Best K E Walter Podcasts (2025)

1
William Cowper's "The Poplar Field" 3:39

2d ago3:39

3:39

“As for man, his days are like grass.” It isn’t much of a stretch, then, when Cowper sees his own mortality in a grove of felled poplars. Happy reading. William Cowper (1731-1800) was a renowned 18th century poet, hymnographer, and translator of Homer. His most famous works include his 5000-line poem ‘The Task’ and some charming and light-hearted v…

1
Larry K. Richman's "The Joys of House Wrecking" 4:33

5d ago4:33

4:33

“The work of destruction is quick, easy and exhilarating; the work of creation slow, laborious and dull.” -Roger Scruton Larry Richman (1934-2023) was born in Philadelphia and grew up on a small Bucks County chicken farm north of the city. He attended local schools and then Colorado College, where he was inducted into Phi Beta Kappa and graduated w…

1
Geoffrey Chaucer's "Prologue" to The Canterbury Tales" 5:37

7d ago5:37

5:37

Though J. R. R. Tolkien translated portions of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, he did not live to complete the project. Fortunately another Inkling, Nevill Coghill, succeeded where Tolkien could not, and produced the modernized verse-rendering that today’s selection comes from. Happy reading! This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with…

1
John Keats' "This Living Hand" 4:50

9d ago4:50

4:50

Today’s poem has a way of reaching out and grabbing you. 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/subscribeBy Sean Johnson

1
E. E. Cummings' "anyone lived in a pretty how town" 4:08

12d ago4:08

4:08

Today’s poem–in which men and women are the two halves of a bell’s tone–voices the rhythms and joys of life in an unconventional way that has to be heard and understood with the body before the mind. 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.subs…

1
Walter de la Mare's "Good-bye" 5:05

14d ago5:05

5:05

Today’s poem is about (not) getting the last word. Happy reading. Walter de la Mare, born on April 25, 1873 in London, is considered one of modern literature’s chief exemplars of the romantic imagination. His complete works form a sustained treatment of romantic themes: dreams, death, rare states of mind and emotion, fantasy worlds of childhood, an…

1
Scott Cairns' "Coracle" 3:36

15d ago3:36

3:36

Today’s poem places us on the frontier of new life. 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/subscribeBy Sean Johnson

1
T. S. Eliot’s “East Coker IV” 4:19

19d ago4:19

4:19

Today, the obligatory Good Friday poem (because it is excellent). 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/subscribeBy Sean Johnson

1
Carl Sandburg's "Buffalo Dusk" 5:09

21d ago5:09

5:09

In today’s poem, Sandburg’s ability to make the same two lines land so differently with so little happening in between is a remarkable feat. 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…

1
J. R. R. Tolkien's "When Spring Unfolds the Beechen Leaf" 5:18

23d ago5:18

5:18

Today’s poem is sometimes known as “Song of the Ent and the Entwife” because, though Tolkien tinkered with it for more than a decade, it did not take its final form until he decided to adapt it for inclusion in The Lord of the Rings. Happy reading! This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus…

1
Franz Wright's "The Raising of Lazarus" 6:22

26d ago6:22

6:22

Franz Wright was born in Vienna, Austria and grew up in the Northwest, the Midwest, and California. He earned a BA from Oberlin College in 1977. His collections of poetry include The Beforelife (2001); God’s Silence (2006); Walking to Martha’s Vineyard, which won the Pulitzer Prize in 2004; Wheeling Motel (2009); Kindertotenwald (2011); and F (2013…

1
Robert Browning's "Home Thoughts from Abroad" 7:26

28d ago7:26

7:26

Browning’s 1845 poem captures the affections of every transplant and ex-pat, conjuring the momentary return to a faraway home. 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/subscribeBy Sean Johnson

1
Mary Oliver's "Breakage" 5:33

30d ago5:33

5:33

Mondays go down easier with Mary Oliver. 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/subscribeBy Sean Johnson

1
Samuel Taylor Coleridge's "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" (selections) 8:32

1M ago8:32

8:32

Today’s selections are characteristic passages from (maybe) the greatest and (certainly) strangest poem in Lyrical Ballads–Coleridge’s Ancient Mariner. Happy reading. (Nota bene: If you are ready for your own copy of Lyrical Ballads, the Oxford World Classics edition is a great way to see the developments across early editions.) This is a public ep…

