We talk often about spring and autumn as seasons of turbulence; the times of year when changes happen, in nature and in our lives. But January—the month that plunges us, quite suddenly, from the comfortable malaise of the winter holidays into a bright sharp commitment to Be a Better Version of Ourselves—that’s when we are most personally in flux. We shed our skins in the New Year. We change, because the changing over of our calendars feels poignant, promising. It feels like The Right Time.
A lot of people don’t love the start of a new year. Resolutions can be overambitious and hard to stick to. There’s pressure in a blank slate. But underneath that pressure, there’s also joy to be found in letting go of the past. In being able to tangibly draw a line under things and revel in the opportunity to start again. This month, I’ve collected twelve poems that celebrate that joy: the potential, the promise of becoming.
“How Dark the Beginning” by Maggie Smith
All we ever talk of is light—
let there be light, there was light then,good light—but what I consider
dawn is darker than all that…
We’ve all heard the adage “it’s darkest before dawn.” It’s been worn almost to meaninglessness now, repeated again and again as a refrain against hardship. This tender poem by NYT-bestselling poet Maggie Smith (not to be confused with the beloved actress Maggie Smith, whom we sadly lost this year) takes the premise at its core and reconsiders it, questioning what darkness itself is allowed to represent.
“New Year” by Carol Ann Duffy
I drop the dying year behind me like a shawl
and let it fall. The urgent fireworks fling themselves
against the night, flowers of desire, love’s fervency…
A new year dawns, the previous one comes to its end, and—while in many ways this can be a relief—it can also be hard to disentangle the past and present. Carol Ann Duffy’s nostalgia-tinged poem reflects on love at the moment the clock strikes, and illustrates the transience of memory: the ways that time is simultaneously linear and not.
“Burning the Old Year” by Naomi Shihab Nye
Letters swallow themselves in seconds.
Notes friends tied to the doorknob,
transparent scarlet paper,
sizzle like moth wings…
As we extricate ourselves from the previous year, there are a great number of moments we let go of, allowing them to sink into the past. Naomi Shihab Nye’s poem sets fire to the past, not vengefully or hatefully, but simply to make space for what’s to come.
“My Hair Burned Like Berenice” by Ruth Awad
My heart was valent
with possibility: I could be anyone now, half woman,
half asterism. Fragmental as a new year. Patron saint
of the rutilant and cindering…
There’s something empowering about standing in a fire’s glow, knowing that every end gives way to beginning. Awad’s “My Hair Burned Like Berenice”is all short sentences, decisive and confident. Itrevels in the transformation of the self, the severance of that which doesn’t serve you.
“won’t you celebrate with me” by Lucille Clifton
won’t you celebrate with me
what i have shaped into
a kind of life?
And once the blaze has died away, we can consider what’s left behind. Lucille Clifton was a prestigious and prolific African American poet, whose work drew upon her lived experience as a Black woman. In this poem, she reminds us that she remained standing, despite everything the previous years had thrown her way: despite adversity and horror. She invites us to be proud of her, as we should. And in doing so, we can also look inward, consider our own lives, and the difficulties people continue to face in this difficult, often frightening world.
“Winter Flowers” by Stanley Moss
I wear a coat of hope and desire.
I follow fallen maple leaves abducted by the wind.
I declare I am a Not Quite, almost a nonentity.
I fought for that “almost.”
I lift up and button my collar of hope.
I simply refuse to leave the universe…
Yes, this one did appear in last year’s list of January poetry. I’m bringing it back once again because I think it has important things to say about remaining hopeful. The snow that blankets the landscape of this poem is a white, empty unknown, but through it flowers poke up, and the narrator trudges on.
“Unleashed” by Leah Umansky
There was a delay satisfying, a flash of body of beauty of breath and beauty and breath and body and breath and breath and breath and then then then—the sense of my blooming before my self before my former self before the new self stuttering before me…
This poem returns to the figure of the new self emerging from the old. From the flash of whiteness that is snow or fire or daylight comes the fresh start, the opportunity worth marvelling at.
“What Kind of Times Are These” by Adrienne Rich
There’s a place between two stands of trees where the grass grows uphill
and the old revolutionary road breaks off into shadows
near a meeting-house abandoned by the persecuted
who disappeared into those shadows…
A gentle but meaningful poem, What Kind of Times are These follows its narrator on a journey “picking mushrooms at the edge of dread.”
“Dance, Dance, While the Hive Collapses” by Tiffany Higgins
Alas. There is still melody,
rhythm, someone is streaking
out in air, droningaround the phonograph, which is the grooved
heart valve of the black vinyl
divine who is winding this universe…
Sometimes the forces stacked against us feel too numerous and powerful to be overcome. Sometimes we feel hopeless, insignificant, like nothing we do is going to matter. Through the lens of colony collapse disorder, Higgins reminds us that even in the face of odds that cannot be surmounted, there is beauty. There is joy. The hive may be collapsing, but there is still time to dance.
“Dear Echo” by Kyle Dargan
In the likely event of galactic calamity —
our sun’s hydrogen reserves fused through,
the star-turned-red-giant bloating
as do our corpses — you will require flames…
On a personal and microcosmic scale, a new year can feel a lot like an apocalypse. So here is a poem about the end of the world. In searing verse, Dargan sets the scene, illuminating as he does so the cyclical nature of everything: how there is no end that doesn’t become the start of something else. (Maybe something better…)
“A Map to the Next World” by Joy Harjo
What I am telling you is real and is printed in a warning on the
map. Our forgetfulness stalks us, walks the earth behind us, leav-
ing a trail of paper diapers, needles, and wasted blood.An imperfect map will have to do, little one…
This fantastical poem guides its readers from one ruined world to another which might yet hold promise. But Harjo shows us that there is no such thing as simple and binary as beginning/end. Our fresh start—the fresh start of the new year—lies in us, in what we know and love and wish to nurture going forward.
“Good Bones” by Maggie Smith
Life is short, though I keep this from my children.
Life is short, and I’ve shortened mine
in a thousand delicious, ill-advised ways…
To finish, another poem by Maggie Smith. You may be familiar with this one already: it went viral in 2016, and has since been translated into numerous languages, set to music by various composers, and even been adapted into a dance troupe’s routine. There’s a good reason for this poem’s virality. Its message of stubborn, practical optimism resonated with many at the time and continues to do so today, reminding us that we are active players in the world we inhabit and the future is what we choose to make it. We don’t need to tear down our foundations: they are imperfect but solid. What we need to do is stay stubborn, and build.
