January Poems And Quotes

Nothing is original. Steal from anywhere that resonates with inspiration or fuels your imagination. Devour old films, new films, music, books, paintings, photographs, poems, dreams, random conversations, architecture, bridges, street signs, trees, clouds, bodies of water, light and shadows. Select only things to steal from that speak directly to your soul. If you do this, your work (and theft) will be authentic. Authenticity is invaluable; originality is non-existent. And don’t bother concealing your thievery - celebrate it if you feel like it. In any case, always remember what Jean-Luc Godard said: “It’s not where you take things from - it’s where you take them to." [MovieMaker Magazine #53 - Winter, January 22, 2004 ]

Sentences may alter the weather, and poems might tear down walls. Stories may change the world.

To read a poem in January is as lovely as to go for a walk in June.

We can gain a lot more striving for harmonious coexistence than we can by giving in to hate-filled rage and fear-driven ignorance.

The thousands small birds of January in their smooth soaring cloud finding the trees.

The Snow Man" One must have a mind of winter To regard the frost and the boughs Of the pine-trees crusted with snow; And have been cold a long time To behold the junipers shagged with ice, The spruces rough in the distant glitter Of the January sun; and not to think Of any misery in the sound of the wind, In the sound of a few leaves, Which is the sound of the land Full of the same wind That is blowing in the same bare place For the listener, who listens in the snow, And, nothing himself, beholds Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is. Wallace Stevens, The Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens. (Vintage; Reissue edition February 19, 1990)

December is... by Stewart Stafford December is all that we give, And whatever we receive, It is those who surround us, And those who have taken leave. December is celebrating light, Where only darkness dwells, It is the ripping of wrapping paper, And tempting culinary smells. December is letting go, Of all the past year's fails, And starting anew in January, As time again chases its tail. © Stewart Stafford, 2021. All rights reserved.

Look: this is January the worst onslaught is ahead of us Don't be lured by these soft grey afternoons these sunsets cut from pink and violet tissue-paper by the thought the days are lengthening Don't let the solstice fool you: our lives will always be a stew of contradictions the worst moment of winter can come in April when the peepers are stubbornly still and our bodies plod on without conviction and our thoughts cramp down before the sheer arsenal of everything that tries us: this battering, blunt-edged life

And let my poem be transparent as a windowpane against which a straying bee hits its head — Anna Kamienska, from “A Prayer That Will Be Answered” Too darlness (Flambard, January 1, 1994)

Ink runs from the corners of my mouth. There is no happiness like mine. I have been eating poetry. The librarian does not believe what she sees. Her eyes are sad and she walks with her hands in her dress. The poems are gone. The light is dim. The dogs are on the basement stairs and coming up. Their eyeballs roll, their blond legs burn like brush. The poor librarian begins to stamp her feet and weep. She does not understand. When I get on my knees and lick her hand, she screams. I am a new man. I snarl at her and bark. I romp with joy in the bookish dark.

In January 1821, Thomas Jefferson wrote John Adams to “encourage a hope that the human mind will some day get back to the freedom it enjoyed 2000 years ago.” This wish for a return to the era of philosophy would put Jefferson in the same period as Titus Lucretius Carus, thanks to whose six-volume poem De Rerum Naturum (On the Nature of Things) we have a distillation of the work of the first true materialists: Leucippus, Democritus, and Epicurus. These men concluded that the world was composed of atoms in perpetual motion, and Epicurus, in particular, went on to argue that the gods, if they existed, played no part in human affairs. It followed that events like thunderstorms were natural and not supernatural, that ceremonies of worship and propitiation were a waste of time, and that there was nothing to be feared in death.

Delvig's best poem is the one he dedicated to Pushkin, his schoolmate, in January 1815. A boy of sixteen, prophesying in exact detail literary immortality to a boy of fifteen, and doing it in a poem that is itself immortal - this is a combination of intuitive genius and actual destiny to which I can find no parallel in the history of world poetry.

