The Daily Poem

Today’s poem imagines what you might do when you’re through paying taxes. 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 an ekphrasis on a portrait of the poet himself–all that the portrait does and doesn’t capture or convey. 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 lighter take on the self-portrait ekphrasis. What is it about the self-portrait that is so intriguing to poets, anyway? 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

Elizabeth Jennings (1926-2001) was born in Boston, Lincolnshire but moved to Oxford at the age of six where she lived for the rest of her life. She studied at St. Anne’s College, Oxford and worked in advertising, at the City Library and briefly in publishing before becoming a full-time writer. Her consistent devotion to poetry yielded over twenty books during her life, a New Collected Poems appearing in 2002. Although initially linked to the group of poets including Kingsley Amis, Philip Larkin and Thom Gunn known as ‘The Movement’, Jennings’ work doesn’t share their irony or academic wit. However, the unassuming technical craft of her poetry and its emotional restraint are qualities that were praised by the poets and critics of the period and continued to be abiding characteristics of her work. An important theme is her Catholicism and many of her poems have a devotional aspect. Her intense musing on spirituality encouraged a sensitivity towards others, evident in the pained tenderness of some of her poems. Jennings’ sincere and scrupulous work gradually built both critical acclaim that weathered changes in poetic fashion, and a genuine popularity. Amongst the many honours awarded her work are the W.H. Smith Literary Award, the Somerset Maugham Award and a CBE. Although consistent in its tone and concerns, her poetry continued to develop and mature – later work demonstrating a more flexible approach to form whilst retaining her clarity.-bio via Poetry Archive (where you can also hear Jennings reading her own poem) 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

Richard Howard (born Oct 13, 1929, died march 31, 2022) was credited with introducing modern French fiction—particularly examples of the Nouveau Roman—to the American public; his translation of Charles Baudelaire’s Les Fleurs du Mal (1984) won a National Book Award in 1984. A selection of Howard’s critical prose was collected in the volume Paper Trail: Selected Prose 1965-2003, and his collection of essays Alone with America: Essays on the Art of Poetry in the United States since 1950 (1969) was praised as one of the first comprehensive overviews of American poetry from the latter half of the 20th century. First and foremost a poet, Howard’s many volumes of verse also received widespread acclaim; he won the 1970 Pulitzer Prize in Poetry for his collection Untitled Subjects. His other honors included the American Book Award, the Harriet Monroe Memorial Prize, the PEN Translation Medal, the Levinson Prize, and the Ordre National du Mérite from the French government. For many years, Howard was the poetry editor of the Paris Review.Evaluations of Howard usually judge his work as a poet to be his most important contribution to contemporary American literature. However, his work has and continues to attract a wide and enthusiastic audience among readers, academics, and critics alike.-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

ekphrasis: “Description” in Greek. An ekphrastic poem is a vivid description of a scene or, more commonly, a work of art. Through the imaginative act of narrating and reflecting on the “action” of a painting or sculpture, the poet may amplify and expand its meaning.Once internationally famous as the author of the poem "The Man with the Hoe," Edwin Markham (1852-1940) was a popular American literary figure during the first half of the 20th century whose works espoused progressive social and spiritual beliefs. In contrast to the experimentalism and pessimism that generally characterized poetry of this era, Markham's quatrains, sonnets, and heroic verse celebrate peace, love, and socialist utopian reform. In a 1902 essay in the Comrade, Leonard D. Abbot proclaimed that "Markham, more than any other poet in the English language, can claim the honor of being the Bard of Labor—the true product of the last great movement that is destined to shake the world."In 1876 Markham abandoned the Methodist faith of his childhood and became a follower of the spiritualist and utopian socialist Thomas Lake Harris. Harris's doctrine, which espoused social harmony and universal charity, became a major force in Markham's life. Markham had begun writing poetry as early as 1872, but he did not sell his first poem until 1880. For the next 19 years, he contributed poems to Harper's, Century, and Scribner's, and cultivated friendships with such eminent American literary figures as Edmund Clarence Stedman, Hamlin Garland, and Ambrose Bierce.During the last week of December 1898, Markham completed a poem that changed his career overnight. Titled "The Man with the Hoe," the poem was based on the painting of the same name by the French artist Jean-Francois Millet in 1862. Millet's painting depicts a stooping peasant with a brutish expression on his face, who in Markham's poem becomes the embodiment of the suffering of oppressed labor throughout world history. Markham read the poem to an editor of William Randolph Hearst's San Francisco Examiner at a New Years' Eve party, and that newspaper published the work two weeks later."The Man with the Hoe" attracted wide public notice and was reprinted in newspapers across the United States. Its appeal for better treatment of the working class became the subject of national debate and launched Markham's career as a poet, transforming him into a national celebrity. Markham enjoyed this immense public prestige until his death in 1940.Markham's poetry is characterized by its highly rhetorical nature and expresses his advocacy of social reform, as well as his desire for the unity of humankind through spiritual faith. "The Man with the Hoe," as well as his subsequent poetry, was hotly debated by critics. William Jennings Bryan wrote: "There is a majestic sweep to the argument; some of the lines pierce like arrows," while Ambrose Bierce railed: "As a literary conception it has not the vitality of a dead fish. It will not carry a poem of whatever excellence otherwise through two generations." Although Markham's first collection of poetry, The Man with the Hoe, and Other Poems, was subject to the same controversy, critics generally viewed Markham as a poet of much promise. With each successive collection, however, he encountered disfavor with critics. When Gates of Paradise, and Other Poems was published in 1920, Herbert S. Gorman wrote, "Markham became a poet when he wrote 'The Man with the Hoe' and when he penned the last line he ceased to be a poet." Nevertheless, Markham always remained popular with readers, and his distinguished appearance—tall, ruggedly featured, and bearded—impressed many people as the ideal of a great American poet.In 1922, Markham, on invitation from former president William Howard Taft, read his poem "Lincoln, the Man of the People" at the dedication of the Lincoln Memorial; in 1932, on the occasion of Markham's 80th birthday, he was regaled at New York's Carnegie Hall, a celebration to which 35 nations sent representatives. Despite the decline in his reputation after his death, among scholars Markham remains an important figure in American poetry of the early 20th century. "At a time when protest counted, Markham's first triumph, 'The Man with the Hoe,' helped awaken the conscience of the American people," observed Joseph W. Slade in the Dictionary of Literary Biography. "Markham elevated socialism, naive as it was, into sublimity. If 'The Man with the Hoe' represents Markham on a soapbox, critic Benjamin De Casseres has written, the 'that soapbox is a star.'"-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

