Poems to Ring in the New Year

One of my 2023 resolutions is to read more poetry – this is pretty easily accomplished working at the National Endowment for the Arts.

Over the past few years, I have had the pleasure of speaking to many of our NEA Literature Fellows about their poetry practices – both writing original poems and translating other’s. Working on Poetry Out Loud, a poetry recitation competition for high schoolers and an initiative of the NEA, is another way I get to enjoy poetry through my job. Hearing poems versus reading them provided a different layer of enjoyment and appreciation to my experience of poetry.

Before coming to work at the NEA, I didn’t love or even like poetry, but now I can’t imagine my life without it. If like me, you are looking to integrate more poetry into your life in 2023, we have collected some New Years poems to get you started. Let us know your favorite over on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram, and let us know if you have any other creative resolutions for the year ahead!

"Where there was something and suddenly isn’t,/ an absence shouts, celebrates, leaves a space./ I begin again with the smallest numbers."

From "Burning the Old Year" by Naomi Shihab Nye.

"Soul, plucking like the many strings/ Of my limbs like puppet's, make them dance,/ Dance, dance, in sombre joy,/ That after all the sullen play/ The old world falls, the new world forms." 

From "Pavane for the New Year" by Elder James Olson.

"With what stillness at last/ you appear in the valley/ your first sunlight reaching down/ to touch the tips of a few/ high leaves that do not stir"

From "To the New Year" by W.S. Merwin.

"One hour stretches sixty minutes into a field/ of white flurry: hexagonal lattices of water// molecules that accumulate in drifts too soon/ strewn with sand, hewn into browning/ mounds by plow blade, left to turn to slush."

From "Snowfall" by Ravi Shankar.

"Look back only for as long as you must,/ Then go forward into the history you will make.// Be good, then better. Write books. Cure disease./ Make us proud. Make yourself proud.// And those who came before you? When you hear thunder,/ Hear it as their applause."

From "A House Called Tomorrow" by Alberto Ríos.

"Put down that bag of potato chips, that white bread, that bottle of pop./ Turn off that cellphone, computer, and remote control./ Open the door, then close it behind you."

From "For Calling the Spirit Back from Wandering the Earth in Its Human Feet" by Joy Harjo.