Lady, that soft skin, Your bones and mine Will all be dust Before another mountain’s raised. No oceans, Not a river, Hardly a stream Will dry Before our eyes do, And our hearts. – But should I love you less, For such ephemerality? – I think the more instead. For our love’s in the real world; Profane and carnal, at times banal, But in our human sight, sublime. No greater, but quite different To dying suns and levelled range compared We share from our two separate selves A happenstance understanding, An unfateful fate, Designed by, decreed by nothing, Ungiven, not granted, But ours the more for that, The thing no thing can ever learn, The first and final lesson: Mortality is a quality of life. (January–February 1979)

When I said I wasn’t with another girl the January after we fell in love for the 3rd time, it’s because it wasn’t actual sex. In the February that began our radio silence, it was actual sex. I hate the tight shirts that go below your waistline. Not only do they make you look too young, but then your torso is a giraffe’s neck attached to tiny legs. I screamed at myself in the subway for writing poems about you still. I made a scene. I think about you almost each morning, and roughly every five days, I still believe you’re there. I still masturbate to you. When we got really bad, I would put another coat of mop water on the floor of the bar to make sure you were asleep when I got to my side of the bed. You are the only person to whom I’ve lied, knowing I was telling the truth. I miss the way your neck wraps around my face like a cave we are both lost in. I remember when you said being with me is like being alone with company. My friend Sarah wrote a poem about pink ponies. I’m scared you’re my pink pony. Hers is dead. It is really sad. You’re not dead. You live in Ohio, or Washington, or Wherever. You are a shadow my body leaves on other girls. I have a growing queue of things I know will make you laugh and I don’t know where to put them. I mourn like you’re dead. If you had asked me to stay, I would not have said no. It would never mean yes.

I will warm the great outdoors for the whole of January if I can.

It’s not over yet. A dream can spend all night fighting off the morning. Let me start again. —Elizabeth Willis, from "Ephemeral Stream." Poem-A-Day January 2, 2014

What is it about the January feeling— past everything else, low-glowing hunger that propels me around

Teach us to sit still. — T.S. Eliot, from “Ash Wednesday,” Selected Poems (Faber & Faber; 80th ed. Edition, May 7, 2009) Originally January 1, 1936.

To read a poem in January is as lovely as to go for a walk in June

THERE’S A KAVEH AKBAR POEM that begins, “it’s been January for months in both directions,

In the early summer of 1846 he moved his family to a cottage in Fordham, which was then far out in the country. He was ill and Virginia was dying, so that he was in no condition to do much work. As a result, their meagre income vanished; when winter game they even lacked money to buy fuel. A friend who visited the cottage wrote a description of Virginia's plight: There was no clothing on the bed... but a snow white spread and sheets. The weather was cold, and the sick lady had the dreadful chills that accompany the hectic fever of consumption. She lay on the straw bed, wrapped in her husband's great-coat, with a large tortoise-shell cat on her bosom. The wonderful cat seemed conscious of her great usefulness. The coat and the cat were the sufferer's only means of warmth... A public appeal for funds was made in the newspapers -- an act which Poe, of course, resented. But Virginia was beyond all human aid. She died on January 30, 1847, and her death marked the end of the sanest period in her husband's life. He plunged into the writing of a book-length mystical and pseudo-scientific work entitled Eureka, in which he set forth his theories of the universe. He intended it as a prose poem, and as such is should be judged, rather than as a scientific explanation of matters beyond it's author's ken.

America I’ve given you all and now I’m nothing. America two dollars and twentyseven cents January 17, 1956. I can’t stand my own mind. America when will we end the human war? Go fuck yourself with your atom bomb. I don’t feel good don’t bother me. I won’t write my poem till I’m in my right mind. America when will you be angelic? When will you take off your clothes? When will you look at yourself through the grave? When will you be worthy of your million Trotskyites? America why are your libraries full of tears? America when will you send your eggs to India? I’m sick of your insane demands. When can I go into the supermarket and buy what I need with my good looks? America after all it is you and I who are perfect not the next world. Your machinery is too much for me. You made me want to be a saint. There must be some other way to settle this argument. Burroughs is in Tangiers I don’t think he’ll come back it’s sinister. Are you being sinister or is this some form of practical joke? I’m trying to come to the point. I refuse to give up my obsession. America stop pushing I know what I’m doing. America the plum blossoms are falling. I haven’t read the newspapers for months, everyday somebody goes on trial for murder. America I feel sentimental about the Wobblies. America I used to be a communist when I was a kid I’m not sorry. I smoke marijuana every chance I get. I sit in my house for days on end and stare at the roses in the closet. When I go to Chinatown I get drunk and never get laid. My mind is made up there’s going to be trouble. You should have seen me reading Marx. My psychoanalyst thinks I’m perfectly right. I won’t say the Lord’s Prayer. I have mystical visions and cosmic vibrations. America I still haven’t told you what you did to Uncle Max after he came over from Russia. I’m addressing you. Are you going to let your emotional life be run by Time Magazine? I’m obsessed by Time Magazine. I read it every week. Its cover stares at me every time I slink past the corner candystore. I read it in the basement of the Berkeley Public Library. It’s always telling me about responsibility. Businessmen are serious. Movie producers are serious. Everybody’s serious but me. It occurs to me that I am America. I am talking to myself again. ...

