The Daily Poem
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The Daily Poem
The Daily Poem offers one essential poem each weekday morning. From Shakespeare and John Donne to Robert Frost and Emily Dickinson, The Daily Poem curates a broad and generous audio anthology of the best poetry ever written, read-aloud by David Kern and an assortment of various contributors. Some li...
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Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings' "Lemon Pie"
Today’s poem is about something very very spooky–a tough crust. Happy reading.
Seamus Heaney's "Follower"
Today’s poem reminds us that we are destined to become the parents of our parents. (I also dedicate it to a child who makes me feel better about that...
Gerard Manley Hopkins' "Spring and Fall"
Why do we hate change? Today’s poem hazards a guess. Happy reading.
Ogden Nash's "A Lady Who Thinks She Is Thirty"
Today’s poem may be one of the most poem-y poems Nash ever wrote. Happy reading.
Wendell Berry's "Sabbath Poem III, 1994"
In today’s poem Berry draws King Lear into his sabbath reflections. Happy reading.
R. S. Thomas' "The Fisherman"
Today’s poem typifies the earthy clarity that Welsh poet R. S. Thomas perfected in his verse. Happy reading.
J. R. R. Tolkien's "The Root of the Boot"
Today’s poem traveled across many years and iterations to finally end up on the tongue of Samwise Gamgee in The Fellowship of the Ring. Happy reading!
Alfred, Lord Tennyson's "The Charge of the Light Brigade"
Today’s poem is both metrical marvel and moving memorial. Happy reading.
Robert Frost's "Birches"
Today’s poem is a classical example of Frost’s virtuosity in crafting solid figures–here trees, climbing, etc.–that stubbornly defy allegorizing, but...
Charles and Mary Lamb's "Feigned Courage"
Today’s poem couples a vanished past with a timeless present. Happy reading.
Ted Kooser's "How to Foretell a Change in the Weather"
My old knee injury usually alerts me to changes in the weather, but in today’s poem Kooser offers a litany of other indicators. Happy reading.
Linda Pastan's "The Dogwoods"
Today’s poem is a tribute to the seasonal liftings-of-the-veil that reveal to us the beauty undergirding the world. Happy reading.
Lewis Carroll's "You Are Old, Father William"
In today’s poem: the dignity of old age, and Charles Dodgson as the Victorian Weird Al. Happy reading.
John Donne's "The Relic"
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"
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” whi...
Ralph Waldo Emerson's "Fable"
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. H...
Geoffrey Hill's "Genesis"
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...
Prince Hal's soliloquy from Henry IV, pt.1 ("herein will I imitate the sun")
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 2....
Phineas Fletcher's "A Litany"
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 he...
Richard Wilbur's "The Writer"
Today’s poem goes out to 6-year-od girls and their dads. Happy reading!
Alfred Tennyson's "In Memoriam..." 1-3
In today’s poem, a young Tennyson begins the long wrestling with grief.
Kenn Nesbitt's "Our Teacher's Not a Zombie"
Today’s poem may or may not be based on actual events. Happy reading!
Donald Hall's "An Old Life"
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"
In today’s poem, better is a dinner of herbs where love and memory are, than great riches. Happy reading.
Lucy Maud Montgomery's "A Request"
Today’s poem is channeling Anne Shirley in the autumn of her years. Happy reading.
Linda Pastan's "Something About the Trees"
Today’s poem takes full advantage of the pantoum form’s naturally-contemplative structure–the repeating lines carrying us back and forth between past,...
Jane Kenyon's "Three Songs at the End of Summer"
In today’s poem, Kenyon wrestles with the Solomonic thesis that “the end of a thing is better than its beginning.” Happy reading.
Ogden Nash's "The People Upstairs"
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 —"
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 c...
Randall Jarrell's "The Lost World"
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 rima in a...
Rudyard Kipling’s “The Ballad of the Clampherdown”
Today’s poem is the satirical saga of an anachronistic naval battle. Heave ho and happy reading!
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's "The Fire of Drift-wood"
Nothing feels better and hurts worse than nostalgia. Happy reading.
Miroslav Holub's "Napoleon"
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 wr...
John Keats' "To Sleep"
“To die, to sleep.” Sometimes the space between the two seems as slight as that intervening comma. Happy reading.
William Shakespeare's "Sonnet 94: They that have power to hurt..."
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 bitter wit:...
Live: William Carlos Williams' "The Fool's Song"
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"
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.
Malcolm Guite's "Transfiguration"
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 read...
Terrence Hayes’ “The Same City”
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 powerful wa...
Billy Collins' "On Turning Ten"
Happy tenth birthday to the Close Reads podcast, and happy reading!