Miroslav Holub's "Napoleon"
The Daily Poem
Goldberry Studios
4.6 • 729 Ratings
🗓️ 18 August 2025
⏱️ 2 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Today’s brief poem goes out to teachers everywhere as they return to work. Good luck and happy reading.
“Poet Seamus Heaney described Holub’s writing as ‘a laying bare of things, not so much the skull beneath the skin, more the brain beneath the skull; the shape of relationships, politics, history; the rhythms of affections and disaffection; the ebb and flow of faith, hope, violence, art.’ In 1988 poet Ted Hughes called Holub ‘one of the half dozen most important poets writing anywhere.’”
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome back to The Daily Poem, a podcast from Goldberry Studios. |
| 0:08.4 | I'm Sean Johnson, and today is Monday, August 18th, 2025. |
| 0:13.6 | Today's poem is by Miroslav Halub, and it's called Napoleon. |
| 0:19.2 | Many teachers went back to work recently, maybe today, or are going back soon, |
| 0:24.9 | and this poem is for them. It's not terribly complicated. There's no enigma at the heart of this poem, |
| 0:33.3 | no green wood or lovely trees dark and deep to plumb the depths of or painstakingly interpret. |
| 0:43.0 | It's just a very laughable, very relatable account of one of those lessons that kind of gets away from you. |
| 0:52.2 | If you're a teacher, you know it well. If you're not a teacher, |
| 0:55.9 | pray for us. Here is Napoleon. Children, when was Napoleon Bonaparte born? asks a teacher. |
| 1:08.0 | A thousand years ago, the children say. A hundred years ago, the children say. Last year, the children say. No one knows. Children, what did Napoleon Bonaparte do? asked a teacher. Won a war, the children say. Lost war, the children say. No one knows. Our butcher had a dog called Napoleon, says Frantusek. The butcher used to beat him, and the dog died of hunger a year ago. And all the children are now sorry for Napoleon. |
| 1:45.7 | This has been the daily poem now sorry for Napoleon. This has been the Daily Poem. |
| 1:48.0 | Thanks for listening. We'll be back with more poetry tomorrow. |
| 1:52.1 | Till then, find us at daily poempod.substack.com |
| 1:55.5 | and for all of us at Goldberry Studios, happy reading. |
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