Edgar Allan Poe was born on January 19th in Boston, Massachusetts in 1809, and died in his adopted home of Baltimore, Maryland on October 7th, 1849, making him the first American writer in this series.

Because I live in south Florida I store cans of black beans and gallons of water in my closet in preparation for hurricane season. I throw a hurricane party in January. You’re my only guest. We play Marco Polo in bed. The sheets are wet like the roof caved in. There’s a million of me in you. You try to count me as I taste the sweat on the back of your neck. I call you Sexy Sexy, and we do everything twice. After, still sweating, we drink Crystal Light out of plastic water bottles. We discuss the pros and cons of vasectomies. It’s not invasive you say. I wrap the bedsheet around my waist. Minor surgery you say. You slur the word surgery, like it’s a garnish on a dish you just prepared. I eat your hair until you agree to no longer talk about vasectomies. We agree to have children someday, and that they will be beautiful even if they’re not. As I watch your eyes grow heavy like soggy clothes, I tell you When I grow up I’m going to be a famous writer. When I’m famous I’ll sign autographs on Etch-A-Sketches. I’ll write poems about writing other poems, so other poets will get me. You open your eyes long enough to tell me that when you grow up, you’re going to be a steamboat operator. Your pores can never be too clean you say. I say I like your pores just fine. I say Your pores are tops. I kiss you with my whole mouth, and you fall asleep next to my molars. In the morning, we eat french toast with powdered sugar. I wear the sugar like a mustache. You wear earmuffs and pretend we’re in a silent movie. I mouth Olive juice, but I really do love you. This is an awesome hurricane party you say, but it comes out as a yell because you can’t gauge your own volume with the earmuffs on. You yell I want to make something cute with you. I say Let me kiss the insides of your arms. You have no idea what I just said, but you like the way I smile.

I know the purity of pure despair, My shadow pinned against a sweating wall. That place among the rocks—is it a cave, Or winding path? The edge is what I have. — Theodore Roethke, from “In a Dark Time,” The Collected Poems of Theodore Roethke. (Anchor Books January 10, 1975) Originally published 1961.

As far apart from you as one eye from the other, out of this affliction I’ve taken on will be born the gaze that deserves you at last. — Julio Cortazar, “If I’m To Live,” Save Twilight: Selected Poems. (City Lights Publishers; 2nd Printing edition January 1, 2001) Originally published October 12th 1980.

To fill the days up of his dateless year Flame from Queen Helen to Queen Guenevere? For first of all the sphery signs whereby Love severs light from darkness, and most high, In the white front of January there glows The rose-red sign of Helen like a rose: And gold-eyed as the shore-flower shelterless Whereon the sharp-breathed sea blows bitterness, A storm-star that the seafarers of love Strain their wind-wearied eyes for glimpses of, Shoots keen through February's grey frost and damp The lamplike star of Hero for a lamp; The star that Marlowe sang into our skies With mouth of gold, and morning in his eyes; And in clear March across the rough blue sea The signal sapphire of Alcyone Makes bright the blown bross of the wind-foot year; And shining like a sunbeam-smitten tear Full ere it fall, the fair next sign in sight Burns opal-wise with April-coloured light When air is quick with song and rain and flame, My birth-month star that in love's heaven hath name Iseult, a light of blossom and beam and shower, My singing sign that makes the song-tree flower; Next like a pale and burning pearl beyond The rose-white sphere of flower-named Rosamond Signs the sweet head of Maytime; and for June Flares like an angered and storm-reddening moon Her signal sphere, whose Carthaginian pyre Shadowed her traitor's flying sail with fire; Next, glittering as the wine-bright jacinth-stone, A star south-risen that first to music shone, The keen girl-star of golden Juliet bears Light northward to the month whose forehead wears Her name for flower upon it, and his trees Mix their deep English song with Veronese; And like an awful sovereign chrysolite Burning, the supreme fire that blinds the night, The hot gold head of Venus kissed by Mars, A sun-flower among small sphered flowers of stars, The light of Cleopatra fills and burns The hollow of heaven whence ardent August yearns; And fixed and shining as the sister-shed Sweet tears for Phaethon disorbed and dead, The pale bright autumn's amber-coloured sphere, That through September sees the saddening year As love sees change through sorrow, hath to name Francesca's; and the star that watches flame The embers of the harvest overgone Is Thisbe's, slain of love in Babylon, Set in the golden girdle of sweet signs A blood-bright ruby; last save one light shines An eastern wonder of sphery chrysopras, The star that made men mad, Angelica's; And latest named and lordliest, with a sound Of swords and harps in heaven that ring it round, Last love-light and last love-song of the year's, Gleams like a glorious emerald Guenevere's.

