of the first section “among the finest since Williams' ‘Asphodel.'” Wagoner has been accused of using staid pastoral conventions in book after book, as well as writing less well about human subjects. However, his books have continued to receive critical attention, often recognized for the ways in which they use encounters with nature as metaphors for encounters with the self. First Light (1983), Wagoner's “most intense” collection, according to James K. Robinson, reflects Wagoner's third marriage to poet Robin Seyfried. And Publishers Weekly celebrated Walt Whitman Bathing (1996) for its use of “plainspoken formal virtuosity” which allows for “a pragmatic clarity of perception.” A volume of new and collected poems, Traveling Light, was released in 1999. Sampling Wagoner's work through the years, many reviewers found the strongest poems to also be the newest. Rochelle Ratner in Library Journal noted “since many of the best are in the ‘New Poems' section, it might make sense to wait for his next volume.” That next volume, The House of Song (2002) won high praise for its variety of subject matter and pitch-perfect craft. Christina Pugh in Poetry declared “The House of Song boasts a superb architecture, and each one of its rooms (or in Italian, stanzas) affords a pleasure that enhances the last.” In 2008 Wagoner published his twenty-third collection of verse, A Map of the Night. Reviewing the book for the Seattle Times, Sheila Farr found many poems shot through with nostalgia, adding “the book feels like a summing-up.” Conceding that “not all the work reaches the high plane of Wagoner's reputation,” Farr described its “finest moments” as those which “resonate with the title, venturing into darkness and helping us recognize its familiar places.”In addition to his numerous books of poetry, David Wagoner was also a successful novelist, writing both mainstream fiction and regional Western fiction. Offering a steady mix of drama seasoned with occasional comedy, Wagoner's tales often involve a naive central character's encounter with and acceptance of human failing and social corruption. In the Contemporary Authors Autobiography Series, Wagoner described his first novel, The Man in the Middle (1954), as “a thriller with some Graham Greene overtones about a railroad crossing watchmen in violent political trouble in Chicago,” his second novel, Money, Money, Money (1955), as a story about “a young tree surgeon who can't touch, look at, or even think about money, though he has a lot of it,” his third novel, Rock (1958) as a tale of “teenage Chicago delinquents,” and his fifth novel, Baby, Come On Inside (1968) as a story “about an aging popular singer who'd lost his voice.” As a popular novelist, however, Wagoner is best known for The Escape Artist (1965), the story of an amateur magician and the unscrupulous adults who attempt to exploit him, which was adapted as a film in 1981. Wagoner produced four successful novels as a Western “regional” writer. Structurally and thematically, they bear similarities to his other novels. David W. Madden noted in Twentieth-Century Western Writers: “Central to each of these [Western] works is a young protagonist's movement from innocence to experience as he journeys across the American frontier encountering an often debased and corrupted world. However, unlike those he meets, the hero retains his fundamental optimism and incorruptibility.”Although Wagoner wrote numerous novels, his reputation rests on his numerous, exquisitely crafted poetry collections, and his dedication as a teacher. Harold Bloom said of Wagoner: “His study of American nostalgias is as eloquent as that of James Wright, and like Wright's poetry carries on some of the deepest currents in American verse.” And Leonard Neufeldt called Wagoner “simply, one of the most accomplished poets currently at work in and with America…His range and mastery of subjects, voices, and modes, his ability to work with ease in any of the modes (narrative, descriptive, dramatic, lyric, anecdotal) and with any number of species (elegy, satirical portraiture, verse editorial, apostrophe, jeremiad, and childlike song, to name a few) and his frequent combinations of a number of these into astonishingly compelling orchestrations provide us with an intelligent and convincing definition of genius.”Wagoner died in late 2021 at age 95.-bio via Poetry Foundation 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

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 the author of the full-length poetry collections Primate Behavior (Grove Press, 1997), which was a finalist for the National Book Award, Mount Clutter (Grove Press, 2002), Twigs and Knucklebones (Copper Canyon Press, 2008), and Debt to the Bone-Eating Snotflower (Copper Canyon Press, 2013).Her honors and awards include a Pushcart Prize, the Carolyn Kizer Prize, and J. Howard and Barbara M.J. Wood Prize as well as a Lannan Literary Fellowship. She lives in Greensboro, North Carolina, where she works as a copy editor.-bio via Poetry Foundation 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

