The Daily Poem Goldberry Studios

Ted Kooser, who worked in insurance for thirty-five years before becoming U.S. Poet Laureate, turns 85 today. Many happy returns of the day to him, and happy reading to the rest of you!


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Have you measured out your life in coffee spoons? Feeling like a pair of ragged claws today? Afraid to eat messy food while other people are watching? Or are you just channeling a little too much Polonius? If so, today’s poem–the classic modernist anthem of insecurity and isolation (and mermaids)–will feel very familiar. Happy reading!

(And for an even better reading of this poem, you should discover Jeremy Irons reading Eliot’s complete poems.)


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Happy birthday to the Bard!

NB: Anyone itching to dig deeper into Shakespeare’s plays should look no further than one of our sister podcasts, The Play’s the Thing!


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Louise Glück was born in New York City in 1943. She is the author of numerous poetry collections, including Winter Recipes from the Collective (2021); Faithful and Virtuous Night (2014), which won the National Book Award; Poems: 1962-2012 (2012), winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize; and The Wild Iris (1992), which won the Pulitzer Prize; and Ararat (1990), which won the Rebekah Johnson Bobbitt National Prize for Poetry from the Library of Congress. In 2020, Glück was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. Her other honors include The New Yorker’s Book Award in Poetry, the Wallace Stevens Award from the Academy of American Poets, the William Carlos Williams Award from the Poetry Society of America, and the National Book Critics Circle Award. She has also received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts. A member of the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters, Glück was elected a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets in 1999 and named the 12th Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress in 2003. Glück has taught English and creative writing at Williams College, Yale University, Boston University, the University of Iowa, and Goddard College. She died in 2023.
-bio via Library of Congress


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Francis Thompson was born in Northwest England in 1859. The son of Catholic converts, as a boy he was initially educated for the priesthood. When he was 18, at his parents' insistence, he entered Owens College in Manchester to follow in his father's footsteps and study medicine. But before long, he left for London hoping to pursue what he believed was his true vocation of being a writer. As a result of ill health and subsequent medical treatment, like many before him, Thompson became addicted to opium. He soon fell into a life of despair and destitution, sleeping on the banks of the Thames with London's homeless and selling matches just to stay alive.
Yet it was during this time, in the midst of all his hunger, deprivation and hopelessness, that he was most able to see the kingdom of Heaven. These devastating experiences honed his poetic focus and insights. In 1888, Thompson sent a tattered and torn manuscript to the Catholic periodical Merry England. Its editors, Wilfrid and Alice Meynell, devout Christians themselves, not only recognized Thompson's poetic ability, they took him under their care and gave him a home. They also arranged for the publication of his first book in 1893, simply titled Poems, which included The Hound of Heaven. The poem was immediately recognized as a masterpiece.
Thompson spent the years from 1893-1897 nursing his frail health in a monastery in Wales. He died of tuberculosis on November 13, 1907. He was 47. After his death, Alice Meynell wrote that no change in poetic tastes in the years to come could ever "lessen the height or diminish the greatness" of Thompson's profound accomplishment. In his eulogy for Thompson, G. K. Chesterton simply concluded: "He was a great poet." Among those who would be influenced by Thompson was the young J. R. R. Tolkien, who purchased a volume of Thompson's works in 1913, and later claimed that it had played an important role in his own writing.
-bio via HoundofHeaven.com


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Today’s poem–benign anthem of the resilient human spirit or a hymn to radical autonomy?–has divided audiences for more than a century.
Born in Gloucester, England, poet, editor, and critic William Ernest Henley was educated at Crypt Grammar School, where he studied with the poet T.E. Brown, and the University of St. Andrews. His father was a struggling bookseller who died when Henley was a teenager. At age 12 Henley was diagnosed with tubercular arthritis that necessitated the amputation of one of his legs just below the knee; the other foot was saved only through a radical surgery performed by Joseph Lister. As he healed in the infirmary, Henley began to write poems, including “Invictus,” which concludes with the oft-referenced lines “I am the master of my fate; / I am the captain of my soul.” Henley’s poems often engage themes of inner strength and perseverance. His numerous collections of poetry include A Book of Verses (1888), London Voluntaries (1893), and Hawthorn and Lavender (1899).
Henley edited the Scots Observer (which later became the National Observer), through which he befriended writer Rudyard Kipling, and the Magazine of Art, in which he lauded the work of emerging artists James McNeill Whistler and Auguste Rodin. Henley was a close friend of Robert Louis Stevenson, who reportedly based his Long John Silver character in Treasure Island in part on Henley.
-bio via Poetry Foundation


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