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

    Yvor Winters' "At the San Francisco Airport"

    Though not yet the Dantesque hells that they are today, airports in 1954 were already places of union, separation, and general existential anxiety. This meditation comes from a serious and sphinx-like Winters at the height of his poetic development–though not yet at his own “terminal,” here he is a man who already has plenty to look back on. Happy reading. (Arthur) Yvor Winters was born in Chicago on October 17, 1900. While studying at the University of Chicago he was diagnosed with tuberculosis and decided to relocate to Santa Fe, New Mexico, for the sake of his health. His early poems, published in 1921 and 1922, were all written at a tuberculosis sanitarium. He enrolled at the University of Colorado in 1925, where he earned his bachelor’s and master’s degrees. In 1926, he married the poet and novelist Janet Lewis. He spent two years teaching at the University of Idaho in Moscow before entering Stanford University as a graduate student, receiving his PhD in 1934. From 1928 until his death, he was a member of Stanford’s English department. Winters’s books of poetry include The Early Poems of Yvor Winters, 1920–1928(Swallow Press, 1966); Collected Poems (1952; revised edition, 1960), winner of the Bollingen Prize; Poems (Gyroscope Press, 1940); Before Disaster (Tryon Pamphlets, 1934); The Proof (Coward-McCann, Inc., 1930); and The Immobile Wind (M. Wheeler, 1921). In Defense of Reason (Swallow Press, 1947), Winters’s major critical work, is a collection of three earlier studies: The Anatomy of Nonsense (New Directions, 1943); Maule’s Curse (New Directions, 1938); and Primitivism and Decadence (Arrow Editions, 1937). Winters was also a prolific and controversial critic who believed that a work of art should be “an act of moral judgement” and attacked such literary icons as T. S. Eliot and Henry James. The chair of the Stanford English department notoriously denounced Winters as a “disgrace to the department.” Winters’s honors include a National Institute of Arts and Letters award as well as grants from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts. He died on January 25, 1968, in Palo Alto, California. -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

    10 min

  2. 4 DAYS AGO

    Billy Collins' "Thesaurus"

    If hot takes about synonyms are your cup of tea, favorite, darling, jam, or weapon of choice, then today’s poem is for you. 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

    6 min

  3. 6 DAYS AGO

    John Davies' "Nosce Teipsum: of Human Knowledge"

    We that acquaint ourselves with every zone,And pass both tropics and behold the poles,When we come home, are to ourselves unknown,And unacquainted still with our own souls. Today’s poem is Davies’ lengthy meditation on what man can know and what he could stand to learn. Happy reading. Poet and lawyer Sir John Davies was born in Wiltshire and educated at Winchester College and Queen’s College, Oxford, though historians disagree about whether he graduated. In 1588, he enrolled in the Middle Temple, where he studied with John Donne, and was called to the bar in 1595. In addition to his legal study, Davies wrote poetry, notably Orchestra, or, A Poeme of Dancing (1596). Davies’s other works include a series of epigrams drawn from his youthful misadventures; Nosce teipsum (1594), a poetic treatise on the immortality of the soul; and Hymnes of Astraea in Acrosticke Verse (1599),an acrostic poem spelling the words Elisabetha Regina. Davies also contributed poetic dialogues to Francis Davison’s Poetical Rhapsody(1602). His Collected Poems appeared in 1622. It is thought that Davies accompanied King James to Scotland after Queen Elizabeth’s death in 1603. Eventually knighted by the king, Davies was made solicitor general for Ireland and emerged as a champion of legal reform in Ireland. He attempted to lay the grounds for a strong civil society, albeit one that benefited England and English rule in all cases. Davies helped cement pro-English property laws and advocated the expulsion of Catholic priests to shore up Protestantism. He was appointed speaker in the Irish Parliament in 1613 and presided over the first Protestant majority. He returned to England and served in the Parliament of 1621. Charles I appointed Davies lord chief justice in 1626, but he died just before officially taking office. John Donne gave his funeral oration. Davies was buried in St. Martin-in-the-Fields. -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

    13 min

  4. JAN 13

    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

  5. JAN 10

    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

  6. JAN 8

    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

  7. 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

  8. 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
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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
    991
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © Goldberry Books LLC
  • Show Website
    The Daily Poem

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