Every morning I feed a piece of blank paper into my Wedgefield 200 manual typewriter. I type the date, I confidently slide the carriage to the right and I begin typing whatever is there to be typed.

The poet Brad Leithauser has written that Conrad Aiken (1889–1973) was, like John McRae (“In Flanders Fields”) and Chidiock Tichbourne (“Tichbourne’s Elegy”), a poet who effectively wrote one poem.

Today’s Poem of the Day, “Music on Christmas Morning,” appeared originally in 1846, in a volume of poetry by three authors, purportedly brothers: Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell. The book was a stunning ...