The Daily Poem

ekphrasis: “Description” in Greek. An ekphrastic poem is a vivid description of a scene or, more commonly, a work of art. Through the imaginative act of narrating and reflecting on the “action” of a painting or sculpture, the poet may amplify and expand its meaning.

Once internationally famous as the author of the poem "The Man with the Hoe," Edwin Markham (1852-1940) was a popular American literary figure during the first half of the 20th century whose works espoused progressive social and spiritual beliefs. In contrast to the experimentalism and pessimism that generally characterized poetry of this era, Markham's quatrains, sonnets, and heroic verse celebrate peace, love, and socialist utopian reform. In a 1902 essay in the Comrade, Leonard D. Abbot proclaimed that "Markham, more than any other poet in the English language, can claim the honor of being the Bard of Labor—the true product of the last great movement that is destined to shake the world."In 1876 Markham abandoned the Methodist faith of his childhood and became a follower of the spiritualist and utopian socialist Thomas Lake Harris. Harris's doctrine, which espoused social harmony and universal charity, became a major force in Markham's life. Markham had begun writing poetry as early as 1872, but he did not sell his first poem until 1880. For the next 19 years, he contributed poems to Harper's, Century, and Scribner's, and cultivated friendships with such eminent American literary figures as Edmund Clarence Stedman, Hamlin Garland, and Ambrose Bierce.During the last week of December 1898, Markham completed a poem that changed his career overnight. Titled "The Man with the Hoe," the poem was based on the painting of the same name by the French artist Jean-Francois Millet in 1862. Millet's painting depicts a stooping peasant with a brutish expression on his face, who in Markham's poem becomes the embodiment of the suffering of oppressed labor throughout world history. Markham read the poem to an editor of William Randolph Hearst's San Francisco Examiner at a New Years' Eve party, and that newspaper published the work two weeks later."The Man with the Hoe" attracted wide public notice and was reprinted in newspapers across the United States. Its appeal for better treatment of the working class became the subject of national debate and launched Markham's career as a poet, transforming him into a national celebrity. Markham enjoyed this immense public prestige until his death in 1940.Markham's poetry is characterized by its highly rhetorical nature and expresses his advocacy of social reform, as well as his desire for the unity of humankind through spiritual faith. "The Man with the Hoe," as well as his subsequent poetry, was hotly debated by critics. William Jennings Bryan wrote: "There is a majestic sweep to the argument; some of the lines pierce like arrows," while Ambrose Bierce railed: "As a literary conception it has not the vitality of a dead fish. It will not carry a poem of whatever excellence otherwise through two generations." Although Markham's first collection of poetry, The Man with the Hoe, and Other Poems, was subject to the same controversy, critics generally viewed Markham as a poet of much promise. With each successive collection, however, he encountered disfavor with critics. When Gates of Paradise, and Other Poems was published in 1920, Herbert S. Gorman wrote, "Markham became a poet when he wrote 'The Man with the Hoe' and when he penned the last line he ceased to be a poet." Nevertheless, Markham always remained popular with readers, and his distinguished appearance—tall, ruggedly featured, and bearded—impressed many people as the ideal of a great American poet.In 1922, Markham, on invitation from former president William Howard Taft, read his poem "Lincoln, the Man of the People" at the dedication of the Lincoln Memorial; in 1932, on the occasion of Markham's 80th birthday, he was regaled at New York's Carnegie Hall, a celebration to which 35 nations sent representatives. Despite the decline in his reputation after his death, among scholars Markham remains an important figure in American poetry of the early 20th century. "At a time when protest counted, Markham's first triumph, 'The Man with the Hoe,' helped awaken the conscience of the American people," observed Joseph W. Slade in the Dictionary of Literary Biography. "Markham elevated socialism, naive as it was, into sublimity. If 'The Man with the Hoe' represents Markham on a soapbox, critic Benjamin De Casseres has written, the 'that soapbox is a star.'"

-bio via Poetry Foundation

Today’s poem is in honor of April being (according to now-outdated tradition) the last prudent month till Autumn in which to eat oysters. Happy reading!

