Today’s poem is the best-remembered work of the beloved “nonsense poet” Edward Lear–a silly lyric about a serious love. The episode also features a few guest readers. Happy reading.

Edward Lear, the British poet and painter known for his absurd wit, was born on May 12, 1812, in Highgate, England, a suburb of London, and began his career as an artist at age fifteen. His father, a stockbroker of Danish origin, was sent to debtor’s prison when Lear was thirteen, forcing the young Lear to earn a living. Lear quickly gained recognition for his work and, in 1832, was hired by the London Zoological Society to execute illustrations of birds. In the same year, the Earl of Derby invited him to reside at his estate; Lear ended up staying until 1836.

Lear’s first book of poems, A Book of Nonsense (Routledge, Warne, and Routledge, 1846) was composed for the grandchildren of the Derby household. Around 1836, Lear decided to devote himself exclusively to landscape painting, although he continued to compose light verse. Between 1837 and 1847, Lear traveled extensively throughout Europe and Asia.

After his return to England, Lear’s travel journals were published in several volumes as The Illustrated Travels of a Landscape Painter. Popular and respected in his day, Lear’s travel books have largely been ignored in the twentieth century. Rather, Lear is remembered for his humorous poems, such as “The Owl and the Pussycat,” and as the creator of the form and meter of the modern limerick. Like his younger peer Lewis Carroll, Lear wrote many deeply fantastical poems about imaginary creatures, such as “The Dong with the Luminous Nose.” His books of humorous verse also include Nonsense Songs, Stories, Botany, and Alphabets (James R. Osgood and Company, 1871) and Laughable Lyrics: a Fourth Book of Nonsense Poems, Songs, Botany, Music, &c.(Robert John Bush, 1877).

Edward Lear died on January 29, 1888, in San Remo, Italy, at the age of seventy-six.

-bio via Academy of American Poets

Today’s poem will leave you “knowing very well what it was all about.” Happy reading.

Gary Soto was born in Fresno, California on April 12, 1952, to working-class Mexican American parents. As a teenager and college student, he worked in the fields of the San Joaquin Valley, chopping beets and cotton and picking grapes. He was not academically motivated as a child, but he became interested in poetry during his high school years. He attended Fresno City College and California State University–Fresno, and he earned an MFA from the University of California–Irvine in 1976.His first collection of poems, The Elements of San Joaquin (University of Pittsburgh Press), won the United States Award of the International Poetry Forum in 1976 and was published in 1977. Since then, Soto has published numerous books of poetry, including You Kiss by th’ Book: New Poems from Shakespeare’s Line (Chronicle Books, 2016), A Simple Plan (Chronicle Books, 2007), and New and Selected Poems (Chronicle Books, 1995), which was a finalist for the National Book Award.Soto cites his major literary influences as Edward Field, Pablo Neruda, W. S. Merwin, Gabriel García Márquez, Christopher Durang, and E. V. Lucas. Of his work, the writer Joyce Carol Oates has said, “Gary Soto’s poems are fast, funny, heartening, and achingly believable, like Polaroid love letters, or snatches of music heard out of a passing car; patches of beauty like patches of sunlight; the very pulse of a life.”Soto has also written three novels, including Amnesia in a Republican County (University of New Mexico Press, 2003); a memoir, Living Up the Street (Strawberry Hill Press, 1985); and numerous young adult and children’s books. For the Los Angeles Opera, he wrote the libretto to Nerdlandia, an opera.Soto has received the Andrew Carnegie Medal and fellowships from the California Arts Council, the Guggenheim Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts. He lives in Northern California.

-bio via Academy of American Poets

Today’s poem is a meditation on speech in the voice of a president. Perfect for an obligatory federal holiday. Happy reading.

Today’s poem looks back on a lifetime of maturing love.

Today’s poem, reminiscent of yesterday’s “From a Railway Carriage,” was written by Auden for use in the 1936 documentary short film, Night Mail, and combines the powerful deep magics of locomotive travel and receiving letters. Bon voyage!

Today’s poem grew out of an elaborate game of make-believe between the Brontë siblings, and gives some idea of the mature verse that might have been if Anne had not died young. Happy(?) reading.

Anne Brontë (17 January 1820 – 28 May 1849) was an English novelist and poet, the youngest member of the Brontë literary family.

