Poem-a-day

Ex Nothing

^{translated from the Spanish by}^{Rosa Alcalá}

Leave the womb
Leave the fear
Leave the nest

Hit the road
Hightail it
Head the hell out

Live hidden
Without a sound

Not seen
Nor heard

Be not
From this earth
But from nothing.

Ex nada

Salir del vientre
Salir del miedo
Salir del nido

Arrancar
Apretar cueva
A toda raja

Vivir escondida
Sin ser oída

Ni vista
Ni oída

No ser
De la tierra
Si no de la nada.

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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 Summer Day

Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean—
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down—
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don’t know exactly what a prayer is.

Mary Oliver

1990

How Do I Love Thee? (Sonnet 43)

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of being and ideal grace.
I love thee to the level of every day’s
Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light.
I love thee freely, as men strive for right.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning

1850

Poets

5 poets

Gerard Manley Hopkins

Born at Stratford, Essex, England, on July 28, 1844, Gerard Manley Hopkins

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Wisława Szymborska

Wislawa Szymborska was a Polish poet whose work was widely translated into English. In 1996, she was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature.

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Jean Cocteau

Jean Cocteau was born on July 5, 1889, in Maisons-Laffitte, near Paris.

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John Ashbery

John Ashbery was born in Rochester, New York, on July 28, 1927.

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Victoria Chang

Victoria Chang is the author of With My Back to the World (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2024), as well as the titles The Trees Witness Everything (Copper Canyon Press, 2022) and Dear Memory (Milkweed, 2021). The recipient of a 2017 Guggenheim Fellowship, she is currently the Bourne Chair in Poetry at Georgia Tech and the director of Poetry@Tech.

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Features

Meditations on Metzmama

The suffering Knarig Metzmama experienced fueled her joie de vivre and imbued her with the kind of wisdom and insight that remain accessible regardless of human cruelty. To laugh in such darkness; to sing in such silence; to love despite such hate; to create even with such destruction and erasure.

July 2026 Poem-a-Day Guest Editor Oliver Baez Bendorf

Listen to a short Q&A where Oliver Baez Bendorf discusses his curatorial process for Poem-a-Day.

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

July 22, 2026

Academy of American Poets Announces 2026 Grant Recipients of the Poetry Fund. Nineteen poetry organizations and presses receive support through the ongoing partnership.

June 9, 2026

Talebi receives the $1,000 prize for translating "Elegies of the Earth: Selected Poems" by Ahmad Shamlou from Persian into English

April 28, 2026

Academy of American Poets announces a legacy gift from the Louise Bogan Charitable Trust to establish an endowed award that recognizes and supports outstanding poet-critics and their contributions to American poetry.

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Poem-a-day

Ex nada

Poems

Poets

Gerard Manley Hopkins

Wisława Szymborska

Jean Cocteau

John Ashbery

Victoria Chang

Features

Announcements

American Poets magazine

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