The Daily Poem

Don’t be fooled by the lack of Dickensian drama: melancholy, materialism, regret, a graveyard–today’s poem is A Christmas Carol for the modern man.

Today’s selection is an ideal poem for Advent–a bittersweet shape poem that expresses the “hopes and fears of all the years.”

Poet and critic John Hollander wrote of Merrill that he “was continually r…

Are home movies the grecian urns of the twentieth century? Today’s poem says, “sort of.”

Poet, editor, essayist, playwright, and lyricist Mary Jo Salter was born in Grand Rapids, Michigan. She grew up…

Today’s poem is, in may ways, the ode of odes. It has inspired volumes upon volumes of poetry and scholarship alike. And yet, it remains nothing more and nothing less than a humble and impassioned co…

Today’s poem for St. Lucy’s day is a remembrance of a light “too bright for our infirm delight” dawning in the deepest darkness of the year.

The poem is collected in Waiting on the Word: a poem a day…

Today’s poem–known to many as the musical setting, “In the Bleak Midwinter”–contemplates unprecedented act of loves in the darkest days of the year. Happy reading.

Ezra Pound had his own complicated relationship with fame, exercising a profound influence upon 20th-century literature but being tried for treason in the U.S. after broadcasting propaganda for the f…

Today is the birthday of Emily Dickinson, and to mark the occasion we have selected a poem that manages to sum up the entire paradox of the human condition in just two lines. Happy reading.

Mark Strand was born on Canada’s Prince Edward Island on April 11, 1934. He received a BA from Antioch College in Ohio in 1957 and attended Yale University, where he was awarded the Cook Prize and th…

Today’s poem pays tribute to the great lover of children and the poor, whose day serves as a festive waystation on the journey to Christmas. Happy reading!

Today’s poem from Williams’ late collection, Pictures from Brueghel, is an ekphrasis on the painting by the same name, and a lesson in disciplined observation. Happy reading.

“We only live, only suspire/ Consumed by either fire or fire.”…are not lines from today’s poem, but one gets the feeling Bradstreet understood their meaning as well as anyone could. Happy reading.

Ann…

New-fallen snow can be a kind of blank canvas for the poet. In yesterday’s poem, Stevenson wrote over it in whimsical metaphor and simile; in today’s, Longfellow finds the reflection of his own troub…

Today’s poem is a master-class in elementary poetic instruction. Happy reading.

Craig Arnold, born November 16, 1967 was an American poet and professor. His first book of poems, Shells (1999), was selected by W.S. Merwin for the Yale Series of Younger Poets. His many honors incl…

Anna Kamienska was a poet, translator, critic, essayist, and editor. She published numerous collections of her own work and translated poetry from several Slavic languages, as well as sacred texts fr…

Today’s poem punctuates the precious value of time spent with family around food. Happy reading.

Jacqueline Woodson received a 2023 Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship, a 2020 MacArthur Fellowship, the 2…

Sometimes a list is much more than a list. Happy reading.

Blaise Cendrars (1887–1961) was the pseudonym of Frédéric Sauser, the Swiss son of a French Anabaptist father and a Scottish mother. As a youn…

Today’s poem opens a week of poetry about food. Happy eating reading.

Bill Holm was born in 1943 on a farm outside Minneota, Minnesota. He received a BA from Gustavus Adolphus College in 1965 and an M…

Today’s poem, from Wilson’s 2018 The Hanging God, takes a candid look at all the ways we overestimate, misunderstand, misrepresent, and undervalue our own human agency–all while leaning heavily on pl…