Here is dust remembers it was a rose one time and lay in a woman’s hair. Here is dust remembers it was a woman one time and in her hair lay a rose. Oh things one time dust, what else now is it you dream and remember of old days? ― Carl Sandburg, “Dust,” The Complete Poems of Carl Sandburg. (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt; First Edition edition January 6, 2003) Originally published 1950.

Armpits smell of linden blossom, lilacs give a whiff of ink. If only we could wage love-making all day long without end, love so detailed and elastic that when the nightfall came, we would exchange each other like prisoners of war, five times, no less! — Vera Pavlova, “53,” If There is Something to Desire: One Hundred Poems. Translated by Steven Seymour. (Knopf; 1St Edition edition January 19, 2010)

Not the Happiness but the Consequence of Happiness He wakes up in the silence of the winter woods, the silence of birds not singing, knowing he will not hear his voice all day. He remembers what the brown owl sounded like while he was sleeping. The man wakes in the frigid morning thinking about women. Not with desire so much as with a sense of what is not. The January silence is the sound of his feet in the snow, a squirrel scolding, or the scraping calls of a single blue jay. Something of him dances there, apart and gravely mute. Many days in the woods he wonders what it is that he has for so long hunted down. We go hand in hand, he thinks, into the dark pleasure, but we are rewarded alone, just as we are married into aloneness. He walks the paths doing the strange mathematics of the brain, multiplying the spirit. He thinks of caressing her feet as she kept dying. For the last four hours, watching her gradually stop as the hospital slept. Remembers the stunning coldness of her head when he kissed her just after. There is light or more light, darkness and less darkness. It is, he decides, a quality without definition. How strange to discover that one lives with the heart as one lives with a wife. Even after many years, nobody knows what she is like. The heart has a life of its own. It gets free of us, escapes, is ambitiously unfaithful. Dies out unaccountably after eight years, blooms unnecessarily and too late. Like the arbitrary silence in the white woods, leaving tracks in the snow he cannot recognize.

Remembering" When there was air, when you could breathe any day if you liked, and if you wanted to you could run. I used to climb those hills back of town and follow a gully so my eyes were at ground level and could look out through grass as the stems bent in their tensile way, and see snow mountains follow along, the way distance goes. Now I carry those days in a tiny box wherever I go, I open the lid like this and let the light glimpse and then glance away. There is a sigh like my breath when I do this. Some days I do this again and again. William Stafford, The Darkness Around Us Is Deep (Harper Perennial; Paperback Original edition, January 12, 1994)

[you shall above all things be glad and young] you shall above all things be glad and young For if you’re young,whatever life you wear it will become you;and if you are glad whatever’s living will yourself become. Girlboys may nothing more than boygirls need: i can entirely her only love whose any mystery makes every man’s flesh put space on;and his mind take off time that you should ever think,may god forbid and (in his mercy) your true lover spare: for that way knowledge lies,the foetal grave called progress,and negation’s dead undoom. I’d rather learn from one bird how to sing than teach ten thousand stars how not to dance E.E. Cummings, 100 Selected Poems ‎(Grove Press, January 10, 1994)

