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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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
Merry Christmas from The Daily Poem!
Today’s poem is T. S. Eliot’s unconventional look at the very familiar story of the Three Wise Men.
Today’s poem is a familiar favorite, just right for the “darkest evening of the year.”
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
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
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
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
"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
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!
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