Shows / The Daily Poem
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 lite commentary is included and the shorter poems are often read twice, as time permits. The Daily Poem is presented by Goldberry Studios.
dailypoempod.substack.com
Episodes
The Daily PoemCzeslaw Milosz’s “Dedication”
“You whom I could not save/Listen to me./Try to understand this simple speech as I would be ashamed of another./I swear, there is in me no wizardry of words./I…
The Daily PoemJoyce Kilmer’s “The House with Nobody In It”
Today’s poem, not a cowboy poem per se, nevertheless tells the story of a frontier mentality and the meeting points of civilization and desolation. Happy…
The Daily PoemBruce Kiskaddon's "When They've Finished Shipping Cattle in the Fall"
Today’s poem is about the memories that come flooding in when the season’s work is done and the cowboy’s body finally relaxes. Happy reading. This is a public…
The Daily PoemCurley Fletcher's "The Strawberry Roan"
Today’s poem, about an unbreakable horse, is a classic example of a unique American genre–the cowboy poem. Happy reading. This is a public episode. If you'd…
The Daily PoemMarjorie Kinnan Rawlings’ “The Last Vegetable”
Today’s poem is about loyalty to the toughest crop in town. Happy reading. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or…
The Daily PoemPaisley Rekdal's "Pear"
Today’s poem has some strong words for the apple. Happy reading. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access…
The Daily PoemBlaze Koneski's "Peppers"
Today’s poem, translated by Kristian Josifoski, makes a pepper into more than a pepper. Happy reading. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this…
The Daily PoemRudyard Kipling's "The Lie"
Today’s poem is all about the correlation between the elaborate architecture of a lie and the pleasure that telling it can give. Maybe an allegory for art?…
The Daily PoemA. F. Moritz's "On Distinction"
Today’s poem is about the strange whys and ways of trying to endure in this world. Happy reading. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with…
The Daily PoemJohn Crowe Ransom's "Piazza Piece
Today’s poem is an open-ended sonnet-versation (sonnet conversation) between youth and experience–with the rarer twist that the dynamic is here presented in…
The Daily PoemMaurice Manning's "To the People of Sangamo County"
“The effort to be/ accomplished, without experience,/ is something to pity” Happy reading. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other…
The Daily PoemPaul Laurence Dunbar's "In Summer"
There are few joys as pure as singing in the summer time. Happy reading. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get…
The Daily PoemWilfred Owen's "Dulce et Decorum Est"
Today’s poem is one of the best known English war poems, both challenging popular notions of the glories of warfare and acknowledging the oft-unseen sacrifices…
The Daily PoemJohn Ciardi's "An Emeritus Addresses the School"
“…a word might turn you all the bent ways to love, its mercies practiced, its one day at a time begun and lived and slept on and begun.” Happy reading. This is…
The Daily PoemMatthew Zapruder's "Graduation Day"
Today’s poem is not the one you should read at graduation parties this month. Happy reading. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other…
The Daily PoemLisa Olstein's "Dear One Absent This Long While"
Today’s poem–from Olstein’s first collection, Radio Crackling, Radio Gone (2006)–is a melancholy collection of the little things we’d like to say to someone…
The Daily PoemRon Padgett's "Poem"
Today’s poem is the experience of having duties in the spring time rolled into the experience of reading every poem ever written. Happy reading. This is a…
The Daily PoemGerard Manley Hopkins' "Spring and Fall"
Today’s poem is for the Maggies, the Margarets, and for anyone who gets moody in the springtime and can’t explain why. Happy reading. This is a public episode…
The Daily PoemChristina Rossetti's "Spring"
“There is no time like Spring that passes by,/Now newly born, and now/Hastening to die.” Happy reading. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this…
The Daily PoemAlexander Pope's "To Mrs. M. B. On Her Birthday"