1
Samuel Taylor Coleridge's "The Dungeon" 4:50

1M ago4:50

4:50

While you can count on one hand the poems Coleridge contributed to Lyrical Ballads, they are some of the most memorable in the collection. Today’s poem uses an abstract description to conjure a very concrete social evil–the state of British prisons at the end of the long 18th century. Happy reading. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discus…

1
William Wordsworth's "Tintern Abbey" 12:41

1M ago12:41

12:41

We begin a week of selections from Lyrical Ballads with today’s nostalgic and pastoral poem, “Lines Written a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey, on Revisiting the Banks of the Wye during a Tour, July 13, 1798.” Happy reading! Jonathan Kerr of the Wordsworth Trust writes about the revolutionary context of the Lyrical Ballads and the revolutionary nature…

1
Hilaire Belloc's "The Scorpion" 2:49

1M ago2:49

2:49

What do Hilaire Belloc and a scorpion have in common? 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/subscribeBy Sean Johnson

1
Oliver Goldsmith's "An Elegy on the Death of a Mad Dog" 3:32

1M ago3:32

3:32

Oliver Goldsmith (born Nov. 10, 1730, Kilkenny West, County Westmeath, Ire.—died April 4, 1774, London) was an Anglo-Irish essayist, poet, novelist, dramatist, and eccentric, made famous by such works as the series of essays The Citizen of the World, or, Letters from a Chinese Philosopher (1762), the poem The Deserted Village (1770), the novel The …

1
Two Poems for the Annunciation 6:35

1M ago6:35

6:35

Today’s poems (too lovely to keep behind the paywall) come from Edwin Muir and Denise Levertov and both marvel at different aspects of the same great mystery. 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…

1
David Wagoner's "For a Student Sleeping in a Poetry Workshop" 6:21

1M ago6:21

6:21

As the long, exhausting march toward summer begins for many students, the wise and compassionate David Wagoner takes us to the intersection of love and weakness. Happy reading. David Wagoner was recognized as the leading poet of the Pacific Northwest, often compared to his early mentor Theodore Roethke, and highly praised for his skillful, insightf…

1
Sarah Lindsay's "Zucchini Shofar" 4:41

2M ago4:41

4:41

Sarah Lindsay was born in Cedar Rapids, Iowa and earned her BA from St. Olaf College and MFA from the University of North Carolina-Greensboro. She is the author of the full-length poetry collections Primate Behavior (Grove Press, 1997), which was a finalist for the National Book Award, Mount Clutter (Grove Press, 2002), Twigs and Knucklebones (Copp…

1
Siegfried Sassoon's "Attack" 5:53

2M ago5:53

5:53

Siegfried Sassoon was born on 8 September 1886 in Kent. His father was part of a Jewish merchant family, originally from Iran and India, and his mother part of the artistic Thorneycroft family. Sassoon studied at Cambridge University but left without a degree. He then lived the life of a country gentleman, hunting and playing cricket while also pub…

1
Seamus Heaney's "Digging" 7:44

2M ago7:44

7:44

“The form of the poem, in other words, is crucial to poetry’s power to do the thing which always is and always will be to poetry’s credit: the power to persuade that vulnerable part of our consciousness of its rightness in spite of the evidence of wrongness all around it, the power to remind us that we are hunters and gatherers of values, that our …

1
Thomas Parnell's "The Book-Worm" 6:27

2M ago6:27

6:27

The life of this week’s final Scriblerian, Thomas Parnell, rounds out the picture of the entire Scriblerus club as a fraternity of wildly brilliant men all carrying some great pain or wound. Some of them clearly write out of that wound, while others seem to write in spite of it. Parnell straddles the line, and today’s poem is a fine example of his …

1
Jonathan Swift's "The Character of Sir Robert Walpole" 2:48

2M ago2:48

2:48

Today’s poem throws unambiguous shade on one of 18th-century England’s most divisive politicians, and marks out Swift as one of the gutsiest Scriblerians. 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…

1
Alexander Pope's "Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot" 9:05

2M ago9:05

9:05

Alexander Pope (1688-1744) was notorious for embroiling himself in literary-political controversy–his sharp pen writing scathing checks his 4’6” frame couldn’t necessarily cash. Today’s poem is selected from his response to a friend who suggested he tone it down. Happy reading. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subs…