Self-effacing, yet having an expressive critical ability; reveling in the possibilities of fancy, though thoroughly at home with the sophisticated nuances of logic and mathematics, Lewis Carroll (Charles Lutwidge Dodgson) was an individual who, through his rare and diversified literary gifts and power of communication, left an indelible mark upon the imaginations of children and adults both during his generation and in generations to come. His best-known works, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865) and Through the Looking-Glass, And What Alice Found There (1872) are still enjoyed by readers throughout the world and have been adapted for radio, television, and motion pictures.

-bio via Poetry Foundation

West Indian poet and playwright Derek Walcott made his debut as an 18-year-old with In a Green Night. For many years he divided his time among Saint Lucia; Boston University, where he taught; and Trinidad, where he managed a theater. Walcott also worked as an artist and combined his poetry with painting in the volume Tiepolo’s Hound (2005).

Walcott’s works often deal with Caribbean history, while he simultaneous searches for vestiges of the colonial era. Western literary canon is revised and given a completely new form, as in the poetry collection Omeros (1990). In his writing Walcott explores the complexity of living and working in two cultures.

-bio via Nobel Foundation

In today’s poem: George Herbert meditating on the simple profundity of a single, sustained metaphor. Happy reading.

Today’s poem–a layered, jokingly-serious response to one of last week’s–comes from Ogden Nash, dubbed the ‘Laurate of Light Verse.’ Which banner would you rally under–Nash or Byron?

One of the most widely appreciated and imitated writers of light verse, Frediric Ogden Nash was born in Rye, New York, on August 19, 1902, to Edmund Strudwick and Mattie Nash. He came from a distinguished family; the city of Nashville, Tennessee, was named in honor of one of his forbearers. Nash attended Harvard College, but dropped out after only one year. He worked briefly on Wall Street, and as a schoolteacher, before becoming a copywriter. In 1925, he took a job in the marketing department with the publishing house Doubleday.

Nash's first published poems began to appear in the New Yorker around 1930. His first collection of poems, Hard Lines (Simon & Schuster), was published in 1931. The book was a tremendous success; it went into seven printings in its first year alone, and Nash quit his job with Doubleday. That same year, he married Frances Rider Leonard; they had two children. Nash worked briefly for the New Yorker in 1932, before deciding to devote himself full-time to his verse.

Nash considered himself a "worsifier." Among his best known lines are "Candy / Is dandy, / But liquor / Is quicker" and "If called by a panther / Don't anther." His poems also had an intensely anti-establishment quality that resounded with many Americans, particularly during the Depression. Nash was a keen observer of American social life, and frequently mocked religious moralizing and conservative politicians. His work is often compared with other satirists of the time, including Dorothy Parker, Robert Benchley, and H. L. Mencken. He appeared regularly on radio and on television, and he drew huge audiences for his readings and lectures.

Nash was also the author of three screenplays for MGM, and with S. J. Perelmen, he wrote the 1943 Broadway hit One Touch of Venus. In the 1950s, Nash focused on writing poems for children, including the collection Girls Are Silly (Franklin Watts, 1962). He died on May 19, 1971.

-bio via Academy of American Poets

A joyous Eastertide and happy reading to you all!

Due to the inconsistencies and ambiguities within his work and the scarcity of information about his personal life, Andrew Marvell has been a source of fascination for scholars and readers since his work found recognition in the early decades of the twentieth century. Born on March 31, 1621, Marvell grew up in the Yorkshire town of Hull, England, where his father, Rev. Andrew Marvell, was a lecturer at Holy Trinity Church and master of the Charterhouse. At age twelve Marvell began his studies at Trinity College, Cambridge. Four years later, two of Marvell’s poems, one in Latin and one in Greek, were published in an anthology of Cambridge poets. After receiving his bachelor’s degree in 1639, Marvell stayed on at Trinity, apparently to complete a master’s degree. In 1641, however, his father drowned in the Hull estuary and Marvell abandoned his studies. During the 1640s Marvell traveled extensively on the continent, adding Dutch, French, Spanish, and Italian to his Latin and Greek—missing the English Civil Wars entirely.