Today’s poem argues you don’t have to like birthdays to have a happy one. Happy reading. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other…
The Daily PoemRandall Jarrell's "Well Water"
Today is the birthday of poet Randall Jarrell, and today’s poem does what birthdays themselves can sometimes do: remind us of the simple glories of every-day…
The Daily PoemR. S. Thomas' "This"
Today’s poem uses the clever manipulation of a symbol to tease out the heart of male communication. Happy reading. This is a public episode. If you'd like to…
The Daily PoemOgden Nash's "Taboo to Boot"
Today’s poem is guaranteed to make you itch. Happy reading. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to…
The Daily PoemRobert Burns' "John Barleycorn"
Today’s poem is about the necessary death and resurrection of the titular figure. Happy reading. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with…
The Daily PoemA. R. Ammons' "Poetics"
Today’s poem is about the attention needed to find…a poem. Happy reading. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get…
The Daily Poemfrom Malcolm Guite's "Galahad and the Grail"
Today’s poem, singing of the first trial of Sir Galahad, is an excerpt from Malcolm Guite’s Arthurian ballad, Galahad and the Grail. Happy reading.Galahad and…
The Daily PoemNorman Maccaig's "Interruption to a Journey"
Today’s poem captures the stab and indelible imprint of unintended destruction. Happy reading. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with…
The Daily PoemJames Joyce's "On the Beach at Fontana"
Today’s poem is from an author seldom associated with poetry today, though in his lifetime his verse garnered considerable recognition. Happy reading. This is…
The Daily PoemEdward Rowland Sill's "The Fool's Prayer"
Today’s poem presents two kinds of fools–those who know they need mercy, and those who don’t. Happy reading. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss…
The Daily PoemEllis Parker Butler's "The Final Tax"
Today’s poem is very much on-brand for Butler, whose best-known short story, “Pigs is Pigs,” concerns “a bureaucratic stationmaster who insists on levying the…
The Daily PoemR. S. Thomas' "The Bright Field"
In today’s poem the speaker has seen the light. Happy reading. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to…
The Daily PoemJonathan Henderson Brooks' "The Resurrection"
Now Calvary was loveliness:/Lilies that flowered thereuponPulled off the white moon’s pallid dress,/And put the morning’s vesture on. This is a public episode…
The Daily Poem"Pangur Ban"
Today’s poem, translated by Robin Flowers, was originally written in Old Irish inside an 8th-century scribe’s copy of St. Paul’s epistles. However, it reveals…
The Daily PoemWilliam Shakespeare's "Sonnet 99"
Today’s poem is one of Shakespeare’s “irregular” sonnets–he’s got 99 problems (most of them flowers), but strict obedience to the requirements of the sonnet…
The Daily PoemNicholas Samaras' "The Second Death of Lazarus"
Today’s poem imagines the long life of Lazarus as he awaits, like Eliot’s magi, “another death.” Happy reading. This is a public episode. If you'd like to…
The Daily PoemSean Johnson's "How many beards gild the lapses of time"
Today’s poem is a hirsute parody of a much better poem. Sorry in advance. Happy reading. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other…
The Daily PoemElizabeth Drew Barstow Stoddard's "One morn I left him in his bed"
In the 19th century, poems about the loss of children became a little genre of their own. Today’s poem is a decidedly uncharacteristic example of the form…
The Daily PoemSeamus Heaney's "Poem"
Today’s poem answers the question you never thought to ask: what do a poem, a barnyard, and a marriage have in common? Happy reading. This is a public episode…
The Daily PoemRainer Maria Rilke's "Annunciation to Mary"
In today’s poem, Rilke (trans. J.B. Leishman) imagines the Annunciation from Gabriel’s perspective. Happy reading. This is a public episode. If you'd like to…
The Daily PoemFrances Ellen Watkins Harper's "Dandelions"
Today’s poem wonders what it means to recognize and appreciate a gift. Happy reading. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other…
