The Daily Poem

Today’s poem contemplates the ways and “why”s of saying nothing, before culminating in a shattering pun on “nothing.” Happy reading.

Today’s poem began its life as a bit of black humor, but lives on as a raw and relatable expression of real grief. Happy reading.

Today’s poem juxtaposes scenes of summer warmth to scenes of torrential bluster with a seamlessness that would make the best film editor jealous. Happy reading.

Today’s poem captures the agonies and ecstacies of thinking about the absent beloved. Happy reading.

Today’s poem employs an image worthy of Homer to touch the stark reality of a mother’s intuition. Happy reading.

Today’s poem is a selection from the Old English, Beowulf, translated by R. M. Liuzza. In these lines, Beowulf prepares for a harrowing showdown with Grendel’s mother, and the cold, clear beauty of the lines almost makes you wish you were there. Happy reading.

Today’s poem answers the question: if cats are the animal world’s “Napoleon of crime,” who is the cat world’s “Napoleon of crime?” Happy reading.

Today’s poem comes from Graves’ verse/prose rendering of Homer’s Iliad, The Anger of Achilles, and highlights the inglorious causes of the Trojan War’s glorious climax. Happy reading.

Today’s poem is a sonnet for a war-torn world with a collapsing center.

“…As the oldest of four children born in rapid succession, Wilfred developed a protective attitude toward the others and an especially close relationship with his mother. After he turned four, the family moved from the grandfather’s home to a modest house in Birkenhead, where Owen attended Birkenhead Institute from 1900 to 1907. The family then moved to another modest house, in Shrewsbury, where Owen attended Shrewsbury Technical School and graduated in 1911 at the age of 18. Having attempted unsuccessfully to win a scholarship to attend London University, he tried to measure his aptitude for a religious vocation by becoming an unpaid lay assistant to the Reverend Herbert Wigan, a vicar of evangelical inclinations in the Church of England, at Dunsden, Oxfordshire. In return for the tutorial instruction he was to receive, but which did not significantly materialize, Owen agreed to assist with the care of the poor and sick in the parish and to decide within two years whether he should commit himself to further training as a clergyman. At Dunsden he achieved a fuller understanding of social and economic issues and developed his humanitarian propensities, but as a consequence of this heightened sensitivity, he became disillusioned with the inadequate response of the Church of England to the sufferings of the underprivileged and the dispossessed. In his spare time, he read widely and began to write poetry. In his initial verses he wrote on the conventional subjects of the time, but his work also manifested some stylistic qualities that even then tended to set him apart, especially his keen ear for sound and his instinct for the modulating of rhythm, talents related perhaps to the musical ability that he shared with both of his parents.

In 1913 he returned home, seriously ill with a respiratory infection that his living in a damp, unheated room at the vicarage had exacerbated. He talked of poetry, music, or graphic art as possible vocational choices, but his father urged him to seek employment that would result in a steady income. After eight months of convalescence at home, Owen taught for one year in Bordeaux at the Berlitz School of Languages, and he spent a second year in France with a Catholic family, tutoring their two boys. As a result of these experiences, he became a Francophile. Later these years undoubtedly heightened his sense of the degree to which the war disrupted the life of the French populace and caused widespread suffering among civilians as the Allies pursued the retreating Germans through French villages in the summer and fall of 1918.

In September 1915, nearly a year after the United Kingdom and Germany had gone to war, Owen returned to England, uncertain as to whether he should enlist. By October he had enlisted and was at first in the Artists’ Rifles. In June 1916 he received a commission as lieutenant in the Manchester Regiment, and on December 29, 1916 he left for France with the Lancashire Fusiliers.”

-via Poetry Foundation

Today’s poem goes out to all of the women who have been stuck between two pugilistic men at a dinner party. Happy reading.