Today’s poem is in honor of April being (according to now-outdated tradition) the last prudent month till Autumn in which to eat oysters. Happy reading!Self-effacing, yet having an expressive critical ability; reveling in the possibilities of fancy, though thoroughly at home with the sophisticated nuances of logic and mathematics, Lewis Carroll (Charles Lutwidge Dodgson) was an individual who, through his rare and diversified literary gifts and power of communication, left an indelible mark upon the imaginations of children and adults both during his generation and in generations to come. His best-known works, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865) and Through the Looking-Glass, And What Alice Found There (1872) are still enjoyed by readers throughout the world and have been adapted for radio, television, and motion pictures.-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

West Indian poet and playwright Derek Walcott made his debut as an 18-year-old with In a Green Night. For many years he divided his time among Saint Lucia; Boston University, where he taught; and Trinidad, where he managed a theater. Walcott also worked as an artist and combined his poetry with painting in the volume Tiepolo’s Hound (2005).Walcott’s works often deal with Caribbean history, while he simultaneous searches for vestiges of the colonial era. Western literary canon is revised and given a completely new form, as in the poetry collection Omeros (1990). In his writing Walcott explores the complexity of living and working in two cultures.-bio via Nobel 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

In today’s poem: George Herbert meditating on the simple profundity of a single, sustained metaphor. 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–a layered, jokingly-serious response to one of last week’s–comes from Ogden Nash, dubbed the ‘Laurate of Light Verse.’ Which banner would you rally under–Nash or Byron?One of the most widely appreciated and imitated writers of light verse, Frediric Ogden Nash was born in Rye, New York, on August 19, 1902, to Edmund Strudwick and Mattie Nash. He came from a distinguished family; the city of Nashville, Tennessee, was named in honor of one of his forbearers. Nash attended Harvard College, but dropped out after only one year. He worked briefly on Wall Street, and as a schoolteacher, before becoming a copywriter. In 1925, he took a job in the marketing department with the publishing house Doubleday.Nash's first published poems began to appear in the New Yorker around 1930. His first collection of poems, Hard Lines (Simon & Schuster), was published in 1931. The book was a tremendous success; it went into seven printings in its first year alone, and Nash quit his job with Doubleday. That same year, he married Frances Rider Leonard; they had two children. Nash worked briefly for the New Yorker in 1932, before deciding to devote himself full-time to his verse.Nash considered himself a "worsifier." Among his best known lines are "Candy / Is dandy, / But liquor / Is quicker" and "If called by a panther / Don't anther." His poems also had an intensely anti-establishment quality that resounded with many Americans, particularly during the Depression. Nash was a keen observer of American social life, and frequently mocked religious moralizing and conservative politicians. His work is often compared with other satirists of the time, including Dorothy Parker, Robert Benchley, and H. L. Mencken. He appeared regularly on radio and on television, and he drew huge audiences for his readings and lectures.Nash was also the author of three screenplays for MGM, and with S. J. Perelmen, he wrote the 1943 Broadway hit One Touch of Venus. In the 1950s, Nash focused on writing poems for children, including the collection Girls Are Silly (Franklin Watts, 1962). He died on May 19, 1971.-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