1
Richard Wilbur's "A Dubious Night" 10:27

2M ago10:27

10:27

Great poets write as much by ear as by sight, and often turn to sonic phenomena for inspiration. The ringing of bells is one of the most time-honored of those sounds, and in today’s poem Wilbur deepens the sound-image through the added dimension of distance. Happy reading. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribe…

1
T. S. Eliot's "Ash Wednesday" 12:15

2M ago12:15

12:15

Today’s poem runs the gamut of Italian renaissance poetry, the Book of Common Prayer, and the depths and heights of the human soul. It opens with an allusion to the Italian poet Guido Cavalcanti, turns to the Purgatorio of Cavalcanti’s great disciple, Dante, and draws in the Anglican penitential office and lectionary readings for Ash Wednesday, all…

1
Scott Cairns' "Possible Answers to Prayer" 8:38

2M ago8:38

8:38

Librettist, essayist, translator, and author of ten poetry collections, Scott Cairns is Curators’ Distinguished Professor Emeritus at University of Missouri. His poems and essays have appeared in Poetry, Image, Paris Review, The Atlantic Monthly, The New Republic, and both have been anthologized in multiple editions of Best American Spiritual Writi…

1
Rudyard Kipling's "The Camel's Hump" 4:26

2M ago4:26

4:26

Today’s poem finds the meeting place between the bump on the log and the one on the camel. 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/subscribeBy Sean Johnson

1
Langston Hughes' "Dreams" 4:28

2M ago4:28

4:28

Today’s poem plays nicely against Hughes’ more famous meditation on “dreams” (the deferred kind, in “Harlem”). Rather than emphasizing the danger of a dream under pressure, here he stresses the importance of a dream to men and women under pressure. Happy reading. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get …

1
Richard Henry Horne's "The Plough" 9:04

2M ago9:04

9:04

Today’s poem features a simple but satisfying sleight of hand. Happy reading. Richard Henry Horne (1802-1884), poet, was born on 31 December 1802 at Edmonton, near London, the eldest of three sons of James Horne (d.1810), quarter-master in the 61st Regiment; his grandfather was Richard Horne, secretary to Earl St Vincent. Richard was brought up at …

1
Edward Lear's "The Owl and the Pussy-Cat" 6:40

2M ago6:40

6:40

Today’s poem is the best-remembered work of the beloved “nonsense poet” Edward Lear–a silly lyric about a serious love. The episode also features a few guest readers. Happy reading. Edward Lear, the British poet and painter known for his absurd wit, was born on May 12, 1812, in Highgate, England, a suburb of London, and began his career as an artis…

1
Gary Soto's "Oranges" 8:17

3M ago8:17

8:17

Today’s poem will leave you “knowing very well what it was all about.” Happy reading. Gary Soto was born in Fresno, California on April 12, 1952, to working-class Mexican American parents. As a teenager and college student, he worked in the fields of the San Joaquin Valley, chopping beets and cotton and picking grapes. He was not academically motiv…

1
Maurice Manning's "A Plank from the Platform" 6:45

3M ago6:45

6:45

Today’s poem is a meditation on speech in the voice of a president. Perfect for an obligatory federal holiday. 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/subscribeBy Sean Johnson

1
Wendell Berry's "Loving You Has Taught Me..." 9:05

3M ago9:05

9:05

Today’s poem looks back on a lifetime of maturing love. 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/subscribeBy Sean Johnson

1
W. H. Auden's "Night Mail" 6:14

3M ago6:14

6:14

Today’s poem, reminiscent of yesterday’s “From a Railway Carriage,” was written by Auden for use in the 1936 documentary short film, Night Mail, and combines the powerful deep magics of locomotive travel and receiving letters. Bon voyage! This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes,…

1
Anne Brontë's "The North Wind" 4:12

3M ago4:12

4:12

Today’s poem grew out of an elaborate game of make-believe between the Brontë siblings, and gives some idea of the mature verse that might have been if Anne had not died young. Happy(?) reading. Anne Brontë (17 January 1820 – 28 May 1849) was an English novelist and poet, the youngest member of the Brontë literary family. Anne Brontë was the daught…

