Poets & Writers
Published on Poets & Writers (https://www.pw.org)

Home > The New Year

The New Year [1]

Poetry [2]
1.4.22

“i am running into a new year / and the old years blow back / like a wind,” writes Lucille Clifton in her poem “i am running into a new year,” which is included in The Collected Poems of Lucille Clifton 1965-2010 edited by Kevin Young and Michael S. Glaser (BOA Editions, 2015). In this popular poem, Clifton writes about encountering her past as she moves into the future: “it will be hard to let go / of what i said to myself / about myself / when i was sixteen and / twenty-six and thirty-six.” Write a poem about the feeling you get when entering a new year. What are you taking with you, and what are you leaving behind? For further inspiration, read this Washington Post article by Stephanie Burt [3] about the tradition of greeting a new year with poetry.


Source URL:https://www.pw.org/content/the_new_year

Links
[1] https://www.pw.org/content/the_new_year [2] https://www.pw.org/genre/poetry [3] https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2020/01/04/poems-that-capture-hopes-fears-about-new-year/