Welcome back to The Daily Poem here in the Close Freeds Podcast Network. I'm David Kern.

Today's poem is by one of the giants of American literature in the 20th century, or really of all time, actually, Robert Penn Warren.

He lived from 1905 to 1989. He was a novelist and a literary critic and one of the

founders of a school of thought called New Criticism, and he was also a poet. He is the only person to

have won Pulitzer Prizes for both fiction and poetry. He won for poetry in 1958 and 1979, and he received

the 1947 Pulitzer Prize for the novel, for his novel, All the Kingsmen. And my guess is if you

have read Robert Penn Warren, then you probably know him because of that novel, All the Kingsmen,

or maybe the movie version of it. He also, for what it's worth,

if you're interested in this sort of thing, founded the literary journal, The Southern Review with

Clint Brooks, which is one of them, the best literary journals around for a long time.

The poem that I'm going to read today is called August Moon. It's a little slightly on the longer side.

It's a couple pages in this little anthology that I have.

So my comments will be somewhat short.

But this is one of those poems to just enjoy anyway.

Here it is, August moon.

Gold like a half slice of orange fished from a stiff old-fashioned.

The moon lolls on the sky that goes deeper blue by the tick of the watch.

Or lulls like a real brass button, half-buttoned on the blue flannel sleeve of an expensive seagoing blue blazer.

Slowly stars in a gradual eczema of glory gain definition.

What kind of world is this we walk in?

It makes no sense except the inner, near-soundless chug-chug of the body's old business,

your father's cancer, or mother's's stroke or the cat's fifth pregnancy.

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