Shakespeare's "If I be not ashamed of my...

Today’s poem is all about the correlation between the elaborate architecture of a lie and the pleasure that telling it can give. Maybe an allegory for art? Maybe a playful confession? Maybe a political commentary? Happy reading. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss ... Show More

Today’s poem is about the strange whys and ways of trying to endure in this world. Happy reading. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit dailypoempod.substack.com/subscribe 

Today’s poem is an open-ended sonnet-versation (sonnet conversation) between youth and experience–with the rarer twist that the dynamic is here presented in the context of a potential romance. Happy reading. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subsc ... Show More

Brian Glavey joins Close Readings to talk about one of the great love poems of the twentieth century, Frank O'Hara's "Having a Coke with You." Check out Brian's recent article on the poem in PMLA and his first book, The Wallflower Avant-Garde (Oxford UP, 2016). Follow Brian on Tw ... Show More

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is one of the most popular English poems of the Middle Ages. In this episode, we explore the language and story of the poem. We also examine how the poem reflects certain changes that were taking place within the English language in the late 1300s. ... Show More

We ask questions to find out the facts, but what if you can’t trust the answers, the questions, or the person who's asking the questions? In Constantine P. Cavafy’s “Waiting for the Barbarians,” translated by Evan Jones, leaders exercise a sinister kind of violence — they’ve take ... Show More

Dave Morrell is a Kimberley icon. In addition to being a brilliant veterinarian, Dave is a brilliant bush poet. He recently released his first, and long awaited book, titled Johnny James and other verses. In this short episode he recites the poem "Walmajarrie Jimmy". See omnystud ... Show More

‘Goblin Market’ was the title poem of Christina Rossetti’s first collection, published in 1862, and while she disclaimed any allegorical purpose in it, modern readers have found it hard to resist political interpretations. The poem’s most obvious preoccupation seems to be the Vic ... Show More

Situated on the cusp of the Romantic era, Thomas Gray’s work is a mixture of impersonal Augustan abstraction and intense subjectivity. ‘Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard’ is one of the most famous poems in the English language, and continues to exert its influence on contempo ... Show More

A haunting, haunted poem for us today: Beci Carver joins the podcast to discuss Thomas Hardy's poem for his late wife, "The Voice."Beci is a lecturer in 20th-century literature at University of Exeter and the author of Granular Modernism (Oxford UP, 2014). Her articles have appea ... Show More

Theaters were an important part of cultural life in Elizabethan England, and they contributed many words to the English language. Those words joined thousands of other words that were pouring into English from around the world. In this episode, we look at how distant cultures wer ... Show More