Welcome back to the Daily Poem here on the Close Reeds Podcast Network. I'm David Kern, and today's

Friday, May 8th, 2020. Today's poem is by an English poet named John Clare. You've heard from

him before on this podcast a few times. He lived from 1793 to 1864. He was the son of a farmer, and so many of his poems are in celebration of the life that he grew up in,

and of the work that people like his father conducted that they did for their survival.

He felt like that way of life was being consumed and sort of spat out by the Industrial Revolution.

And so his poetry was in support of them and their way of life.

The poem that I'm going to read today is called The Nightingale's Nest.

And it's long enough that I don't think I'll be able to read it twice.

So I want to offer some comments up at the top.

I got an email. I get an

email called Proof Rock every day. It's a summary of great articles and things like that from all

over the internet. And in that email, a piece was shared from the Hudson Review. It's called

Elegie and Plenitude in the Wild. It's by Dean Flower. And it's from their spring 2020 issue. And it's about,

it's about birds in England. And there's a paragraph in here that references this poem,

because I did not know this poem before, but I want to read this paragraph to you. And then,

and then I'll read the poem to you.

But Flower writes, quote,

The Nightingale has a long history in England, particularly in poetry and legend, but its natural history lagged behind, partly because the bird itself is so elusive and commonplace when

seen, and partly because its song alone is so spectacular, powerful, various,

inventive, seductive, unpredictable, sometimes disturbing.

Even John Clare did not know when he wrote The Nightingale's Nest in 1832 that only the male

sings, but nobody knew his poem either, which languished un-published until 1978.

...