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Poem-a-day

Lines for a Sun-Dial

With shadowy pen I write,
Till time be done,
Good news of some strange light,
Some far off sun.

This poem is in the public domain. Published in Poem-a-Day on October 18, 2026, by the Academy of American Poets.

Poems

Do not go gentle into that good night

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright

Dylan Thomas

1937

If—

If you can keep your head when all about you

Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;

If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,

But make allowance for their doubting too;

If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,

Or, being lied about, don’t deal in lies,

Rudyard Kipling

1910

The Road Not Taken

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Robert Frost

1916

Hamlet, Act III, Scene I [To be, or not to be]

To be, or not to be: that is the question:
Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them? To die: to sleep;
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks

William Shakespeare

1603

Poets

5 poets

T. S. Eliot

Born in Missouri on September 26, 1888, T. S. Eliot is the author of The Waste Land, which is now considered by many to be the most influential poetic work of the twentieth century.

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William Carlos Williams

Poet, novelist, essayist, and playwright William Carlos Williams is often said to have been one of the principal poets of the Imagist movement.

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Pádraig Ó Tuama

Pádraig Ó Tuama is the author of the poetry collections Love Between Men (Copper Canyon Press, 2026); Kitchen Hymns (Copper Canyon Press, 2025); Feed the Beast (Broken Sleep Books, 2022); Sorry for Your Troubles (Canterbury Press, 2013); and Readings from the Book of Exile (Canterbury Press, 2012). A poet, theologian, and conflict mediator, Ó Tuama is a professor at Yale Divinity School. He lives in Connecticut, on the ancestral lands of the Quinnipiac people.

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Sonia Sanchez

Sonia Sanchez received the 2018 Wallace Stevens Award, given annually to recognize outstanding and proven mastery in the art of poetry.

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Gabriela Mistral

Gabriela Mistral, also known as Lucila Godoy y Alcayaga, was the first Latin-American writer to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature.

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Features

Third Language

I did not turn to poetry to escape grief. I turned to it because it allowed grief to exist without apology. Poems do not ask us to be finished. They allow fragments. They allow contradiction.

October 2026 Poem-a-Day Guest Editor Edward Hirsch

Listen to a short Q&A where Edward Hirsch discusses his curatorial process for Poem-a-Day.

2026 Featured Fall Book List

Poem-a-Day Guest Editors in 2026

The 2026 cohort of Guest Editors are all award-winning poets who represent wide-ranging expertise and editorial perspectives. Learn more about them below.

Announcements

October 6, 2026

Academy of American Poets Announces Harryette Mullen and Tim Seibles as 2026 Recipients of Its Highest Honors

August 3, 2026

Twenty-Two Poets Laureate Awarded $1.1 Million for Community Poetry Projects. Fellowships fund public poetry programs in cities, counties, states, and Tribal communities across the United States.

July 22, 2026

New York, NY (July 22, 2026)—The Academy of American Poets is pleased to announce the nineteen recipients of the 2026 Poetry Fund, made possible by Amazon Literary Partnership.

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Poem-a-day

Poems

Poets

T. S. Eliot

William Carlos Williams

Pádraig Ó Tuama

Sonia Sanchez

Gabriela Mistral

Features

Announcements

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