The Daily Poem

Today’s poem from Ezra Pound (a poet with his own colorful history of exile) is after the style of Li Po, featured last week.Ezra Pound was born in Hailey, Idaho, on October 30, 1885. He completed two years of college at the University of Pennsylvania and earned a degree from Hamilton College in 1905. After teaching at Wabash College for two years, he travelled abroad to Spain, Italy, and London, where, as the literary executor of the scholar Ernest Fenellosa, he became interested in Japanese and Chinese poetry. He married Dorothy Shakespear in 1914 and became London editor of the Little Review in 1917.In 1924, Pound moved to Italy. During this period of voluntary exile, Pound became involved in Fascist politics and did not return to the United States until 1945, when he was arrested on charges of treason for broadcasting Fascist propaganda by radio to the United States during World War II. In 1946, he was acquitted, but was declared mentally ill and committed to St. Elizabeths Hospital in Washington, D.C. During his confinement, the jury of the Bollingen Prize for Poetry (which included a number of the most eminent writers of the time), decided to overlook Pound’s political career in the interest of recognizing his poetic achievements, and awarded him the prize for the Pisan Cantos (New Directions, 1948). After continuous appeals from writers won his release from the hospital in 1958, Pound returned to Italy and settled in Venice, where he died, a semi-recluse, on November 1, 1972.Ezra Pound is generally considered the poet most responsible for defining and promoting a Modernist aesthetic in poetry. In the early teens of the twentieth century, he opened a seminal exchange of work and ideas between British and American writers, and was famous for the generosity with which he advanced the work of such major contemporaries as W. B. Yeats, Robert Frost, William Carlos Williams, Marianne Moore, H. D., James Joyce, Ernest Hemingway, and especially T. S. Eliot.Pound’s own significant contributions to poetry begin with his promulgation of Imagism, a movement in poetry that derived its technique from classical Chinese and Japanese poetry—stressing clarity, precision, and economy of language, and foregoing traditional rhyme and meter in order to, in Pound’s words, “compose in the sequence of the musical phrase, not in the sequence of the metronome.” His later work, for nearly fifty years, focused on the encyclopedic epic poem he entitled The Cantos.-bio via American Academy of 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

Today’s poem answers the question you never thought to ask: ‘What do Macbeth and a buzz saw have in common?’ 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

Some poets wind up writing prayers by accident; others do it on purpose. Today’s poems from Robert Herrick–“Grace For a Child” and “His Prayer for Absolution”–are of the latter variety. 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 poems–”The Hill Place” and “Day’s Diamond”–come from Robert P. Tristram Coffin. Coffin (1892-1955) grew up in Brunswick, Maine on a “saltwater farm.” He attended Bowdoin, Princeton, and Oxford University, where he was a Rhodes Scholar before, as well as after, serving two years in World War I. He taught at Wells College in Aurora, New York from 1921-1934 and eventually returned to Bowdoin College, where he was Pierce Professor in English from 1934 until his death in 1955.Throughout his life, Robert Coffin successfully combined the roles of artist and teacher, poet and prose writer. He authored more than forty books, and was awarded many honors, including the 1936 Pulitzer Prize in Poetry for his book, Strange Holiness. In 1945, Coffin was elected to the National Institute of Arts and Letters for “work of permanent value in American literature,” and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences granted him membership in 1949.-bio via University of New HampshireAs promised, Coffin’s essay, Night of Lobster 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 marks the ides (or idus) or March, a day classically associated with the settling of debts (and maybe old scores, too).One of the foremost editors, literary critics, and anthologists of contemporary American literature, David Lehman is also one of its most accomplished poets. Born in New York City in 1948, Lehman earned a PhD from Columbia University and attended the University of Cambridge as a Kellett Fellow. He is the author of numerous collections of poetry, including New and Selected Poems (2013), Yeshiva Boys (2009), and When a Woman Loves a Man (2005).  Two of his collections, The Evening Sun (2002) and The Daily Mirror: A Journal in Poetry (1998), were culled from Lehman’s five-year-long project of writing a poem a day. Yusef Komunyakaa called The Daily Mirror “a sped-up meditation on the elemental stuff that we're made of: in this honed matrix of seeing, what's commonplace becomes the focus of extraordinary glimpses....” Lehman has also written collaborative books of poetry, including Poetry Forum (2007), with Judith Hall; and Jim and Dave Defeat the Masked Man (2005), a collection of sestinas he wrote with the poet James Cummins.Lehman inaugurated The Best American Poetry series in 1988. As series editor, he has earned high acclaim for his pivotal role in garnering contemporary American poetry a larger audience. In an early interview about the series with Judith Moore, Lehman noted “I want the books to have a lot to commend them beyond the poems themselves. The 75 poems are of course the center of the book, but we want also to have a foreword by me that can provide a context, that gives an idea of what happened in poetry this year, and an essay in which the guest editor propounds his or her criteria.” Lehman’s work as an editor also includes such volumes as The Best American Erotic Poems (2008), The Oxford Book of American Poetry (2006), A.R. Ammons: Selected Poems (2006), Great American Prose Poems: From Poe to the Present (2003), and Ecstatic Occasions, Expedient Forms (1996). He was the director of the University of Michigan Press’s Poets on Poetry and the Under Discussion series from 1994 to 2006.A prominent literary and cultural critic, Lehman has published works ranging from an indictment of deconstruction, Signs of the Times: Deconstruction and the Fall of Paul de Man (1991); to a history of the New York School of Poets, The Last Avant-Garde: The Making of the New York School of Poets (1998); to a meditation on the influence of Jewish songwriters in American music, A Fine Romance: Jewish Songwriters, American Songs (2009). Lehman’s numerous honors and awards include fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Guggenheim Foundation, and the Ingram Merrill Foundation, and awards from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the Lila Wallace-Reader’s Digest Writer’s Award. On faculty at both the New School and New York University, he lives in New York City.-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

Exploring the life of poet Li Po and his themes of solitude and melancholy. Analysis of his poem 'The Solitude of Night' and its portrayal of drunkenness and loneliness. Reflecting on a serene moment in nature at night, finding peace in solitude and connecting with the natural world.

Explore James Merrill's transition from conventional poetry to the occult in 'The Octopus', delving into themes of attention, vision, and obsession. The parallels between attention and prayer are examined, along with the symbolism of the octopus as a representation of vision. Dive into the challenges of maintaining vigilant vision and the consequences of awakening one's attention.

Explores Hilaire Belloc's poetic defense of G.K. Chesterton through 'Lines to a Don', highlighting poetic diss tracks. Contrast between dismal dawn flaws and majestic dawns. Critiques dawn while praising Belloc. References Belloc's works and urges support for the podcast.

Explore Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's poetic personifications of each month, from April's wild manifestations to May's gentle nature, depicting mythological attributes and seasonal symbolism that celebrate the beauty and essence of each passing time of the year.

Delve into Naomi Shihab Nye's powerful poem 'The Traveling Onion' and uncover the deeper meaning behind seemingly ordinary objects. Explore the significance of heritage, peace, and the beauty found in simple things through the lens of poetry.