The Daily Poem

From a New York Times obituary of Oliver Herford (1860-1935): "His wit…was too original at first to go down with the very delectable highly respectable magazine editors of the Nineties. It was odd, unexpected, his own brand. It takes genius to write the best nonsense, which is often far more sensible than sense. Herford's, the result of care and polish, looked unforced.…Intelligent, thoughtful, well-bred, what with his animals and his children and his artistic simplicities, he was remote from the style of the best moderns. No violence, no obscenity, not even obscurity or that long-windedness which is the signet of the illustrious writer of today. An old-fashioned gentleman, a painstaking artist, whose work had edge, grace and distinction.”

Today’s poem is a good reminder about noblesse obliges. Happy reading!

Today’s poem might be a perfect companion to a bedtime-reading of Where the Wild Things Are on a balmy summer evening.

Today’s poem is another from Belloc–one of his Cautionary Tales for Children just in time for the beginning of a quiet summer (maybe?).

Today’s poem is a series of increasingly vital pleas. Happy reading.

For more of Belloc’s advice to the young, find yourself a copy of Cautionary Tales for Children!

Today we’re feeling out a Saturday bonus episode featuring a reading of “Morituri Salutamus” in its entirety. Happy reading!

Today’s episode features selections from Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s fifty-year retrospective on his own graduation, the lengthy speech-in-verse, “Morituri Salutamus: Poem for the Fiftieth Anniversary of the Class of 1825 in Bowdoin College.” Come back tomorrow to hear the poem in full. Happy reading!

Today’s poem from Christina Rossetti is not about high school or college, but it might still be about graduation. Happy reading!

Konstantinos Petrou Kavafis, known, especially in English, as Constantine P. Cavafy and often published as C. P. Cavafy, was a Greek poet, journalist, and civil servant from Alexandria. A major figure of modern Greek literature, he is sometimes considered the most distinguished Greek poet of the 20th century.

-bio via Wikipedia

Matthew Zapruder is the author of six collections of poetry, most recently I Love Hearing Your Dreams, forthcoming from Scribner in September 2024, as well as two books of prose: Why Poetry (Ecco, 2017) and Story of a Poem (Unnamed, 2023). He is editor at large at Wave Books, where he edits contemporary poetry, prose, and translations. From 2016-7 he held the annually rotating position of Editor of the Poetry Column for the New York Times Magazine, and was the Editor of Best American Poetry 2022. He teaches in the MFA in Creative Writing at Saint Mary’s College of California.

-bio via the poet’s website