Sep 23 2025
Born on September 23, 1901, Jaroslav Seifert lived through nearly the entire turbulent history of twentieth-century Czechoslovakia while remaining, above all else, a lyric poet. Revolutions changed governments around him, armies occupied his country, political movements he had once supported hardened into systems he later opposed, and censorship repeatedly affected his ability to publish. Yet …
Sep 22 2025
Alice Meynell belonged to the late Victorian literary world, but there is something strikingly modern about the quiet precision of her writing. She was a poet, essayist, critic, journalist, editor, Catholic intellectual, mother, and advocate for women’s suffrage whose work rarely depended upon grand gestures. Instead, she paid attention to pauses, fleeting impressions, changes of …
Sep 21 2025
Born in Seville on September 21, 1902, Luis Cernuda became one of the most distinctive voices of Spain’s Generation of ’27, a poet whose work continually circles the distance between the life we desire and the reality we are given. Love, beauty, loneliness, homosexuality, social judgment, exile, memory, Spain, youth, aging, and the longing for …
Sep 20 2025
Donald Hall spent much of his life returning. He returned to poems again and again until every unnecessary word had been tested. He returned in memory to the New Hampshire farm where he had spent summers as a boy. He returned to the people he loved after they were gone, writing about fathers, grandparents, friends, …
Sep 19 2025
Born on September 19, 1894, Rachel Field built a remarkably varied literary career in a life that lasted less than half a century. She wrote children’s novels, poetry, plays, adult fiction, lyrics, fairy tales, and stories, moving comfortably between audiences without treating one kind of writing as more worthy than another. She could imagine a …
May 12 2024
Mother’s Day often inspires us to look for words that feel more meaningful than a greeting card. Poetry can do that beautifully. A few lines can capture gratitude, childhood memories, grief, admiration, tenderness, and the complicated bond between mothers and children in ways ordinary conversation sometimes cannot. Poets have been writing about mothers for centuries, …
Sep 22 2022
For the Chipmunk in My Yard I think he knows I’m alive, having come downThe three steps of the back porchAnd given me a good once over. All afternoonHe’s been moving back and forth,Gathering odd bits of walnut shells and twigs,While all about him the great fields tumbleTo the blades of the thresher. He’s luckyTo …
Aug 17 2022
Illustrator and author Ian Beck was born on this day August 17, 1947 in Brighton, England. “Few sounds were to be heard at that early hour, only the drone of the airship’s engines and the mournful mournful moans of the foghorns, which seemed almost to be searching for one another, somewhere along the silvered and …
Jul 02 2022
Morningside Heights, July Haze. Three student violists boardinga bus. A clatter of jackhammers.Granular light. A film of sweat for primerand the heat for a coat of paint.A man and a woman on a bench:she tells him he must be psychic,for how else could he sense, even before she knew,that she’d need to call it off? …
Jun 29 2022
Our planet’s lush tropics cover 40% of the land, and account for approximately 80% of Earth’s biodiversity, yet it is under constant threat from human activity and climate change. Today is International Day of the Tropics, which was created as a reminder to appreciate and respect our rich, tropical lands. Here is a poem by …
