The Well Read Poem

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Because reading is interpretation, The Well Read Poem aims to teach you how to read with understanding! Hosted by poet Thomas Banks of The House of Humane Letters, these short episodes will introduce you to both well-known and obscure poets and will focus on daily recitation, historical and intellectual background, elements of poetry, light explication, and more!

Play this podcast daily and practice reciting! The next week, get a new poem. Grow in your understanding and love of poetry by learning how to read well!

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Season 17 Poems:

“On the Jubilee of Queen Victoria” by Alfred, Lord Tennyson

“The Death of King Charles II” by John Dryden

“Sonnet 11: On the Desecration Which Followed My Writing Certain Treatises” by John Milton

“To a Republican Friend” by Matthew Arnold

“Poem of the Propositions of Nakedness” by Walt Whitman

“The Dissolution of the Monasteries” by William Wordsworth

Season 16 Poems:

“Summer Sun” by Robert Louis Stevenson

“The Lonely Hunter” by William Sharp

“July, 1964” by Donald Davie

“Adlestrop” by Edward Thomas

“On the Move” by Thom Gunn

“Summer” by Christina Rossetti

Season 15 Poems:

“On His Brother’s Death” by Catullus (trans. by Aubrey Beardsley)

“Marsyas” by Jose-Maria de Heredia (trans. by Thomas Banks)

“The Cat” by Charles Baudelaire (trans. by Roy Campbell)

“I Do Not Like Thee, Doctor Fell” by Martial (trans. by Tom Brown)

“Ask Not (Odes I.11)” by Horace (trans. by John Conington)

“Happy the Man, Who Like Ulysses” by Joachim du Bellay (trans. by Richard Wilbur)

Season 14 Poems:

The Magi by William Butler Yeats

The Mistletoe by Walter de la Mare

Christmas Carol by Sara Teasdale

Good King Wenceslas by Vaclav Svoboda 

Noel by Theophile Gautier 

Christmas by John Betjeman

Season 13 Poems:

“David’s Lament for Saul and Jonathan” from 2 Samuel 1 (KJV)

“To Pompeius” Ode 2.7 by Horace, trans. by John Davidson

“To Lucasta, on Going to the Wars” by Richard Lovelace

“Into Battle” by Julian Grenfell

“The Burial of Sir John Moore after Corunna” by Charles Wolfe

“The English War” by Dorothy L. Sayers

Season 12 Poems:

Sonnet 1, “From fairest creatures we desire increase” by William Shakespeare

Sonnet 18, “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day” by William Shakespeare

Sonnet 106, “When in the chronicle of wasted time” by William Shakespeare

Sonnet 138, “When my love swears that I am made of truth” by William Shakespeare

“Care-charmer Sleep, son of the sable night”, by Samuel Daniel

“Since there’s no help, come let us kiss and part” by Michael Drayton

Season 11 Poems:

“The Lost Leader” by Robert Browning

“On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer” by John Keats

“The Arrest of Oscar Wilde at the Cadogan Hotel” by John Betjeman

“To Walter de la Mare” by T.S. Eliot

“Edward Lear” by W.H. Auden

“On Shakespeare” by John Milton

Season 10 Poems:

“Fanfare for the Makers” by Louis MacNeice

“Men Who March Away” by Thomas Hardy

“Song of the Shirt” by Thomas Hood

“Surgeons Must Be Very Careful” by Emily Dickinson

“The Chimney Sweeper” by William Blake

“The British Journalist” by Humbert Wolfe

Season 9 Poems:

“The Rhodora” by Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Sumer Is Icumen In” by Anonymous 13th Century Author

“Bed in Summer” by Robert Louis Stevenson

“To Autumn” by John Keats

“Nothing Gold Can Stay” by Robert Frost

“Loveliest of Trees” by A. E. Houseman

Season 8 Poems:

“Les Hiboux (The Owls)” by Charles Baudelaire

“The Eagle” by Alfred, Lord Tennyson

“The Oven Bird” by Robert Frost

“Le Corbeau et Le Renaud (The Crow and the Fox)” by Jean de la Fontaine

“Old Adam, the Carrion Crow” by Thomas Lovell Beddoes

“Ode to a Nightingale” by John Keats

Season 7 Poems:

“A Farewell to Arms” by George Peele

“My Mistress’ Eyes are Nothing Like the Sun” by William Shakespeare

Mother, I Cannot Mind My Wheel” by Walter Savage Landor

Remember Me” by Christina Rossetti

Tell Me the Truth About Love” by W. H. Auden

“Love Poem” by John Frederick Nims

Season 6 Poems:

“On a General Election” by Hilaire Belloc

“Atticus” by Alexander Pope

“Zimri” by John Dryden

“To a Poet, Who Would Have Me Praise Certain Bad Poets, Imitator of His and Mine” by William Butler Yeats

Selection from “A Satire Against Mankind” by John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester

“There Are Two Voices There” by James Kenneth Stephen

Season 5 Poems:

“All That’s Past” by Walter de la Mare

“Ghost” by Walter de la Mare

“Breughel’s Winter” by Walter de la Mare

“Polonius” by Walter de la Mare

“Alexander” by Walter de la Mare

“Summer Evening” by Walter de la Mare

Season 4 Poems:

“Auguries of Innocence” by William Blake

“Infant Innocence” by A. E. Houseman

“The Kraken” by Alfred, Lord Tennyson

“Epigram Engraved on the Collar of a Dog” by Alexander Pope

“A Runnable Stag” by John Davidson

“The Blinded Bird” by Thomas Hardy

Season 3 Poems:

“August 1968” by W. H. Auden

“The Shield of Achilles” by W. H. Auden

“Roman Wall Blues” by W. H. Auden

“Luther” by W. H. Auden

“Epitaph on a Tyrant” by W. H. Auden

“Song for St. Cecilia’s Day” by W. H. Auden

Season 2 Poems:

“Constantinople” by J. C. Squire

“The Wife of Flanders” by G. K. Chesterton

“Harp Song of the Dane Women” by Rudyard Kipling

“To Toussaint L’Ouverture” by William Wordsworth

“Stanzas Written in Passing the Ambracian Gulf” by Lord Byron

“To Virgil” by Alfred, Lord Tennyson

Season 1 Poems:

“The Listeners” by Walter de la Mare

“To the Old Gods” by Edwin Muir

“If We Shadows Have Offended” by William Shakespeare

“Babylon” by Robert Graves

“Kubla Khan” by Samuel Taylor Coleridge

“The World is Too Much With Us” by William Wordsworth