NOBEL PRIZE–WINNER, British poet laureate, essayist, novelist, journalist, and short story writer Rudyard Kipling wrote for both children and adults, with many of his stories and poems focusing on British imperialism in India. His works were popular during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, even though many deemed his political views too conservative. Born on December 30, 1865, in Bombay, India, Kipling had a happy early childhood, but in 1871 he and his sister were sent to a boarding house called Lorne Lodge in Southsea, where he spent many disappointing years. He was accepted in 1877 to United Services College in the west of England. In 1882, he returned to his family in India, working as a journalist, associate editor, and correspondent for many publications, including Civil and Military Gazette, a publication in Lahore, Pakistan. He also wrote poetry. He found great success in writing after his 1889 return to England, where he was eventually appointed poet laureate. Some of his most famous writings, including The Jungle Book, Kim, Puck of Pook’s Hill, and Rewards and Fairies, saw publication in the 1890s and 1900s. It was during this period that he married Caroline Balestier, the sister of an American friend and publishing colleague. The couple settled in Vermont, where their two daughters were born. After a quarrel with his brother-in-law and grumblings from his American neighbors about his controversial political views, Kipling and his family returned to England. There, Caroline gave birth to a son in 1896. Tragically, their eldest daughter died in 1899. Later, Kipling’s son perished in battle during World War I. In 1907 Kipling was awarded the Nobel Prize. He died on January 18, 1936, and his ashes are buried in Poets’ Corner in Westminster Abbey.

IN JANUARY 1959 Police Chief Herbert Jenkins found a poem tacked to a bulletin board at his departmental headquarters. Tellingly, the anonymous author had titled it “The Plan of Improvement,” in sarcastic tribute to Mayor Hartsfield’s 1952 program for the city’s expansion and economic progress. The poem looked back over a decade of racial change and spoke volumes about the rising tide of white resentment. It began with a brief review of the origins of residential transition and quickly linked the desegregation of working-class neighborhoods to the desegregation of the public spaces surrounding them: Look my children and you shall see, The Plan of Improvement by William B. On a great civic venture we’re about to embark And we’ll start this one off at old Mozeley Park. White folks won’t mind losing homes they hold dear; (If it doesn’t take place on an election year) Before they have time to get over the shock, We’ll have that whole section—every square block. I’ll try something different for plan number two This time the city’s golf courses will do. They’ll mix in the Club House and then on the green I might get a write up in Life Magazine. And now comes the schools for plan number three To mix them in classrooms just fills me with glee; For I have a Grandson who someday I pray Will thank me for sending this culture his way. And for my finale, to do it up right, The buses, theatres and night spots so bright; Pools and restaurants will be mixed up at last And my Plan of Improvement will be going full blast. The sarcasm in the poem is unmistakable, of course, but so are the ways in which the author—either a policeman himself or a friend of one—clearly linked the city’s pursuit of “progress” with a litany of white losses. In the mind of the author, and countless other white Atlantans like him, the politics of progress was a zero-sum game in which every advance for civil rights meant an equal loss for whites.

gee i like to think of dead" gee i like to think of dead it means nearer because deeper firmer since darker than little round water at one end of the well       it's too cool to be crooked and it's too firm to be hard but it's sharp and it's thick and it loves,      every old thing falls in rosebugs and jackknives and kittens and pennies they all sit there looking at each other having the fastest time because they've never met before dead's more even than how many ways of sitting on your head your unnatural hair has in the morning dead's clever too like POF goes the alarm off and the little striker having the best time tickling away every- body's brain so everybody just puts out their finger and they stuff the poor thing all full of fingers dead has a smile like the nicest man you've never met who maybe winks at you in a streetcar and you pretend you don't but really you do see and you are My how glad he winked and hope he'll do it again or if it talks about you somewhere behind your back it makes your neck feel all pleasant and stoopid      and if dead says may i have this one and was never intro- duced you say Yes because you know you want it to dance with you and it wants to and it can dance and Whocares dead's fine like hands do you see that water flowerpots in windows but they live higher in their house than you so that's all you see but you don't want to dead's happy like the way underclothes All so differ- ently solemn and inti and sitting on one string dead never says my dear,Time for your musiclesson and you like music and to have somebody play who can but you know you never can and why have to? dead's nice like a dance where you danced simple hours and you take all your prickley-clothes off and squeeze- into-largeness without one word      and you lie still as anything      in largeness and this largeness begins to give you,the dance all over again and you,feel all again all over the way men you liked made you feel when they touched you(but that's not all)because largeness tells you so you can feel what you made,men feel when,you touched,them dead's sorry like a thistlefluff-thing which goes land- ing away all by himself on somebody's roof or some- thing where who-ever-heard-of-growing and nobody expects you to anyway dead says come with me he says(and why ever not)into the round well and see the kitten and the penny and the jackknife and the rosebug                                 and you say Sure you say  (like that)  sure i'll come with you you say for i like kittens i do and jackknives i do and pennies i do and rosebugs i do E.E. Cummings, 100 Selected Poems. (Grove Press, January 10, 1994) Originally published 1954.

