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
Charles G. Eastman’s “The Yellow Corn”
Today’s poem exults unselfconsciously in a rich harvest. Happy reading.
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Robert Frost’s “After Apple-Picking”
Today’s poem meander’s sleepily but steadily through an irregular rhyme scheme and looks back on a day’s work–if not more. Happy reading.
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Tracy K. Smith’s “Einstein’s Mother”
Today’s poem offers an implicit encouragement to harried mothers. Happy reading.
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Ted Kooser’s “Applesauce”
Today’s poem taps into the powerful connection between food, love, and nostalgia. Happy reading.
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Emily Dickinson’s “A Thunderstorm”
Today’s poem is especially topical as The Daily Poem returns after a brief storm delay. Happy reading.
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Seamus Heaney’s “Storm on the Island”
Today’s poem weathers the unfriendliness of the natural world. Happy reading.
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William Shakespeare’s “As fast as thou shalt wane...” (Sonnet 11)
In today’s poem the bard urges his subject not to bury the gifts of Nature in the grave. Happy reading.
Want to send your teen to a day of Shakespearean wisdom (and folly) this July? You can find out more about the CiRCE Institute National Conference and our Pre-Conference event for high schoolers here: Love All, Trust a Few
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Li Bai’s “Taking Leave of a Friend”
Today’s poem–a masterclass in subtlety and imagery–makes you feel the scale of the farewell before it arrives. Happy reading.
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“Sweeney Praises the Trees”
Today’s poem, translated from the Irish by Seamus Heaney, delivers precisely what the title promises. Happy reading.
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Helen Hunt Jackson’s “September”
Today’s poem praises September and mystifies it with a coy turn in the final stanza. Enjoy the last day of this finest of months. Happy reading.
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Pablo Neruda’s “Ode to the Yellow Bird”
Today’s poem is a lament over a caged beauty. Happy reading.
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Edward Lear’s “How Pleasant To Know...”
Today’s poem is a comic self-portrait in verse from a poet who spent years working as a painter. Happy reading.
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Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s “Crossing the Bar”
In today’s poem, death is a country beyond the sea. Happy reading.
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George Herbert’s “The Pulley”
Today’s poem gives us a poet making sense of his restlessness and finding in it the mechanism that draws him upward to God. Happy reading.
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Marsden Hartley’s “Salutations to a Mouse”
In today’s poem, the poet discovers unexpected value in his writing. Happy reading.
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Annie Dillard’s “How we spend our days”
Today we are remembering Annie Dillard. Her poem offers not only advice for living, but an approach to understanding a life in retrospect. Happy reading.
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Algernon Charles Swinburne’s “Sestina”
Today’s poem heightened the form it’s named for by adding patterned rhyme. Even with the added complexity, this sometimes-rigid form strikes the ear as verse that is smooth and unassuming. Happy reading.
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Scott Cairns’ “Chemo With Coleridge”
Today’s poem, from Cairns’ new Against Certainty, ponders the value of intravenous poetry. Happy reading.
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Wendell Berry’s “Sabbath Poem III, 1994”
Today’s poem is, quite simply, one of my favorites. Berry uses Shakespeare to tell us we cannot see our life clearly until we have passed through death. Happy reading.
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Wendell Berry’s “The Guest”
Today’s poem confesses the discomfort and undesirability of loving our neighbor. Happy reading.
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Wendell Berry’s “In a Motel Parking Lot, Thinking of Dr. Williams”
Today’s poem is part tribute, part poetic manifesto. Happy reading.
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Jane Austen’s “Mock Panegyric on a Young Friend”
Today’s poem marshals Austen’s characteristic wit to praise feminine virtues via comparison to American geography. Fellas, don’t try this at home. Happy reading.
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Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s “Grief”
Today’s poem, pitting Victorian stoicism against Victorian sentimentality, contends that the truest grief is the most austere and long-lived. Happy reading.
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Wendell Berry’s “Testament”
Composed in 1971 as a self-eulogy, today’s poem is a remembrance of Wendell Berry who embarked for the greater Port Royal yesterday at the age of 92. May his memory be eternal.
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Oliver Wendell Holmes’ “The Last Leaf”
Holmes wrote that the man who inspired today’s poem reminded him of "a withered leaf which has held to its stem through the storms of autumn and winter, and finds itself still clinging to its bough while the new growths of spring are bursting their buds and spreading their foliage all around it." Happy reading.
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Francis Jammes’ “A Prayer to Go to Paradise with the Donkeys”
Today’s poem, translated by Richard Wilbur, is part animal appreciation, prayer for a good death. Happy reading.
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William Shakespeare’s Sonnet 71 (“No longer mourn for me when I am dead”)
Today’s poem has a different preoccupation than most Shakespearean sonnets–not immortalizing the beloved, but effacing the lover. Happy reading.
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John Milton’s Proem to Paradise Lost
Today’s poem is the opening lines of a famous epic poem–composed by a blind poet, about the fall of a great kingdom, a devious stratagem, and a long journey home. Happy reading.
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Shel Silverstein’s “Sick”
Today’s poem is angling for a day off. Happy reading.
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David Wagoner’s “The Junior High School Band Concert”
“No doubt, in his mind’s earSome band somewhereIn some music of some SphereWas striking a note as pureAs the wishes of Franz Schubert,But meanwhile here we were”
Happy reading.
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William Blake's "The School Boy"
Today’s poem is a more eloquent version of an appeal being made in many households this month. Happy reading.
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Bill Watterson's "The Yukon Song"
Today’s poem turns the Yukon territory into every boy’s dream. Happy reading.
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Thomas Dekker's "The Happy Heart"
Today’s poem ponders the soft pillow of poverty and even boasts a Beatles connection. Happy reading.
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John Donne's "The Good-Morrow"
“My face in thine eye, thine in mine appears.” In today’s poem, love awakens the sleeper to new life. Happy reading.
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Walter de la Mare's "Silver"
Today’s poem is bathed in moonlight. Happy reading.
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St. John of the Cross's "The Soul Aflame"
Today’s poem is another contemplation of ambivalence toward life that conceals a deeper commitment to life. Happy reading.
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Angela Morgan's "Work: A Song of Triumph"
Today’s poem is a very enthusiastic paean to work (doth the lady protest too much?). Happy Monday and Happy reading.
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Robert Louis Stevenson's "Consolation"
Today’s poem is a tender consolation after the loss of a friend, suitable for young and old alike. Happy reading.
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Francis Thompson's "The Kingdom of God"
In today’s poem, the transcendent is immanent. Happy reading.
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Emily Dickinson's "If I can stop one heart from breaking"
Today’s poem uses an unrhymed line to make its point. Happy reading.
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