The Daily Poem

Goldberry Studios
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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

  1. 1 DAY AGO

    Ted Kooser's Blizzard Voices

    Today’s poems are selected from Ted Kooser’s The Blizzard Voices, a collection of informal verse commemorating the apocalyptic Great Plains blizzard of 1888. He mined histories and first-hand accounts to give “voice” to the men and women who lived through the unprecedented storm. 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/subscribe

    4 min

  2. 4 DAYS AGO

    Kingsley Amis' "A Bookshop Idyll"

    Today’s poem is a roller-coaster of machismo and vulnerability in that most singular of places–the poetry section of a small bookstore. Happy reading. Kingsley Amis (1922–1995) was a popular and prolific British novelist, poet, satirist, and critic. Born in suburban South London, the only child of a clerk in the office of the mustard-maker Colman’s, he won an English scholarship to St John’s College, Oxford, where he began a lifelong friendship with fellow student Philip Larkin. Following service in the British Army’s Royal Corps of Signals during World War II, he completed his degree and joined the faculty at the University College of Swansea in Wales. Lucky Jim, his first novel, appeared in 1954 to great acclaim and won a Somerset Maugham Award. Ultimately he published twenty-four novels, including science fiction and a James Bond sequel; more than a dozen collections of poetry, short stories, and literary criticism; restaurant reviews and three books about drinking; political pamphlets and a memoir; and more. Amis received the Booker Prize for his novel The Old Devils in 1986 and was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in 1990. -bio via NYRB 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/subscribe

    5 min

  3. 6 DAYS AGO

    A. E. Stallings' "Scissors"

    Today’s poem offers an incisive analogy for analogies. Happy reading. A.E. (Alicia) Stallings is the Oxford Professor of Poetry. She grew up in Decatur, Georgia, and studied classics at the University of Georgia and Oxford University. Her poetry collections include Like (2018), a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize; Olives (2012), which was nominated for a National Book Critics Circle Award; Hapax (2006); and Archaic Smile(1999), winner of the Richard Wilbur Award and finalist for both the Yale Younger Poets Series and the Walt Whitman Award. Her poems have appeared in The Best American Poetry anthologies of 1994, 2000, 2015, 2016, and 2017, and she is a frequent contributor to Poetry and the Times Literary Supplement. Stallings’s poetry is known for its ingenuity, wit, and dexterous use of classical allusion and forms to illuminate contemporary life. In interviews, Stallings has spoken about the influence of classical authors on her own work: “The ancients taught me how to sound modern,” she told Forbes magazine. “They showed me that technique was not the enemy of urgency, but the instrument.” Stallings's latest verse translation is the pseudo-Homeric The Battle Between the Frogs and the Mice (2019), in an illustrated edition with Paul Dry Books, and her latest volume of poetry is a selected poems, This Afterlife (2023, FSG). She is the recipient of fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the MacArthur Foundation. She lives in Athens, Greece, with her husband, the journalist John Psaropoulos. -bio via Poetry Foundation 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/subscribe

    6 min

  4. JAN 6

    Richard Wilbur's "A Wedding Toast"

    Today’s poem draws together marriage and the blessing of water. 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/subscribe

    8 min

  5. JAN 3

    Philip Appleman's "To the Garbage Collectors in Bloomington, Indiana, the First Pickup of the New Year"

