The Daily Poem

Dorianne Laux is the author of several collections of poetry, including What We Carry (1994), a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award; Smoke (2000); Facts about the Moon (2005), chosen by the poet Ai as winner of the Oregon Book Award and also a finalist for the Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize; The Book of Men (2011), which was awarded the Paterson Prize; and Only As the Day is Long: New and Selected (2019). She has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts, and has been a Pushcart Prize winner. Laux’s free-verse poems are sensual and grounded, and they reveal the poet as a compassionate witness to the everyday. She observed in an interview for the website Readwritepoem, “Poems keep us conscious of the importance of our individual lives ... personal witness of a singular life, seen cleanly and with the concomitant well-chosen particulars, is one of the most powerful ways to do this.” Speaking of the qualities she admires most in poetry, Laux added, “Craft is important, a skill to be learned, but it’s not the beginning and end of the story. I want the muddled middle to be filled with the gristle of the living.” She was first inspired to write after hearing a poem by Pablo Neruda. Other influences include Sharon Olds, Lucille Clifton, Anne Sexton, and Adrienne Rich.Laux has taught creative writing at the University of Oregon, Pacific University, and North Carolina State University; she has also led summer workshops at Esalen in Big Sur. She is the co-author, with Kim Addonizio, of The Poet’s Companion: A Guide to the Pleasures of Writing Poetry (1997). She lives in Raleigh, North Carolina, with her husband, poet Joseph Millar.-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

John Mason Neale was born in London to evangelical parents. His father’s early death meant that Neale attended many different schools; he eventually earned a degree from Trinity College, Cambridge. While at Cambridge, Neale moved from an evangelical to a strongly Anglican religious orientation. He helped found the Cambridge Camden Society, which later became the Ecclesiological Society, at Cambridge in 1839; the group’s main goal was to align church architecture, decoration, and ritual with its teaching. Neale was ordained a deacon in 1841 and a priest in 1842. His role in mid-19th-century British religious history is complex: many of his innovations, including establishing the Society of Saint Margaret for the nursing of pensioners and the poor, seemed too close to Roman Catholicism for Anglican leaders of the day.  Nonetheless, Neale’s literary and religious output was immense. He wrote books and pamphlets on a wide range of spiritual and material issues. Neale’s other volumes included novels, books for children, and works on church history. He penned a multivolume History of the Holy Eastern Church (1847, 1850, and a posthumous volume in 1873). Neale’s interest in Eastern Christianity led him to translate Hymns of the Eastern Church (1862), though he translated many other kinds of hymns, including from Latin, for Anglican use. Neale is best remembered as a hymnist whose collections include Hymns for Children (1843), Hymns for the Sick (1843), Carols for Christmas-tide (1853), and Carols for Easter-tide (1854). Perhaps his most famous carol is “Good King Wenceslas.” Neale’s early death, at age 48, was not widely recognized at the time; however, the archbishop of Canterbury celebrated its centenary.-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

Merry Christmas from The Daily 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

Today’s poem is T. S. Eliot’s unconventional look at the very familiar story of the Three Wise Men. 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 familiar favorite, just right for the “darkest evening of the year.” 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

Ruth Moose is the author of Making the Bed (Main Street Rag Press, 2004) and The Sleepwaker (Main Street Rag Press, 2007). Her poetry has been published in former U.S. Poet Laureate Ted Kooser's column, "American Life in Poetry."-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

Gerard Manley Hopkins is considered to be one of the greatest poets of the Victorian era. However, because his style was so radically different from that of his contemporaries, his best poems were not accepted for publication during his lifetime, and his achievement was not fully recognized until after World War I. Hopkins’s family encouraged his artistic talents when he was a youth in Essex, England. However, Hopkins became estranged from his Protestant family when he converted to Roman Catholicism. Upon deciding to become a priest, he burned all of his poems and did not write again for many years. His work was not published until 30 years after his death when his friend Robert Bridges edited the volume Poems.-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

G. K. Chesterton was one of the dominating figures of the London literary scene in the early 20th century. Not only did he get into lively discussions with anyone who would debate him, including his friend, frequent verbal sparring partner, and noted Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw, but he wrote about seemingly every topic, in every genre, from journalism to plays, poetry to crime novels. "He said something about everything and he said it better than anyone else," writes Dale Ahlquist, president of the American Chester Society. Most of Chesterton's literary output was nonfiction, including thousands of columns for various periodicals, but today he is best remembered for his fictional work—a mystery series about Father Brown, a Catholic priest and amateur detective.Chesterton's first published books were of poetry. Ian Boyd points to a "close connection between his poetry and his everyday journalism," concluding: "In this sense, T.S. Eliot's description of Chesterton's poetry as 'first-rate journalistic balladry' turns out to have been particularly perceptive, since it is a reminder about the essential character of all Chesterton's work. In his verse, as in all his writings, his first aim was to comment on the political and social questions of the day."-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

Mark Doty is a poet, essayist, memoirist and author of nine books of poetry. His book Fire to Fire: New and Selected Poems won the 2008 National Book Award. He has also received other literary awards, including the Whiting Writers Award, the T. S. Eliot Prize, the National Book Critics Circle Award, two Lambda Literary Awards and the PEN/Martha Albrand Award for First Nonfiction. His poetry collection “My Alexandria” was chosen for the National Poetry Series. Doty has also received two National Endowment for the Arts fellowships, Guggenheim and Rockefeller Foundation fellowships, a Lila Wallace/Readers Digest Award, and the Witter Bynner Prize. Doty’s most recent book is What Is the Grass: Walt Whitman in My Life (Norton), a memoir about his poetic relationship with Walt Whitman. Doty is a distinguished professor of English and the director of Writers House at Rutgers University.-bio via Library of Congress 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

"Among those whom I like or admire, I can find no common denominator, but among those whom I love, I can: all of them make me laugh." -Wystan Hugh Auden 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