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 mother part of the artistic Thorneycroft family. Sassoon studied at Cambridge University but left without a degree. He then lived the life of a country gentleman, hunting and playing cricket while also publishing small volumes of poetry.In May 1915, Sassoon was commissioned into the Royal Welsh Fusiliers and went to France. He impressed many with his bravery in the front line and was given the nickname 'Mad Jack' for his near-suicidal exploits. He was decorated twice. His brother Hamo was killed in November 1915 at Gallipoli.In the summer of 1916, Sassoon was sent to England to recover from fever. He went back to the front, but was wounded in April 1917 and returned home. Meetings with several prominent pacifists, including Bertrand Russell, had reinforced his growing disillusionment with the war and in June 1917 he wrote a letter that was published in the Times in which he said that the war was being deliberately and unnecessarily prolonged by the government. As a decorated war hero and published poet, this caused public outrage. It was only his friend and fellow poet, Robert Graves, who prevented him from being court-martialled by convincing the authorities that Sassoon had shell-shock. He was sent to Craiglockhart War Hospital in Edinburgh for treatment. Here he met, and greatly influenced, Wilfred Owen. Both men returned to the front where Owen was killed in 1918. Sassoon was posted to Palestine and then returned to France, where he was again wounded, spending the remainder of the war in England. Many of his war poems were published in 'The Old Huntsman' (1917) and 'Counter-Attack' (1918).After the war Sassoon spent a brief period as literary editor of the Daily Herald before going to the United States, travelling the length and breadth of the country on a speaking tour. He then started writing the near-autobiographical novel 'Memoirs of a Fox-hunting Man' (1928). It was an immediate success, and was followed by others including 'Memoirs of an Infantry Officer' (1930) and 'Sherston's Progress' (1936). Sassoon had a number of homosexual affairs but in 1933 surprised many of his friends by marrying Hester Gatty. They had a son, George, but the marriage broke down after World War Two.He continued to write both prose and poetry. In 1957, he was received into the Catholic church. He died on 1 September 1967.-bio via BBC 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

“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 power to persuade that vulnerable part of our consciousness of its rightness in spite of the evidence of wrongness all around it, the power to remind us that we are hunters and gatherers of values, that our very solitudes and distresses are creditable, in so far as they, too, are an earnest of our veritable human being.”-Seamus Heaney, in his 1995 Nobel acceptance speech 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

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 men all carrying some great pain or wound. Some of them clearly write out of that wound, while others seem to write in spite of it. Parnell straddles the line, and today's poem is a fine example of his blending of bright energy with a sharp edge. Happy reading.Thomas Parnell (11 September 1679 – 24 October 1718) was an Anglo-Irish poet and clergyman who was a friend of both Alexander Pope and Jonathan Swift.He was born in Dublin, the eldest son of Thomas Parnell (died 1685) of Maryborough, Queen's County (now Portlaoise, County Laois), a prosperous landowner who had been a loyal supporter of Oliver Cromwell during the English Civil War and moved from Congleton, Cheshire to Ireland after the Restoration of Charles II. His mother was Anne Grice of Kilosty, County Tipperary: she also owned property in County Armagh, which she left to Thomas at her death in 1709. His parents married in Dublin in 1674. Thomas was educated at Trinity College, Dublin and collated as Archdeacon of Clogher in 1705. In the last years of the reign of Queen Anne of England he was a popular preacher, but her death put an end to his hope of career advancement. He married Anne (Nancy) Minchin, daughter of Thomas Minchin, who died in 1712, and had three children, two of whom died young. The third child, a girl, is said to have reached a great age. The marriage was a very happy one, and it has been said that Thomas never recovered from Nancy's early death.He spent much of his time in London, where he participated with Pope, Swift and others in the Scriblerus Club, contributing to The Spectator and aiding Pope in his translation of The Iliad. He was also one of the so-called "Graveyard poets": his 'A Night-Piece on Death,' widely considered the first "Graveyard School" poem, was published posthumously in Poems on Several Occasions, collected and edited by Alexander Pope and is thought by some scholars to have been published in December 1721. It is said of his poetry, "it was in keeping with his character, easy and pleasing, enunciating the common places with felicity and grace."-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

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 Scriblerians. 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

Alexander Pope (1688-1744) was notorious for embroiling himself in literary-political controversy–his sharp pen writing scathing checks his 4'6” frame couldn't necessarily cash. Today's poem is selected from his response to a friend who suggested he tone it down. 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

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 of those sounds, and in today's poem Wilbur deepens the sound-image through the added dimension of distance. 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

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 allusion to the Italian poet Guido Cavalcanti, turns to the Purgatorio of Cavalcanti's great disciple, Dante, and draws in the Anglican penitential office and lectionary readings for Ash Wednesday, all while following Eliot's speaker through despair into hope. 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