A Year of Poems: January

My morning practice of reading poetry before I start the busier part of each day has resulted in quite a few thematic collections of poems. I collect them serendipitously and when I reach what feels like a decent number on a topic, I publish them here or over on Bike Style.

When a poem names a specific month—not just a season but the actual month in the Gregorian calendar full of dead Roman emperors and Roman gods—if I'm reading that poem in that actual month I get a little bump of happiness, or perhaps delight the way Ross Gay describes it in The Book of Delights.

So of course I started my collection of poems that directly name months, not knowing whether I would find one for each month or build a catalog big enough that each month would get its own list. Then I realized committing to a time-bound structure like this requires a different method: actual research. 

That doesn't mean I'll end up with a collection worth publishing every month. I don't yet know how much has been said about each month. It's too easy to take poetry about a holiday held in a particular month and count that as being about the month but it isn't; it's about the holiday. My criteria thus include truly being about that set of days and how they feel, primarily in the northern hemisphere since that's where I live.

It seems appropriate to be less than 100% certain about which way this is going to go. After all, this month is named for Janus, the Roman god with two faces who looked both backward and forward. The god's likeness was often carved above doorways, indicating that we can move either direction through a portal. 

For now I'm moving forward. My poetry posts began just over a year ago with my first collection of bike poems, and I'm listing all of those at the end so you can also travel back in time.

Not at all surprising that other people have also compiled lists of January poems, although they often include ones I would label "winter" because they don't actually name the month. Similarly, if a poem is named for the month or mentions it in passing but doesn't feel to me as if it's "about" the experience of living in or through this month I didn't include it.

I resisted the temptation to load it up with poems about making New Year's resolutions. I've had a variety of thoughts about making resolutions over the years, my primary one being, "Why wait for January 1 if it's worth doing at all?".

And now, on to the poetry. If you have a favorite January poem I've missed, please drop a link on the comments to share. 

"Runoff" by Sidney Burris

January’s drop-down menu
leaves everything to the imagination:

"Letter Written During a January Northeaster" by Anne Sexton

The snow has quietness in it; no songs,
no smells, no shouts nor traffic.
When I speak
my own voice shocks me.

"The Snow Man" by Wallace Stevens

To behold the junipers shagged with ice,
The spruces rough in the distant glitter

Of the January sun;

"January" by Betty Adcock

Dusk and snow this hour
in argument have settled
nothing. Light persists,
and darkness

"In January" by Ted Kooser

Beyond the glass, the wintry city
creaks like an ancient wooden bridge.
A great wind rushes under all of us.
The bigger the window, the more it trembles.

"January" by John Updike

The days are short,
The sun a spark,
Hung thin between
The dark and dark.

"New Year's Day" by Kim Addonizio

Today I want   
to resolve nothing.

I only want to walk
a little longer in the cold

blessing of the rain,   
and lift my face to it.

"The Sixth of January" by David Budbill

I can’t say the sun is going down.

We haven’t seen the sun for two months.

Who cares?

"In the Second Week of the New Year" by Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

It brings me real joy

to plant these seeds today

while outside the wind

and snow and cold

do their wintery work.

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

here and now whether or not
anyone hears it this is
where we have come with our age
our knowledge such as it is
and our hopes such as they are

Related reading: Poems on anything

• The Quotidian: Poems Celebrating the Everyday, the Ordinary 
• It Beats the Alternative: Poems on Growing Older 
• We Are the Ones We've Been Waiting For: Poems for Activists and Advocates 
• Making Soup: A Pot Full of Poems

Related reading: Transportation poems

•  “I think/therefore/I ride.” A Bike Rack of Bicycle Poems 
• “Safe passage through countless intersections”: A Baker’s Dozen of Transportation Poems 
• “Do Not Drive Through, This Poem’s In The Way”: Transportation Poems Keep Rolling In 
• Yes, Even More Transportation Poems 
• More Poems on the Bike Rack 
• Walking Poems