This site exists for one purpose only: to help dispel the ugly and absolutely untrue myth that poetry is boring. Granted, a lot of poetry is boring, but you won't find it here. At Your Daily Poem, you'll find poetry that is touching, funny, provocative, inspiring, uplifting, and surprising. It may punch you in the gut, it may bring tears to your eyes, it may make you laugh out loud, but it most assuredly will not bore you.

Poetry on YDP—by poets living and long dead, famous to completely unknown--is specially selected for accessibility and appeal. Thanks so much for visiting—and remember: a poem a day keeps the doldrums away!

Your Daily Poem is LIVE in Plymouth, Massachusetts!
Monday, October 2 at 3 PM
Plymouth Public Library, 132 South Street
Come join us for readings and a Q&A session!

Henry David Thoreau (1817 - 1862) was an American writer who celebrated nature and independence; we know him best for his book, Walden, which chronicles two years of life he spent in a tiny cabin on the shores of Walden Lake, and for his essay, Civil Disobedience, works cited as powerful influences by no less than Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr.  Thoreau (which is pronounced "THUR-oh," by the way, not "thu-ROW") was a contemporary and friend of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Louisa May and Bronson Alcott, and Nathaniel Hawthorne; he lived his entire life in Massachusetts and was a graduate of Harvard. To learn more about him, visit https://www.walden.org/thoreau/.