Marvell spent most of the 1650s working as a tutor, first for Mary Fairfax, daughter of a retired Cromwellian general, then for one of Oliver Cromwell’s wards. Scholars believe that Marvell’s greatest lyrics were written during this time. In 1657, due to John Milton’s efforts on his behalf, Marvell was appointed Milton’s Latin secretary, a post Marvell held until his election to Parliament in 1660.

A well-known politician, Marvell held office in Cromwell’s government and represented Hull to Parliament during the Restoration. His very public position—in a time of tremendous political turmoil and upheaval—almost certainly led Marvell away from publication. No faction escaped Marvell’s satirical eye; he criticized and lampooned both the court and Parliament. Indeed, had they been published during his lifetime, many of Marvell's more famous poems—in particular, “Tom May's Death,” an attack on the famous Cromwellian—would have made him rather unpopular with royalists and republicans alike.

Marvell used his political status to free Milton, who was jailed during the Restoration, and quite possibly saved the elder poet’s life. In the early years of his tenure, Marvell made two extraordinary diplomatic journeys: to Holland (1662–63) and to Russia, Sweden, and Denmark (1663–65). In 1678, after eighteen years in Parliament, Marvell died rather suddenly of a fever. Gossip from the time suggested that the Jesuits (a target of Marvell’s satire) had poisoned him. After his death, he was remembered as a fierce and loyal patriot.

Now considered one of the greatest poets of the seventeenth century, Marvell published very little of his scathing political satire and complex lyric verse in his lifetime. Although he published a handful of poems in anthologies, a collection of his work did not appear until 1681, three years after his death, when his nephew compiled and found a publisher for Miscellaneous Poems. The circumstances surrounding the publication of the volume aroused some suspicion: a person named “Mary Marvell,” who claimed to be Marvell’s wife, wrote the preface to the book. “Mary Marvell” was, in fact, Mary Palmer—Marvell’s housekeeper—who posed as Marvell’s wife, apparently, in order to keep Marvell’s small estate from the creditors of his business partners. Her ruse, of course, merely contributes to the mystery that surrounds the life of this great poet.

Andrew Marvell died on August 16, 1678.

-bio via Academy of American Poets

English peer and poet George Gordon Byron was one of the bad boys of the Romantic movement and, by some accounts, the first ‘celebrity.’ Like countless celebrities who would come after, he was embroiled in a number of romantic scandals and never accused of being overly pious (to put it Britishly). Nevertheless, he was moved by a number of stories from the Hebrew scriptures–a response that inspired him to pen an entire collection of poetry and one of the best-known similes in English poetry.

Poet, editor, translator, and critic Louis Simpson was born in Jamaica to Scottish and Russian parents. He moved to the United States when he was 17 to study at Columbia University. After his time in the army, and a brief period in France, Simpson worked as an editor in New York City before completing his PhD at Columbia. He taught at colleges such as Columbia University, the University of California, Berkeley, and the State University of New York at Stony Brook.

A contemporary of confessional poets like Robert Lowell, John Berryman, and Sylvia Plath, Simpson’s early work followed a familiar arc. In the New York Times Book Review, critic David Orr noted its highlights: “Simpson has followed a path lined with signposts sunk so deep in our nation's poetic terra firma that they've practically become part of the landscape. Those signposts declare that a poet born in or around the 1920s should (1) begin his career writing witty, ironic formal poems bearing the stamp of Eliot and Auden; then (2) abandon that formalism for a more 'natural' free verse approach, while (3) dabbling in surrealism; until (4) finally settling on social, conversational poems in the manner of a man speaking to men.” While Simpson’s early books like The Arrivistes (1949) and A Dream of Governors (1959) show the influence of Auden, they also speak to his horrific experiences in World War II, where he served in the 101st Airborne Division and saw active duty in France, Belgium, and Germany. Simpson’s intense formal control, at odds with the visceral details of soldiering, also earned him comparisons to Wilfred Owen. At the End of the Open Road (1963) won the Pulitzer Prize and marked a shift in Simpson’s poetry as well. In this and later volumes, like Searching for the Ox (1976) and The Best Hour of the Night (1983), Simpson’s simple diction and formally controlled verses reveal hidden layers of meaning.

