Helen Hunt Jackson’s “September”
The Daily Poem

Helen Hunt Jackson’s “September”

B2Upper-intermediateSeptember 30, 20263 min
  • One speaker
  • Arts & culture

Today’s poem praises September and mystifies it with a coy turn in the final stanza. Enjoy the last day of this finest of months. Happy reading. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit dailypoempod.substack.com/subscribe

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Today's poem is by Helen Hunt Jackson, and it's called September.

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Dickinson is almost an exact contemporary of Emily Dickinson's. She was born the same

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0:00

Welcome back to The Daily Poem, a podcast from Goldberry Studios. I'm Sean Johnson, and today is Wednesday, September 30th, 2026. Today's poem is by Helen Hunt Jackson, and it's called September. It was the absolute last day we could get this one in, so I had to make sure we did.

0:26

Dickinson is almost an exact contemporary of Emily Dickinson's. She was born the same year and the two women died just one year apart. While Jackson has not garnered or maintained the same kind of notoriety as Dickinson, her writing took many forms and she was prolific in her own right. One of her works was a calendar of sonnets in which she composed a

0:48

sonnet for every month of the year and included original illustrations to accompany each. But September she opted not to write a sonnet. Judging by what she says about September in her poem, I imagine the reason is 14 lines just didn't feel like enough space to praise this month, which she finds so lovely. So she opts for seven quatrains, and it definitely adds an extra

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