The Daily Poem
An audio anthology of the best poetry ever written
- Update frequency
- every 2 days
- Average duration
- 7 minutes
- Episodes
- 984
- Years Active
- 2019 - 2025
William Shakespeare's Sonnet 147 ("My love is as a fever...")
Today, the Bard gets bitter.
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William Shakespeare's Sonnet 73 ("That time of year...")
Today’s sonnet details a painful reality: even great poets lose their hair sometimes.
This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, v…
William Shakespeare's Sonnet 55 ("Not marble...")
Today, a (biased) case for poems as the monuments that can outlast monuments.
This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit dai…
William Shakespeare's Sonnet 18 ("Shall I compare thee...")
Today’s poem–arguably the Bard’s most famous sonnet–will set the stage for four days of dramatically underrated Shakespearean sonnets. Happy reading!
This is a public episode. If you'd like to discus…
Oliver Herford's "The Early Owl"
From a New York Times obituary of Oliver Herford (1860-1935): "His wit…was too original at first to go down with the very delectable highly respectable magazine editors of the Nineties. It was odd, u…
A. A. Milne's "Bad Sir Brian Botany"
Today’s poem is a good reminder about noblesse obliges. Happy reading!
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Robert Louis Stevenson's "My Bed is a Boat"
Today’s poem might be a perfect companion to a bedtime-reading of Where the Wild Things Are on a balmy summer evening.
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Hilaire Belloc's "Rebecca, Who Slammed Doors for Fun and Perished Miserably"
Today’s poem is another from Belloc–one of his Cautionary Tales for Children just in time for the beginning of a quiet summer (maybe?).
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Hilaire Belloc's "On the Gift of a Book to a Child"
Today’s poem is a series of increasingly vital pleas. Happy reading.
For more of Belloc’s advice to the young, find yourself a copy of Cautionary Tales for Children!
This is a public episode. If you'…
Bonus: "Morituri Salutamus" in full
Today we’re feeling out a Saturday bonus episode featuring a reading of “Morituri Salutamus” in its entirety. Happy reading!
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Selections From Longfellow's "Morituri Salutamus"
Today’s episode features selections from Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s fifty-year retrospective on his own graduation, the lengthy speech-in-verse, “Morituri Salutamus: Poem for the Fiftieth Anniversa…
Christina Rossetti's "Up-Hill"
Today’s poem from Christina Rossetti is not about high school or college, but it might still be about graduation. Happy reading!
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C. P. Cavafy's "Che Fece...Il Gran Rifiuto"
Konstantinos Petrou Kavafis, known, especially in English, as Constantine P. Cavafy and often published as C. P. Cavafy, was a Greek poet, journalist, and civil servant from Alexandria. A major figur…
Matthew Zapruder's "Graduation Day"
Matthew Zapruder is the author of six collections of poetry, most recently I Love Hearing Your Dreams, forthcoming from Scribner in September 2024, as well as two books of prose: Why Poetry (Ecco, 20…
John Ciardi's "An Emeritus Addresses the School"
About the creative process itself, John Ciardi argued in the Writer that “it isn’t easy to make a poem,” adding, “It is better than easy: it is joyously, consumingly difficult. As it is difficult, to…
Matsuo Bashō's Spring Haiku
Today’s poems are all about the ineffable experience of spring. Happy reading!
The 17th-century Japanese haiku master Bashō was born Matsuo Kinsaku near Kyoto, Japan, to a minor samurai and his wife.…
Thomas Nashe's "Spring, the sweet spring"
Today’s poem–an unambiguous paean to spring–suggests Thomas Nashe and T. S. Eliot had very different feelings about the month of April. Happy reading!
Thomas Nashe (1567 - c. 1601) –English pamphletee…
Edna St. Vincent Millay's "Spring"
Today’s poem is a more complicated take on spring. 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.su…
E. E. Cummings' "[O sweet spontaneous]"
E.E. Cummings, in full Edward Estlin Cummings, (born October 14, 1894, Cambridge, Massachusetts, U.S.—died September 3, 1962, North Conway, New Hampshire), American poet and painter who first attract…
Phillis Levin's "End of April
What started as an early spring is now not long for this world. In an attempt to stave off an early summer, we have a week of poems dedicated to the fairest of the seasons. Happy reading.
Phillis Levi…