The Daily Poem

Today’s poem, introducing the counterpart to “Songs of Innocence,” is a dialogue that immediately deepens the mood of the more “mature” lyrics that will follow. 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

Sweet is the home you leave. 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

Today’s poem is a somber, paternal retrospective from the Ancient Mariner poet. 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

Today’s poem kicks off a short trek through English poetry. 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

My friend Simon Curtis, who has died aged 70, was one of the small band of people who work tirelessly, for no pay and few thanks, to promote poetry. An excellent poet himself, he edited two magazines and helped many struggling writers into print.His heroes were Wordsworth, Hardy and Causley. His own poetry, which rhymed and was perfectly accessible, was distinguished by, in his words, its "shrewd, ironic and Horatian tone". It ranged from accomplished light verse, which was often very funny, to deeply affecting poems about family bereavement. He appeared in the Faber Poetry Introduction 6 (1985).Simon was born in Burnley, Lancashire, the son of Susan, an English teacher, and the Rev Douglas Curtis, a vicar, and grew up in Northamptonshire. Armed with an English degree from Cambridge University, and a PhD from Essex, on Darwin as writer and scientist, he became a lecturer in comparative literature at Manchester University. He was active in the Hardy Society, editing the Thomas Hardy Journal for several years, worked quietly for the Campaign to Protect Rural England, and spent a lot of time caring for his mother, who lived to a great age.Eventually, he moved to Plymouth and in 2010 took over from me as the editor of the little magazine The Interpreter's House, which he made, in Hardy's phrase, "a house of hospitalities". We were both determined that it shouldn't be just a platform for the editor's friends but should be open to good poets of all stripes.But early in 2013 all plans had to be shelved as this active outdoor man was diagnosed with incurable cancer. Though paralysed below the waist, he remained positive, continued to watch the yellowhammers outside his window and never allowed his many visitors to feel downhearted. Shoestring Press rushed out a volume of his new and selected poems, Comet Over Greens Norton, which contains all his best work.Simon was old-fashioned in the best kind of ways, a former 1960s student who canvassed for Labour but who dressed conservatively and retained a stiff upper lip and immaculate manners. He hated pollution, literary infighting, and public greed and waste. He loved bird-watching, football, woodcuts and the Lake District.-bio via Merryn Williams’ 2014 Obituary for Curtis in The Guardian 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

Today’s poem grows on 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

David Wojahn grew up in St. Paul, Minnesota. He studied at the University of Minnesota and the University of Arizona. Ever since his first collection, Icehouse Lights, was chosen for the Yale Series of Younger Poets award in 1981, Wojahn has been one of American poetry’s most thoughtful examiners of culture and memory. His work often investigates how history plays out in the lives of individuals, and poet Tom Sleigh says that his poems “meld the political and personal in a way that is unparalleled by any living American poet.”Wojahn’s book World Tree (2011) received the Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize from the Academy of American Poets. His collection Interrogation Palace: New and Selected Poems 1982–2004 (2006), which Peter Campion called “superb” and “panoramic” in a review for Poetry, showcases Wojahn’s formal range, the scope of his personal narratives, and his intense, imaginative monologues and character sketches, such as his sonnets on pop culture icons and rock-and-roll musicians in Mystery Train (1990). He is also celebrated for the emotional resonance of his poetry—the ability to, in the words of poet Jean Valentine, “follow … tragedy to its grave depths, with dignity and unsparingness, and egolessness.”In addition to his books of poetry, Wojahn is the author of From the Valley of Making: Essays on the Craft of Poetry (2015) and Strange Good Fortune (2001), a collection of essays on contemporary poetry. He coedited A Profile of Twentieth Century American Poetry (1991), and edited a posthumous collection of his wife Lynda Hull’s poetry, The Only World (1995).Wojahn has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, the Illinois Arts Council, and the Indiana Arts Commission. He teaches poetry at Virginia Commonwealth University and in the low residency MFA in Writing program at the Vermont College of Fine Arts.-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

A little light verse for anyone who wants to rise (far) above the noise for a moment. Happy reading.Bert Leston Taylor (November 13, 1866 – March 19, 1921) was an American columnist, humorist, poet, and author.Bert Leston Taylor became a journalist at seventeen, a librettist at twenty-one, and a successfully published author at thirty-five. At the height of his literary career, he was a central literary figure of the early 20th century Chicago renaissance as well as one of the most celebrated columnists in the United States.-bio via Wikipedia 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

Death has been personified and analogized in myriad ways, but none perhaps so withering as today’s imagining of death as a fascist bureaucrat. 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

Jeanne Murray Walker was born in a village of 900 people in northern Minnesota. She was first published by The Atlantic Monthly at age 19. Today she’s the prize-winning author of nine books of poetry. Jeanne serves as a Mentor in the Seattle Pacific University low residency MFA Program and travels widely to give readings and workshops.-bio via Paraclete Press 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