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

Today is January 30th, 2020. In the last three days, I read poems by W.B. Yeats in a commemoration and remembrance of his life, he died on January 28th.

So I wanted to spend a couple days sharing some of his poetry with you.

But I can't let this week pass without mentioning that another great poet, another truly

predominant poet, also died at the end of January. And that is Robert Frost, who died on January 29th,

1963. You've heard from Frost on this podcast and in many other

places before. He lived from 1874 to 1963. He was an American poet. He received four Pulitzer

Prizes. I believe he's still the only person for whom that is true. And he was awarded the

Congressional Gold Medal in 1960 for his poetry. He was also

a poet laureate of Vermont. And of course, there are many famous poems of his that I could read,

many of which I have already done before on this podcast. But I want to read one called The Oven Bird.

And it goes like this.

There is a singer everyone has heard,

loud, a midsummer and a midwood bird,

who makes the solid tree trunks sound again.

He says that leaves are old and that for flowers midsummer

is to spring as one to ten. He says the early pedal fall is past when pear and cherry bloom

went down and showers on sunny days a moment overcast. And comes that other fall we name the fall.

He says the highway dust is over all.

The bird would cease and be as other birds,

but that he knows in singing not sing.

The question that he frames,

...