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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Thomas Lux’s “A Little Tooth”
Today’s poem lets the reader experience all the dread and feeling of parenthood in nine lines. Happy reading.
Herman Melville's "In the Prison Pen"
Today’s poem comes from a writer not remembered for his poetry, but when Melville’s early success as a novelist seemed to falter, he dedicated a numbe...
Robert Frost's "For Once, Then, Something"
Today’s poem is a poem about the way looking gets in the way of what we perceive. Happy reading.
Edgar Guest's "A Boy and His Dad "
Today’s poem speaks unironically of a pastoral Eden where fathers and sons commune with one another while the fish jump. Happy reading.
Richard Armour's "Parental Pride"
Today’s poem takes a well-meant jab at the things we say about babies. Happy reading.
William McGonagall's "Attempted Assassination of the Queen"
Today’s poem comes from the pen of the perfect mid-week poet. Happy reading.
Prudentius' "The Passion of the Apostles Peter and Paul"
Today’s poem, originally a 4th-century Latin composition, details the celebration of Sts. Peter and Paul in ancient Rome. Happy reading.
Pablo Neruda's "Ode To The Artichoke"
Today’s poem is a paean to the world’s greatest vegetable. Happy reading.
Pablo Neruda's "Sonnet XVII"
Today’s poem, probably Neruda’s best-known (tr. Stephen Mitchell), goes out to all the June brides. Happy reading.
Mary Oliver’s “No Matter What”
Today’s poem tangles and untangles the sweet permanence of impermanence. Happy reading.
Czeslaw 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...
Joyce 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. Ha...
Bruce 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.
Curley 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.
Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings’ “The Last Vegetable”
Today’s poem is about loyalty to the toughest crop in town. Happy reading.
Blaze Koneski's "Peppers"
Today’s poem, translated by Kristian Josifoski, makes a pepper into more than a pepper. Happy reading.
Rudyard 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...
A. F. Moritz's "On Distinction"
Today’s poem is about the strange whys and ways of trying to endure in this world. Happy reading.
John 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 presen...
Maurice Manning's "To the People of Sangamo County"
“The effort to be/ accomplished, without experience,/ is something to pity”
Happy reading.
Paul Laurence Dunbar's "In Summer"
There are few joys as pure as singing in the summer time. Happy reading.
Wilfred 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 s...
John 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 beg...
Matthew Zapruder's "Graduation Day"
Today’s poem is not the one you should read at graduation parties this month. Happy reading.
Lisa 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 s...
Ron 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.
Gerard 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.
Christina Rossetti's "Spring"
“There is no time like Spring that passes by,/Now newly born, and now/Hastening to die.” Happy reading.
Alexander 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.
Randall 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 ev...
R. S. Thomas' "This"
Today’s poem uses the clever manipulation of a symbol to tease out the heart of male communication. Happy reading.
Robert Burns' "John Barleycorn"
Today’s poem is about the necessary death and resurrection of the titular figure. Happy reading.
A. R. Ammons' "Poetics"
Today’s poem is about the attention needed to find…a poem. Happy reading.
from 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.Gal...
Norman Maccaig's "Interruption to a Journey"
Today’s poem captures the stab and indelible imprint of unintended destruction. Happy reading.
James 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.
Edward 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.