The Daily Poem

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

December 13 is St. Lucy’s day, traditionally a day celebrating light in the midst of the darkest, coldest time of the year. Today’s poems–from Elaine Feinstein, John Donne, and Thomas Merton–all meditate on that contrast in some way. Enjoy, stay warm, and 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

Thomas Hardy (born June 2, 1840 - died January 11, 1928) was born in Dorset, England. The son of a stone mason, he trained as an architect and worked in London and Dorset for ten years.Hardy began his writing career as a novelist, publishing Desperate Remedies (Tinsley Brothers) in 1871, and was soon successful enough to leave the field of architecture for writing. His novels Tess of the D’Urbervilles (Osgood McIlvaine & Co., 1891) and Jude the Obscure (Osgood McIlvaine & Co., 1895), which are considered literary classics today, received negative reviews upon publication. He left fiction writing for poetry and published eight collections, including Poems of the Past and the Present (Harper & Bros., 1902) and Satires of Circumstance (Macmillan, 1914).Hardy’s poetry explores a fatalist outlook against the dark, rugged landscape of his native Dorset. He rejected the Victorian belief in a benevolent God, and much of his poetry reads as a sardonic lament on the bleakness of the human condition. A traditionalist in technique, he nevertheless forged a highly original style, combining rough-hewn rhythms and colloquial diction with a variety of meters and stanzaic forms. A significant influence on later poets (including Robert Frost, Wystan Hugh Auden, Dylan Thomas, and Philip Larkin), his influence has increased over the course of the twentieth century, offering a more down-to-earth, less rhetorical alternative to the more mystical and aristocratic precedent of William Butler Yeats. 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

Lawrence Monsanto Ferlinghetti (March 24, 1919 – February 22, 2021) was an American poet, painter, social activist, and co-founder of City Lights Booksellers & Publishers. An author of poetry, translations, fiction, theatre, art criticism, and film narration, Ferlinghetti was best known for his second collection of poems, A Coney Island of the Mind (1958), which has been translated into nine languages and sold over a million copies.-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

Mary Jo Salter is the author of eight books of poetry including The Surveyors (2017) and, most recently Zoom Rooms: Poems (2022). She is also a lyricist whose song cycle “Rooms of Light: The Life of Photographs" was composed by Fred Hersch. Her children’s book The Moon Comes Home appeared in 1989; her play Falling Bodies premiered in 2004. She is also a co-editor of The Norton Anthology of Poetry (4th edition, 1996; 5th edition, 2005; 6th edition, 2018). 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