Today’s poem grows on you. Happy reading.

David Wojahn grew up in St. Paul, Minnesota. He studied at the University of Minnesota and the University of Arizona. Ever since his first collection, Icehouse Lights, was chosen for the Yale Series of Younger Poets award in 1981, Wojahn has been one of American poetry’s most thoughtful examiners of culture and memory. His work often investigates how history plays out in the lives of individuals, and poet Tom Sleigh says that his poems “meld the political and personal in a way that is unparalleled by any living American poet.”

Wojahn’s book World Tree (2011) received the Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize from the Academy of American Poets. His collection Interrogation Palace: New and Selected Poems 1982–2004 (2006), which Peter Campion called “superb” and “panoramic” in a review for Poetry, showcases Wojahn’s formal range, the scope of his personal narratives, and his intense, imaginative monologues and character sketches, such as his sonnets on pop culture icons and rock-and-roll musicians in Mystery Train (1990). He is also celebrated for the emotional resonance of his poetry—the ability to, in the words of poet Jean Valentine, “follow … tragedy to its grave depths, with dignity and unsparingness, and egolessness.”

In addition to his books of poetry, Wojahn is the author of From the Valley of Making: Essays on the Craft of Poetry (2015) and Strange Good Fortune (2001), a collection of essays on contemporary poetry. He coedited A Profile of Twentieth Century American Poetry (1991), and edited a posthumous collection of his wife Lynda Hull’s poetry, The Only World (1995).

Wojahn has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, the Illinois Arts Council, and the Indiana Arts Commission. He teaches poetry at Virginia Commonwealth University and in the low residency MFA in Writing program at the Vermont College of Fine Arts.

-bio via Poetry Foundation

A little light verse for anyone who wants to rise (far) above the noise for a moment. Happy reading.

Bert Leston Taylor (November 13, 1866 – March 19, 1921) was an American columnist, humorist, poet, and author.

Bert Leston Taylor became a journalist at seventeen, a librettist at twenty-one, and a successfully published author at thirty-five. At the height of his literary career, he was a central literary figure of the early 20th century Chicago renaissance as well as one of the most celebrated columnists in the United States.

-bio via Wikipedia

Death has been personified and analogized in myriad ways, but none perhaps so withering as today’s imagining of death as a fascist bureaucrat. Happy reading.

Jeanne Murray Walker was born in a village of 900 people in northern Minnesota. She was first published by The Atlantic Monthly at age 19. Today she’s the prize-winning author of nine books of poetry. Jeanne serves as a Mentor in the Seattle Pacific University low residency MFA Program and travels widely to give readings and workshops.

-bio via Paraclete Press

Today’s poem is a comical maxim that typifies the heavy lifting light verse is capable of. Happy reading.

Poet Timothy Murphy was born in Hibbing, Minnesota, and graduated from Yale University, where he participated in the Scholar of the House program. He was a partner in a large-scale hog farm and a businessperson. His books include the poetry collections The Deed of Gift (1998), Very Far North (2002), Mortal Stakes • Faint Thunder (2011), Hunter's Log (2011), and Devotions (2017) as well as a memoir, Set the Ploughshare Deep: A Prairie Memoir (2000). He has also translated Beowulf. Though hunting and farming are essential subjects for his writing, myths and legends influence his work as well. He passed away in June 2018.

-bio via Poetry Foundation

Today’s poem has become one of the most famous 20th-century war poems–in part because of its ability to grant fallen soldiers a voice that is earnestly patriotic without becoming jingoistic. Perhaps the balance is a reflection of the steadiness of the Canadian veteran who penned it. Happy reading.

Today’s poem is a Heaney favorite, and goes out to all of the couples tying the knot this summer. Happy reading!

The uniting, in today’s poem, of Spring and sadness is not immediately intuitive. However, it makes more natural sense amidst the many partings and reminiscences of graduation season. Happy reading.