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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The full title of today’s poem from Maurice Manning says it all: “A Brief Refutation of the Rumor That I Allowed Willie and Tad to Relieve Themselves in my Up-Turned Hat on a Sunday Morning at the Office While Their Mother was Attending Religious Services”
Maurice Manning (born 1966) is an American poet. His first collection of poems, Lawrence Booth's Book of Visions, was awarded the Yale Younger Poets Award, chosen by W.S. Merwin. Since then he has published four collections of poetry (with Houghton Mifflin Harcourt and Copper Canyon Press). He teaches English and Creative Writing at Transylvania University in Lexington, Kentucky, where he oversees the Judy Gaines Young Book Award, and is a member of the poetry faculty of the Warren Wilson College MFA Program for Writers. Today’s poem comes from his 2020 collection, Railsplitter.
-bio via Wikipedia
James Matthew Wilson has published ten books, among them four collections of poems, including The Strangeness of the Good. His poems, essays, and reviews appear regularly in a wide range of magazines and journals. The winner of the 2017 Hiett Prize from the Dallas Institute of Humanities and Culture, Wilson also serves as Poet-in-Residence of the Benedict XVI Institute for Sacred Music and Divine Worship, poetry editor of Modern Age magazine, and series editor of Colosseum Books, a new imprint that publishes the best contemporary poetry and literary criticism of serious craft and spiritual depth.
-bio via University of St. Thomas, Houston
Today’s poem comes from Rilke and has a fairly straight-forward title–or does it?
Today’s poem from Ben Jonson (also know by its first line, “Drink to me only with thine eyes”) has been arranged and set to music numerous times, and become so familiar that it is often recognizable even to those who no longer associate it with Jonson himself.
Jonson’s circle of admirers and friends, who called themselves the “Tribe of Ben,” met regularly at the Mermaid Tavern and later at the Devil’s Head. Among his followers were nobles such as the Duke and Duchess of Newcastle, as well as writers, including Robert Herrick, Richard Lovelace, Sir John Suckling, James Howell, and Thomas Carew. Most of his well-known poems include tributes to friends, notably Shakespeare, John Donne, and Francis Bacon.
When Jonson died in 1637, a tremendous crowd of mourners attended his burial at Westminster Abbey. He is regarded as one of the major dramatists and poets of the seventeenth century.
-bio via Academy of American Poets
Today’s poem from Pablo Neruda is characteristic of the passionate Chilean’s emphatic love poetry, but more chaste and decorous than some of his verses–perfect for a day that somehow manages to celebrate romance and the beheading of an Italian saint simultaneously.
Today’s poem comes from a young John Donne. Long before he became a serious clergyman writing Holy Sonnets for God, he was a young rake writing saucy sophistries like this one for the ladies.
Today’s poems kick off a week of love poetry with two by the Master.
William Cullen Bryant (1794-1878) was a Fireside Poet, journalist, and nature writer with ties to the Hudson River School of art. He wrote poems, essays, and articles that championed the rights of slaves, workers, and immigrants, and he was frequently published by the North American Review. He is the author of several books, including The White-Footed Deer and Other Poems (I. S. Platt, 1844), and The Fountain and Other Poems (Wiley and Putnam, 1842).
-bio via Academy of American Poets
Today’s poem is a rare departure for Elizabeth Bishop who usually avoided a confessional style of poetry–but everybody gets a little introspective on their birthday.
Tracy K. Smith was born in Massachusetts and raised in northern California. She earned a BA from Harvard University and an MFA in creative writing from Columbia University. From 1997 to 1999 she held a Stegner fellowship at Stanford University. Smith is the author of four books of poetry: The Body's Question (2003), which won the Cave Canem prize for the best first book by an African-American poet; Duende (2007), winner of the James Laughlin Award and the Essense Literary Award; Life on Mars (2011), winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry; and Wade in the Water (2018). In 2014 she was awarded the Academy of American Poets fellowship. She has also written a memoir, Ordinary Light(2015), which was a finalist for the National Book Award in nonfiction.In June 2017, Smith was named U.S. poet laureate. She teaches at Harvard University, where she is a professor of English and of African and African American Studies and the Susan S. and Kenneth L. Wallach Professor at the Harvard Radcliffe Institute. She also hosted American Public Media's daily radio program and podcast The Slowdown, which is sponsored by the Poetry Foundation.
-bio via Poetry Foundation
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