1
Alfred, Lord Tennyson's "Ulysses" pt. 2 6:03

3M ago6:03

6:03

Today’s poem is the final stanza of Tennyson’s “Ulysses,” in which the hero of the Trojan war persuades his aging compatriots to wring out the last of their energies in a quest for the ends of the earth–“to strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.” Happy reading. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or g…

1
Zbigniew Herbert's "The Salt of the Earth" 10:57

3M ago10:57

10:57

Poet’s don’t typically compete for “coolest book cover,” and it’s probably because Zbigniew Herbert won years ago. Today’s poem is his tender look at poverty, pleasure, and irretrievable loss. Zbigniew Herbert was born on October 29, 1924, in Poland in the city of Lvov, which is now a part of the Ukraine. His grandfather was an Englishman who settl…

1
Ted Kooser's "So This Is Nebraska" 6:56

3M ago6:56

6:56

Today’s poem glides, settles, dances, waves, and soars its way through the unassuming comforts of the familiar. 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/subscribeBy Sean Johnson

1
Phyllis McGinley's "Lament for a Wavering Viewpoint" 4:06

3M ago4:06

4:06

Phyllis McGinley (March 21, 1905 – February 22, 1978) was an American author of children's books and poetry. Her poetry was in the style of light verse, specializing in humor, satiric tone and the positive aspects of suburban life. She won a Pulitzer Prize in 1961. McGinley enjoyed a wide readership in her lifetime, publishing her work in newspaper…

1
John Keats' "On First Looking Into Chapman's Homer" 8:30

3M ago8:30

8:30

As William Shakespeare was putting the final touchers on Hamlet, George Chapman was beginning (arguably) an even more momentous undertaking: introducing the English-speaking world to Homer’s epics. In a turn of historical irony, the fame of Chapman’s translation continues almost solely in and through today’s poem–but there are worse ways to be reme…

1
Mary Oliver's "First Snow" 7:53

3M ago7:53

7:53

Today’s poem was too topical to pass up. Like so many of Oliver’s poems, it is an invitation to attend closely to life’s unexpected gifts. 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…

1
G. K. Chesterton's "Stilton and Milton" 5:40

3M ago5:40

5:40

Today’s poem, whose full title is “Stilton and Milton; Or Literature in the 17th and 20th Centuries,” has something for book lovers and cheese lovers alike to dig in to. Chesterton once wrote that “poets have been mysteriously silent on the subject of cheese,” and he then set about rectifying that state of affairs through poems like these. Happy re…

1
John Keble's "The Accession" 5:15

3M ago5:15

5:15

Today’s poem, though written for the far more infrequent crowning of monarchs, contains plenty of sentiments fitting for a quadrennial presidential inauguration. Happy reading. On a pillar on the west wall of Poets' Corner in Westminster Abbey is a white marble bust to poet and clergyman John Keble. The bust is signed and dated by Thomas Woolner, 1…

1
Yvor Winters' "At the San Francisco Airport" 10:14

4M ago10:14

10:14

Though not yet the Dantesque hells that they are today, airports in 1954 were already places of union, separation, and general existential anxiety. This meditation comes from a serious and sphinx-like Winters at the height of his poetic development–though not yet at his own “terminal,” here he is a man who already has plenty to look back on. Happy …

1
Billy Collins' "Thesaurus" 6:25

4M ago6:25

6:25

If hot takes about synonyms are your cup of tea, favorite, darling, jam, or weapon of choice, then today’s poem is for you. 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/subscribeBy Sean Johnson

1
John Davies' "Nosce Teipsum: of Human Knowledge" 12:54

4M ago12:54

12:54

We that acquaint ourselves with every zone,And pass both tropics and behold the poles,When we come home, are to ourselves unknown,And unacquainted still with our own souls. Today’s poem is Davies’ lengthy meditation on what man can know and what he could stand to learn. Happy reading. Poet and lawyer Sir John Davies was born in Wiltshire and educat…

1
Ted Kooser's Blizzard Voices 4:01

4M ago4:01

4:01

Today’s poems are selected from Ted Kooser’s The Blizzard Voices, a collection of informal verse commemorating the apocalyptic Great Plains blizzard of 1888. He mined histories and first-hand accounts to give “voice” to the men and women who lived through the unprecedented storm. Happy reading. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss thi…

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