Nice to have you here

And three poems for the New Year

Wow, it is really nice to see you all here. Thank you for subscribing. I hope I will get to know each and every one of you. Please do let me know who you are in the comments, and link to your Substack if you have one (and you should have one!). I suppose I should walk the talk and post something, or I’ll never hear the end of it from some friends and colleagues (I am talking about you,

Mills Baker

).

Two years ago, while New York and the world were still in voluntary lockdown, I celebrated the turning of the year at home with one of my closest friends. We were drinking whiskey and thought we’d do something old-fashioned, like play backgammon or read poetry, as the final hour of the year was rolling out. We were browsing the collections on my shelves and happened upon Auden’s New Year Letter, which felt apt. The poem runs 45 pages in his Collected Poems, and it took us precisely an hour to read it aloud to each other, taking turns (if you think this is pretentious your childhood was not marked by the theatrical release of Dead Poets Society). We were drinking, and did this for kicks, but as it often happens with genius, you stumble upon it tipsily and it sobers you right up. The poem is a masterpiece, and thanks to it that remains one of my favorite New Year’s Eves I can remember—and I doubt it shall be topped by many more. We finished at precisely 23:55. We then went up to the rooftop of my building and waved at other people on their balconies. Some were alone, others in pairs, no one at a party.

Auden is the one who also said that, “The only way to spend New Year’s Eve is either quietly with friends or in a brothel. Otherwise when the evening ends and people pair off, someone is bound to be left in tears.”

I will add a third way to that, which is to spend it with poems. Here are a few that I’ve associated with this occasion. I wish you a good, lighthearted year, and leave you with a resolution I rather like, from someone who is not typically associated with optimism: Friedrich Nietzsche:

For the new year. — I still live, I still think: I still have to live, for I still have to think. Sum, ergo cogito: cogito, ergo sum. Today everybody permits himself the expression of his wish and his dearest thought; hence I, too, shall say what it is that I wish from myself today, and what was the first thought to run across my heart this year—what thought shall be for me the reason, warranty, and sweetness of my life henceforth. I want to learn more and more to see as beautiful what is necessary in things; then I shall be one of those who make things beautiful. Amor fati: let that be my love henceforth! I do not want to wage war against what is ugly. I do not want to accuse;

I do not even want to accuse those who accuse. Looking away shall be my only negation. And all in all and on the whole: some day I wish to be only a Yes-sayer.

Breakfast today with honey from Ikaria—the island of longevity

Three poems for the New Year

I AM RUNNING INTO A NEW YEAR
by Lucille Clifton

i am running into a new year
and the old years blow back
like a wind
that i catch in my hair
like strong fingers like
all my old promises and
it will be hard to let go
of what i said to myself
about myself
when i was sixteen and
twentysix and thirtysix
even thirtysix but
i am running into a new year
and i beg what i love and
i leave to forgive me

(From Good Woman: Poems and A Memoir 1969-1980)

AMBITION
by Jack Gilbert

Having reached the beginning, starting toward
a new ignorance. Places to become,
secrets to live in, sins to achieve.
Maybe South America, perhaps a new woman,
another language to not understand.
Like setting out on a raft over an ocean
of life already well lived.
A two-story failed hotel in the tropics,
hot silence of noon with the sun
straying through the shutters.
Sitting with his poems at a small table,
everybody asleep. Thinking with pleasure,
trailing his hand in the river he will
turn into.

(From one of my favorite collections, Refusing Heaven)

And finally,

THE YEARS
by Alex Dimitrov

All the parties you spent
watching the room
from a balcony
where someone joined you
to smoke then returned.
And how it turns out no one
had the childhood they wanted,
and how they’d tell you this
a little drunk, a little slant
in less time than it took
to finish a cigarette
because sad things
can’t be explained.
Behind the glass and inside,
all your friends buzzed.
You could feel the shape
of their voices. You could
tell from their eyes they were
in some other place. 1999
or 2008 or last June.
Of course, it’s important
to go to parties. To make
life a dress or a drink
or suede shoes someone wears
in the rain. On the way home,
in the car back, the night sky
played its old tricks. The stars
arranged themselves quietly.
The person you thought of drove
under them. Away from the party,
(just like you) into the years.

(From his forthcoming collection, and originally published in the New Yorker. Alex also writes the excellent alexdimitrov.substack.com)

PS: The only reason I doubt AI will manage to produce good poetry is that we, humans, must reckon with hopelessness. Let’s use days like these to be hopeful.