    If you can see “a World in a Grain of Sand/And a Heaven in a Wild Flower,” what can you see in the trashcan at the curb? Apparently quite a bit, if you look closely. Today’s poem, a paean to the unsung heroes of the holidays, can help with that. Also in today’s episode: a look at what’s new for The Daily Poem in 2025. Happy reading! Philip Appleman (1926-2020) served in the U.S. Army Air Corps during World War II and in the Merchant Marine after the war. He has degrees from Northwestern University, the University of Michigan, and the University of Lyon, France. His acclaimed books of poetry include Karma, Dharma, Pudding & Pie (W. W. Norton, 2009), New and Selected Poems, 1956-1996 (1996); Let There Be Light (1991); Darwin's Bestiary (1986); Open Doorways (1976); and Summer Love and Surf (1968). He is also the author of three novels, including Apes and Angels (Putnam, 1989); and six volumes of nonfiction, including the Norton Critical Edition, Darwin (1970). Appleman has taught at Columbia University, SUNY Purchase, and is currently Distinguished Professor Emeritus at Indiana University, Bloomington. He has also served on the Governing Board of the Poetry Society of America and the Poets Advisory Board of Poets House. His many awards include a Fellowship in Poetry from the National Endowment for the Arts, a Pushcart Prize, and both the Castagnola Award and the Morley Award from the Poetry Society of America. -bio via Academy of American Poets 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/subscribe

    12 min

  6. JAN 2

    Robert Service's "The Passing of the Year"

    Does today’s poem contain the secret to minimizing regret in 2025? Kinda, sorta. Happy reading. In his youth, Robert Service worked in a shipping office and a bank, and briefly studied literature at the University of Glasgow. Inspired by Rudyard Kipling and Robert Louis Stevenson, Service sailed to western Canada in 1894 to become a cowboy in the Yukon Wilderness. He worked on a ranch and as a bank teller in Vancouver Island six years after the Gold Rush, gleaning material that would inform his poetry for years to come and earn him his reputation as “Bard of the Yukon.” Service traveled widely throughout his life—to Hollywood, Cuba, Alberta, Paris, Louisiana, and elsewhere—and his travels continued to fuel his writing.A prolific writer and poet, Service published numerous collections of poetry during his lifetime, including Songs of a Sourdough or Spell of the Yukon and Other Verses (1907), which went into ten printings its first year, Ballad of a Cheechako (1909) and Ballads of a Bohemian (1921), as well as two autobiographies and six novels. Several of his novels were made into films, and he also appeared as an actor in The Spoilers, a 1942 film with Marlene Dietrich. -bio via Poetry Foundation 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/subscribe

    6 min

  7. JAN 1

    Helen Hunt Jackson's "New Year's Morning"

    Happy New Year (and Happy Reading) from The Daily Poem! Born in Amherst, Massachusetts, to academic Calvinist parents, poet, author, and Native American rights activist Helen Hunt Jackson (born Helen Maria Fiske) was orphaned as a child and raised by her aunt. Jackson was sent to private schools and formed a lasting childhood friendship with Emily Dickinson. At the age of 21, Jackson married Lieutenant Edward Bissell Hunt and together they had two sons. Jackson began writing poetry only after the early deaths of her husband and both sons. Jackson published five collections of poetry, including Verses (1870) and Easter Bells (1884), as well as children’s literature and travel books, often using the pseudonyms “H.H.,” “Rip van Winkle,” or “Saxe Holm.” Frequently in poor health, she moved to Colorado on her physician’s recommendation and married William Sharpless Jackson there in 1875. Moved by an 1879 speech given by Chief Standing Bear, Jackson wrote A Century of Dishonor (1881), an exposé of the rampant crimes against Native Americans, which led to the founding of the Indian Rights Association. In 1884 she published Ramona, a fictionalized account of the plight of Southern California’s dispossessed Mission Indians, inspired by Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin.Jackson was inducted into the Colorado Women’s Hall of Fame in 1985. -bio via Poetry Foundation 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/subscribe

    8 min

  8. 12/31/2024

    T. S. Eliot's "Journey of the Magi"

    …I had seen birth and death, But had thought they were different; this Birth was Hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death. Today’s poem seemed an appropriate choice as we endure the death of one year and the pregnant anticipation of another. 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/subscribe

    9 min
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About

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

Information

  • Creator
    Goldberry Studios
  • Years Active
    2018 - 2025
  • Episodes
    988
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © Goldberry Books LLC
  • Show Website
    The Daily Poem

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