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
E. E. Cummings' "anyone lived in a pretty how town"
Today’s poem–in which men and women are the two halves of a bell’s tone–voices the rhythms and joys of life in an unconventional way that has to be heard and understood with the body before the mind.…
Walter de la Mare's "Good-bye"
Today’s poem is about (not) getting the last word. Happy reading.
Walter de la Mare, born on April 25, 1873 in London, is considered one of modern literature’s chief exemplars of the romantic imaginat…
Scott Cairns' "Coracle"
Today’s poem places us on the frontier of new life. Happy reading.
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T. S. Eliot’s “East Coker IV”
Today, the obligatory Good Friday poem (because it is excellent).
This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit dailypoempod.su…
Carl Sandburg's "Buffalo Dusk"
In today’s poem, Sandburg’s ability to make the same two lines land so differently with so little happening in between is a remarkable feat. Happy reading!
This is a public episode. If you'd like to …
J. R. R. Tolkien's "When Spring Unfolds the Beechen Leaf"
Today’s poem is sometimes known as “Song of the Ent and the Entwife” because, though Tolkien tinkered with it for more than a decade, it did not take its final form until he decided to adapt it for i…
Franz Wright's "The Raising of Lazarus"
Franz Wright was born in Vienna, Austria and grew up in the Northwest, the Midwest, and California. He earned a BA from Oberlin College in 1977. His collections of poetry include The Beforelife (2001…
Robert Browning's "Home Thoughts from Abroad"
Browning’s 1845 poem captures the affections of every transplant and ex-pat, conjuring the momentary return to a faraway home. Happy reading.
This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this w…
Mary Oliver's "Breakage"
Mondays go down easier with Mary Oliver. 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.substack.com…
Samuel Taylor Coleridge's "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" (selections)
Today’s selections are characteristic passages from (maybe) the greatest and (certainly) strangest poem in Lyrical Ballads–Coleridge’s Ancient Mariner. Happy reading.
(Nota bene: If you are ready for …
Samuel Taylor Coleridge's "The Dungeon"
While you can count on one hand the poems Coleridge contributed to Lyrical Ballads, they are some of the most memorable in the collection. Today’s poem uses an abstract description to conjure a very …
William Wordsworth's "Tintern Abbey"
We begin a week of selections from Lyrical Ballads with today’s nostalgic and pastoral poem, “Lines Written a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey, on Revisiting the Banks of the Wye during a Tour, July 13,…
Hilaire Belloc's "The Scorpion"
What do Hilaire Belloc and a scorpion have in common? 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…
Oliver Goldsmith's "An Elegy on the Death of a Mad Dog"
Oliver Goldsmith (born Nov. 10, 1730, Kilkenny West, County Westmeath, Ire.—died April 4, 1774, London) was an Anglo-Irish essayist, poet, novelist, dramatist, and eccentric, made famous by such work…
Two Poems for the Annunciation
Today’s poems (too lovely to keep behind the paywall) come from Edwin Muir and Denise Levertov and both marvel at different aspects of the same great mystery. Happy reading.
This is a public episode.…
David Wagoner's "For a Student Sleeping in a Poetry Workshop"
As the long, exhausting march toward summer begins for many students, the wise and compassionate David Wagoner takes us to the intersection of love and weakness. Happy reading.
David Wagoner was recog…
Sarah Lindsay's "Zucchini Shofar"
Sarah Lindsay was born in Cedar Rapids, Iowa and earned her BA from St. Olaf College and MFA from the University of North Carolina-Greensboro. She is the author of the full-length poetry collections …
Siegfried Sassoon's "Attack"
Siegfried Sassoon was born on 8 September 1886 in Kent. His father was part of a Jewish merchant family, originally from Iran and India, and his mother part of the artistic Thorneycroft family. Sasso…
Seamus Heaney's "Digging"
“The form of the poem, in other words, is crucial to poetry’s power to do the thing which always is and always will be to poetry’s credit: the power to persuade that vulnerable part of our consciousn…
Thomas Parnell's "The Book-Worm"
The life of this week’s final Scriblerian, Thomas Parnell, rounds out the picture of the entire Scriblerus club as a fraternity of wildly brilliant men all carrying some great pain or wound. Some of …