Poems for the cusp
Last lines for a new year
Like reading in bed in the summer, I find the stretch of days between Christmas and New Years to be a time of idle lavishness.
“Leave the dishes,” says Louise Erdrich. “Let the celery rot in the bottom drawer of the refrigerator and an earthen scum harden on the kitchen floor. Leave the black crumbs in the bottom of the toaster. Throw the cracked bowl out and don’t patch the cup. Don’t patch anything. Don’t mend. Buy safety pins. Don’t even sew on a button. Let the wind have its way, then the earth that invades as dust and then the dead foaming up in gray rolls underneath the couch. Talk to them. Tell them they are welcome. Don’t keep all the pieces of the puzzles or the doll’s tiny shoes in pairs, don’t worry who uses whose toothbrush or if anything matches, at all. Except one word to another. Or a thought. Pursue the authentic—decide first what is authentic, then go after it with all your heart. Your heart, that place you don’t even think of cleaning out. That closet stuffed with savage mementos. Don’t sort the paper clips from screws from saved baby teeth or worry if we’re all eating cereal for dinner again. Don’t answer the telephone, ever, or weep over anything at all that breaks. Pink molds will grow within those sealed cartons in the refrigerator. Accept new forms of life and talk to the dead who drift in though the screened windows, who collect patiently on the tops of food jars and books. Recycle the mail, don’t read it, don’t read anything except what destroys the insulation between yourself and your experience or what pulls down or what strikes at or what shatters this ruse you call necessity.”
In the dwindling days of the year I want to accept new forms of life, talk to the dead, pursue the authentic, “…dance, laugh, eat pink cakes, yellow cakes, drink thin, sharp wine.” 1
Early in the morning and just before dusk on these early winter nights, skies are the colour of champagne. Champagne is on the brain; it is a week of such indulgences. Champagne week. Of the beverage, Evelyn Waugh wrote: “Whatever purpose is served by cocktails is more nobly served by champagne in its naked beauty. . . Its uses are limitless from launching ships to reviving the moribund. It is acceptable at every hour of the day and night; it can be drunk with every variety of food. Drunk in excess it has the least direful consequences. If I were confronted with the appalling decision of having to choose one from all the fermented liquors of the world to be my sole companion and stay for the rest of my life, I should choose champagne.”
I have always felt the clean divide of a new year beginning. Each New Year’s Eve, from six in the evening until midnight I am aware of the threshold, I’m toeing its line, anticipating it by writing in my journal, biding time with hors d'oeuvres and wine. I want to carry little into the new year.
In The Glass Essay, Anne Carson writes:
Forget resolutions. Tonight, find a place to put it down.
There is, however, a poem that I would like to carry with me into the new year. It’s by Denise Levertov, and since discovering it I have read it again and again. I can imagine holding it in my hands, feeling the texture of its words against my palms. It begins with this line:
You can read the entire poem here.
May we discover such secrets this year, and may we forget them; we’ll find them again in new and unexpected places when we need them most—all things are dear / that disappear.2
I love this time of year for its deep trenches of reflection and for its proximity to magic; things feel promised and possible on the mantel of the unknown, even if the unknown is a mere flip of the calendar, numbers rearranged to mark a new year.
I’ve been sick for the past two weeks and find that, with sickness, time slows. You’re more attuned to how your body works when it isn’t working. These long days feel unhurried and insulated. The lights on the street below glow, though they are no longer summoning Christmas. The roads are quieter, less cars on them. People have retreated indoors, beginning their hibernations. I was looking forward to this odd week for its indulgences: a surplus of Christmas chocolate, and the four bottles of champagne on the kitchen counter, gifts for my partner’s and my recent engagement. I pictured elaborate cheese plates and coffee tainted with Irish cream. Long, quiet hours spent working on my book. Oysters on New Year’s Eve. Half-jokingly, I blame mercury retrograde. The body had other plans. And so I acquiesce to the sickness, indulging in repose: a carousel of Gatorade, cough syrup, water, orange juice, soup, the trick candy of cherry-flavoured lozenges, watching the honey pour from the jar onto a tea bag. Movies on the couch. Books in bed. Deciding, since I lack the energy to venture outdoors, the pathetic fallacy of the grey weather is fitting. Just as well. Will we see any sunlight before the new year? I’m tempted to google the seven day forecast, find out; in equal measure, I’m fine with not knowing. I’m good with the surprise. This closing line, from the Diane di Prima poem Buddhist New Year Song, echoes in my head:
a madness, or a beginning?
a madness, or a beginning?
a madness, or a beginning?
In my last New Year’s Eve newsletter, I shared a poem called For Calling the Spirit Back from Wandering the Earth in Its Human Feet by Joy Harjo. It’s a piece that shape shifts between readings; a year later a favourite line will turn invisible, and a new line beckons.
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.
. . .
Now you can have a party. Invite everyone you know who loves and supports you. Keep room for those who have no place else to go.
Make a giveaway, and remember, keep the speeches short.
Then, you must do this: help the next person find their way through the dark.
The following poems are written about, or at least evoke, the spirit of these suspenseful, lingering days, the passage of time on the cusp of a new year.
Remember: So much of any year is flammable.3 The temporary is the sacred.4
I hope you enjoy.
If You Knew - Ellen Bass
Burning the Old Year - Naomi Shihab Nye
On a New Year’s Eve - June Jordan
Buddhist New Year Song - Diane Di Prima
First Thought - Lorna Dee Cervantes
New Year Resolve - May Sarton
Absence, Presence - Luisa A. Igloria
on new year’s eve - Evie Shockley
Room in Brooklyn - Anne Carson
Notebook, 1981 - Eileen Myles
Counting, This New Year’s Morning, What Powers Yet Remain To Me - Jane Hirshfield
New Year’s Day - Audre Lorde
Virginia Woolf, The String Quartet
June Jordan, On a New Year’s Eve
Naomi Shihab Nye, Burning the Old Year
June Jordan, On a New Year’s Eve
Thank you for this curation. 🤍 Do you mind me asking where you found “A loose sheet in English, circa 1962”, Louise Bourgeois? Is it from the book Louise Bourgeois: The Return of the Repressed: Psychoanalytic Writings, by any chance?