Stay ConnectedThe Daily Poem offers one essential poem each weekday morning. From Shakespeare and John Donne to Robert Frost and Emily Dickinson, The Daily Poem curates a broad and generous audio anthology of the best poetry ever written, read-aloud by David Kern and an assortment of various contributors. Some lite commentary is included and the shorter poems are often read twice, as time permits.
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Today’s poem is the perfect prelude to Thanksgiving–not only by whetting the appetite, but by uncovering the hidden glories of one of the most enduring and ubiquitous of nature’s gifts. Happy reading.
Today’s poem, though brief, is arguably “bigger on the inside,” just like its subject. Happy reading.
It’s one thing to write a poem claiming poetry should show rather than tell; it is another thing entirely for that poem to follow its own advice. Happy reading.
In today’s poem (sometimes printed alternatively as “Letter to a Young Friend”), Scotland’s national poet gives life advice with his characteristic blend of sincerity and levity. Happy reading!
Today’s poem is a little more (purposefully) enigmatic than most of Dickinson’s verse. Happy reading.
Today’s poem may be triggering for anyone who has had to endure a vacation they didn’t plan or really even want to go. Happy reading.
Today’s poem comes from a young man (he died at 25) whose Spring and Autumn were the same. Happy reading.
Today’s poem sings of one of the most painful and irremediable forms of nostalgia. Happy reading.
Today’s poem is a “row of perfect rhymes” and an absolute delight. Happy reading.
You can find the text of the poem here.
George Starbuck was born in Columbus, Ohio on June 15, 1931. He grew up in Illinois and California. He attended the University of California at Berkeley for two years, and the University of Chicago for three. He then studied with Archibald MacLeish and Robert Lowell, alongside peers Anne Sexton and Sylvia Plath, at Harvard University. Starbuck won the Yale Younger Poets Prize for his collection Bone Thoughts (1960). He is the author of several other books, including The Argot Merchant Disaster: New and Selected Poems (1982), Elegy in a Country Church Yard (1974), and White Paper (1966). He taught at the State University College at Buffalo, the University of Iowa, and Boston University.
Starbuck’s witty songs of protest are usually concerned with love, war, and the spiritual temper of the times. John Holmes believed that “there hasn’t been as much word excitement ... for years,” as one finds in Bone Thoughts. Harvey Shapiro pointed out that Starbuck’s work is attractive because of its “witty, improvisational surface, slangy and familiar address, brilliant aural quality” and added that Starbuck may become a “spokesman for the bright, unhappy young men.” Louise Bogan asserted that his daring satire “sets him off from the poets of generalized rebellion.”
After reading Bone Thoughts, Holmes hoped for other books in the same vein; R.F. Clayton found that, in White Paper(1966), the verse again stings with parody. Although Robert D. Spector wasn’t sure of Starbuck’s sincerity in Bone Thoughts, he rated the poems in White Paper, which range “from parody to elegy to sonnets, and even acrostic exercises,” as “generally superior examples of their kind.” In particular, Spector wrote, when Starbuck juxtaposes McNamara’s political language and a Quaker’s self-immolation by burning, or wryly offers an academician’s praise for this nation’s demonstration of humanity by halting its bombing for “five whole days,” we sense this poet’s genuine commitment.
Starbuck died in Tuscaloosa, Alabama on August 1, 1996.
-bio via Poetry Foundation
November mood. Happy reading.
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