Anne Brontë was the daughter of Maria (néeBranwell) and Patrick Brontë, a poor Irish clergyman in the Church of England. Anne lived most of her life with her family at the parish of Haworth on the Yorkshire Dales. Otherwise, she attended a boarding school in Mirfield between 1836 and 1837, and between 1839 and 1845 lived elsewhere working as a governess. In 1846, she published a book of poems with her sisters and later two novels, initially under the pen name Acton Bell. Her first novel, Agnes Grey, was published in 1847 at the same time as Wuthering Heights by her sister Emily Brontë. Anne's second novel, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, was published in 1848. The Tenant of Wildfell Hall is often considered one of the first feminist novels.

Anne died at 29, most likely of pulmonary tuberculosis. After her death, her sister Charlotte edited Agnes Grey to fix issues with its first edition, but prevented republication of The Tenant of Wildfell Hall. As a result, Anne is not as well known as her sisters. Nonetheless, both of her novels are considered classics of English literature.

-bio via Wikipedia

Today’s poem is the final stanza of Tennyson’s “Ulysses,” in which the hero of the Trojan war persuades his aging compatriots to wring out the last of their energies in a quest for the ends of the earth–“to strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.” Happy reading.

Poet’s don’t typically compete for “coolest book cover,” and it’s probably because Zbigniew Herbert won years ago. Today’s poem is his tender look at poverty, pleasure, and irretrievable loss.

Zbigniew Herbert was born on October 29, 1924, in Poland in the city of Lvov, which is now a part of the Ukraine. His grandfather was an Englishman who settled in Lvov to teach English. His father, a former member of the Legions that had fought for restoration of Poland’s independence, was a bank manager. Herbert’s formal education began in Lvov and continued under German occupation in the form of clandestine study at the underground King John Casimir University, where he majored in Polish literature. He was a member of the underground resistance movement. In 1944, he moved to Krakow, and three years later he graduated from the University of Krakow with a master’s degree in economics. He also received a law degree from Nicholas Copernicus University in Torun and studied philosophy at the University of Warsaw under Henryk Elzenberg.

During the 1950s, Herbert worked at many low-paying jobs because he refused to write within the framework of official Communist guidelines. After widespread riots against Soviet control in 1956 brought about a political “thaw,” Herbert became an administrator at the Union of Polish Composers and published his first collection, Struna swiatla [The Chord of Light] (Czytelnik, 1956). The book immediately placed him among the most prominent representatives of the “Contemporaries” (young poets and writers associated with the weekly Contemporary Times).

In 1957, Herbert published his second collection of verse, Hermes, pies i gwiazda [Hermes, the Dog and the Star] (Czytelnik). Four years later, he published his third book of poems, Studium przedmiotu [Study of the Object] (Czytelnik, 1961). In 1968, his Selected Poems, translated into English by Czeslaw Milosz and Peter Dale Scott, was released in both the United States and England, making Herbert one of the most popular contemporary poets in the English-speaking world. In 1971, he released the first Polish edition of Selected Poems.

Herbert’s 1983 collection, Raport z oblezonego miasta i inne wiersze [Report from the Besieged City] (Instytut Literacki), dealt with the ethical problems Poland faced while under martial law. The book was issued simultaneously through an emigré publishing house and as an underground edition in Poland. He also published a number of essay collections and works of drama. In 1962, he released his famous work, Barbarzyńca wogrodzie [Barbarian in the Garden] (Czytelnik), which was eventually translated into numerous languages.

Herbert’s numerous awards include the Kościelski Foundation Prize, the Austrian Lenau Prize, the Alfred Jurzykowski Prize, the Herder Prize, the Petrarch Prize, the Bruno Schulz Prize, and the Jerusalem Prize for the Freedom of the Individual in Society.

Herbert was a coeditor of the poetry journal Poezja from 1965 to 1968 but resigned in protest of antisemitic policies. He traveled widely throughout the West and lived in Paris, Berlin, and the United States, where he taught briefly at the University of California, Los Angeles. He died in Warsaw on July 28, 1998.

-bio via Academy of American Poets

Today’s poem glides, settles, dances, waves, and soars its way through the unassuming comforts of the familiar. Happy reading.

Phyllis McGinley (March 21, 1905 – February 22, 1978) was an American author of children's books and poetry. Her poetry was in the style of light verse, specializing in humor, satiric tone and the positive aspects of suburban life. She won a Pulitzer Prize in 1961.

McGinley enjoyed a wide readership in her lifetime, publishing her work in newspapers and women's magazines such as the Ladies Home Journal, as well as in literary periodicals, including The New Yorker, The Saturday Review and The Atlantic. She also held nearly a dozen honorary degrees – "including one from the stronghold of strictly masculine pride, Dartmouth College" (from the dust jacket of Sixpence in Her Shoe (copy 1964)). Time Magazine featured McGinley on its cover on June 18, 1965.

-bio via Wikipedia