Simpson’s lifelong expatriate status influenced his poetry, and he often uses the lives of ordinary Americans in order to critically investigate the myths the country tells itself. Though he occasionally revisits the West Indies of his childhood, he always keeps one foot in his adopted country. The outsider’s perspective allows him to confront “the terror and beauty of life with a wry sense of humor and a mysterious sense of fate,” wrote Edward Hirsch of the Washington Post. Elsewhere Hirsch described Simpson’s Pulitzer Prize-winning collection, At the End of the Open Road (1963), as “a sustained meditation on the American character,” noting, “The moral genius of this book is that it traverses the open road of American mythology and brings us back to ourselves; it sees us not as we wish to be but as we are.” Collected Poems (1988) and There You Are (1995) focus on the lives of everyday citizens, using simple diction and narratives to expose the bewildering reality of the American dream. Poet Mark Jarman hailed Simpson as “a poet of the American character and vernacular.”

A noted scholar and critic, Simpson published a number of literary studies, including Ships Going Into the Blue: Essays and Notes on Poetry (1994), The Character of the Poet (1986), and Three on the Tower: The Lives and Works of Ezra Pound, T.S. Eliot, and William Carlos Williams (1975). Simpson also penned a novel, Riverside Drive (1962), and the autobiographies The King My Father's Wreck (1994) and North of Jamaica (1972).

Simpson’s later work included The Owner of the House: New Collected Poems (2003), a collection that spans his 60-year career, and Struggling Times (2009). In addition to the Pulitzer Prize, Simpson received numerous awards and accolades, including the Prix de Rome, the Columbia Medal for Excellence, and fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation. He was a finalist for the prestigious Griffin International Poetry Award, and his translation of Modern Poets of France: A Bilingual Anthology (1997) won the Harold Morton Landon Translation Award.

Simposon died in Setauket, New York in 2012.

-bio via Poetry Foundation

Alfred Edward Housman was born in Fockbury, Worcestershire, England on March 26, 1859 and was the eldest of seven children. A year after his birth, Housman’s family moved to nearby Bromsgrove, where the poet grew up and had his early education. In 1877, he attended St. John’s College, Oxford and received first class honours in classical moderations.

Housman became distracted, however, when he fell in love with his roommate, Moses Jackson. He unexpectedly failed his final exams, but managed to pass the final year and later took a position as clerk in the Patent Office in London for ten years.

During this time, Housman studied Greek and Roman classics intensively, and, in 1892, he was appointed professor of Latin at University College, London. In 1911, he became professor of Latin at Trinity College, Cambridge, a post he held until his death. As a classicist, Housman gained renown for his editions of the Roman poets Juvenal, Lucan, and Manilius, as well as his meticulous and intelligent commentaries, and his disdain for the unscholarly.

Housman only published two volumes of poetry during his life: A Shropshire Lad (1896) and Last Poems (1922). The majority of the poems in A Shropshire Lad, his cycle of sixty-three poems, were written after the death of Adalbert Jackson, Housman’s friend and companion, in 1892. These poems center around themes of pastoral beauty, unrequited love, fleeting youth, grief, death, and the patriotism of the common soldier. After the manuscript had been turned down by several publishers, Housman decided to publish it at his own expense, much to the surprise of his colleagues and students.

While A Shropshire Lad was slow to gain in popularity, the advent of war, first in the Boer War and then in World War I, gave the book widespread appeal due to its nostalgic depiction of brave English soldiers. Several composers created musical settings for Housman’s work, deepening his popularity.

Housman continued to focus on his teaching, but in the early 1920s, when his old friend Moses Jackson was dying, Housman chose to assemble his best unpublished poems so that Jackson might read them. These later poems, most of them written before 1910, exhibit a range of subject and form much greater than the talents displayed in A Shropshire Lad. When Last Poems was published in 1922, it was an immediate success. A third volume, More Poems, was released posthumously in 1936 by his brother, Laurence, as was an edition of Housman’s Complete Poems (1939).

Despite receiving acclaim as a scholar and a poet during his lifetime, Housman lived as a recluse, rejecting honors and avoiding the public eye. He died on April 30, 1936 in Cambridge.

-bio via Academy of American Poets