The Daily PoemNaomi Shihab Nye's "My Uncle’s Favorite Coffee Shop"
Today’s poem contemplates the ways and “why”s of saying nothing, before culminating in a shattering pun on “nothing.” Happy reading. This is a public episode…
The Daily PoemW. H. Auden's "Funeral Blues"
Today’s poem began its life as a bit of black humor, but lives on as a raw and relatable expression of real grief. Happy reading. This is a public episode. If…
The Daily PoemThomas Hardy's "During Wind and Rain"
Today’s poem juxtaposes scenes of summer warmth to scenes of torrential bluster with a seamlessness that would make the best film editor jealous. Happy…
The Daily PoemWilliam Carlos Williams' "Love Song"
Today’s poem captures the agonies and ecstacies of thinking about the absent beloved. Happy reading. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this…
The Daily PoemRhina P. Espaillat’s “Butchering”
Today’s poem employs an image worthy of Homer to touch the stark reality of a mother’s intuition. Happy reading. This is a public episode. If you'd like to…
The Daily PoemBeowulf prepares for battle
Today’s poem is a selection from the Old English, Beowulf, translated by R. M. Liuzza. In these lines, Beowulf prepares for a harrowing showdown with Grendel’s…
The Daily PoemT. S. Eliot's "Macavity: The Mystery Cat"
Today’s poem answers the question: if cats are the animal world’s “Napoleon of crime,” who is the cat world’s “Napoleon of crime?” Happy reading. This is a…
The Daily PoemRobert Graves' Proem to The Iliad
Today’s poem comes from Graves’ verse/prose rendering of Homer’s Iliad, The Anger of Achilles, and highlights the inglorious causes of the Trojan War’s…
The Daily PoemWilfred Owen's "Anthem for Doomed Youth"
Today’s poem is a sonnet for a war-torn world with a collapsing center. “…As the oldest of four children born in rapid succession, Wilfred developed a…
The Daily PoemWendy Cope's "Men and Their Boring Arguments"
Today’s poem goes out to all of the women who have been stuck between two pugilistic men at a dinner party. Happy reading. This is a public episode. If you'd…
The Daily PoemAnna Kamienska's "On the Threshold of the Poem"
Today’s poem asks: “What happens inside a poem?” Happy reading. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to…
The Daily PoemCharles Lamb's "Cleanliness"
Today’s poem is a seemingly innocuous enjoinder to handwashing that nevertheless invites a deeper inspection. Happy reading. This is a public episode. If you'd…
The Daily PoemFriedrich von Schiller's "Light and Warmth"
Anyone with children can recognize the degree to which we enter this life “Warm with the noble vows of youth,/Hallowing [one’s] true arm to the truth.” Happy…
The Daily PoemT. S. Eliot's "Ash Wednesday (III)"
Today’s poem is a selection from Eliot’s profound contemplation of conversion and repentance. Happy reading. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss…
The Daily PoemThomas Campion's "When to Her Lute Corinna Sings"
In today’s poem, the composer-poet identifies with an object he knows inside and out. Happy reading. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this…
The Daily PoemAileen Fisher's "I Like It When It’s Mizzly"
Today’s poem is pure language joy. Happy reading. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus…
The Daily PoemMarianne Moore's "No Swan So Fine"
Today’s poem pits art against reality, with the French monarchy as the only clear loser. Happy reading. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this…
The Daily PoemRobert Frost's "Not to Keep"
If Robert Frost were a musician, today’s poem might be a B-side to one of his better-known poems. Happy reading. This is a public episode. If you'd like to…
The Daily PoemLucille Clifton’s “blessing the boats”
“may you kiss / the wind then turn from it” Today’s poem is a benediction for boats and, maybe, a lot of other things. Happy reading. This is a public episode…
The Daily PoemPablo Neruda's "Ode to My Socks"
Today’s poem is a contemplation of sometimes-essential footwear that blossoms unexpectedly into a proverb on utility and beauty. Happy reading. This is a…