The Daily Poem

In today’s poem, Shakespeare puts the theatre in political theater via a candid moment with the future King Henry V in Henry IV pt. 1, Act 1, Scene 2. Happy reading!

Today’s poem is a short meditation on grief made enduringly-famous after Orlando Gibbons set it to music. You can hear an arrangement of that piece here. Happy reading.

Today’s poem goes out to 6-year-od girls and their dads. Happy reading!

In today’s poem, a young Tennyson begins the long wrestling with grief.

Today’s poem may or may not be based on actual events. Happy reading!

In the latter years of his career and life, Donald Hall became something of an expert on growing old (his essay collections Essays After Eighty and A Carnival of Losses: Notes Nearing Ninety are a breathtaking dissertation on the subject), and in today’s poem we get a glimpse of his early apprenticeship in the art. Happy reading.

In today’s poem, better is a dinner of herbs where love and memory are, than great riches. Happy reading.

Today’s poem is channeling Anne Shirley in the autumn of her years. Happy reading.

Today’s poem takes full advantage of the pantoum form’s naturally-contemplative structure–the repeating lines carrying us back and forth between past, present, and an undetermined future. Happy reading.

In today’s poem, Kenyon wrestles with the Solomonic thesis that “the end of a thing is better than its beginning.” Happy reading.