New research is lending texture and credence to what generations of storytellers have known in their bones – that books, poems, movies, and real-life stories can affect the way we think and even, by extension, the way we act ["The Power of Story," Aeon, January 12, 2015].

January 26: Kazan asks Miller to escort Marilyn to a party that Charles Feldman is hosting in honor of Miller. Miller and Marilyn spend time together visiting bookshops and going on a picnic. He watches her delight in reading an e.e. cummings poem.

We have slept together in A lonely bed. Now my heart Turns towards you, awake at last, Penitent, lost in the last Loneliness. Speak to me. Talk To me. Break the black silence. Speak of a tree full of leaves, Of a flying bird, the new Moon in the sunset, a poem, A book, a person - all the Casual healing speech Of your resonant, quiet voice. — Kenneth Rexroth, from “Loneliness,” The Collected Shorter Poems of Kenneth Rexroth, (New Directions January 17, 1966)

Some time when the river is ice ask me mistakes I have made. Ask me whether what I have done is my life. Others have come in their slow way into my thought, and some have tried to help or to hurt: ask me what difference their strongest love or hate has made. I will listen to what you say. You and I can turn and look at the silent river and wait. We know the current is there, hidden; and there are comings and goings from miles away that hold the stillness exactly before us. What the river says, that is what I say. — William Stafford, “Ask Me,” Ask Me; 100 Essential Poems of William Stafford (Graywolf Press, January 7th 2014)

We have slept together in A lonely bed. Now my heart Turns towards you, awake at last, Penitent, lost in the last Loneliness. Speak to me. Talk To me. Break the black silence. Speak of a tree full of leaves, Of a flying bird, the new Moon in the sunset, a poem, A book, a person - all the Casual hfrankealing speech Of your resonant, quiet voice. — Kenneth Rexroth, from “Loneliness,” The Collected Shorter Poems of Kenneth Rexroth, (New Directions January 17, 1966)

I mean that words in that world can sometimes rise from their ink-and-cotton cradles and reshape the nature of reality. Sentences may alter the weather, and poems might tear down walls. Stories may change the world.

Words in that world can sometimes rise from their ink-and-cotton cradles and reshape the nature of reality. Sentences may alter the weather, and poems might tear down walls. Stories may change the world.

Did you like him?” Poppy hesitated. “Mr. Rutledge is . . . unsettling. He’s charming, but one has the feeling he’s capable of nearly anything. He’s like some wicked angel from a William Blake poem.” “I wish I could have seen him,” Beatrix said wistfully. “And I wish even more that I could visit the curiosities room. I envy you, Poppy. It’s been so long since anything interesting has happened to me.” Poppy laughed quietly. “What, when we’ve just gone through nearly the entire London season?” Beatrix rolled her eyes. “The London season is about as interesting as a snail race. In January. With dead snails.

O heart, heart, so singularly Intransigent and corruptible, Here we lie entranced by the starlit water, And moments that should each last forever Slide unconsciously by us like water. — Kenneth Rexroth, from “Another Spring,” One Hundred Poems from the Chinese. (New Directions January 17, 1971) Originally published 1956.

The gods were here first, and they’re bigger. They always were, and always will be living it up in their father’s mansion. You only crawled from the drain a few millenia ago, after inventing legs for yourself so you could stand, inventing fists in order to raise them and curse the heavens. Do the gods see us? Will the waters be rising soon? The waters will be rising soon. Find someone or something to cling to. — Kim Addonizio, from “Storm Catechism,” Lucifer at the Starlite: Poems. (W. W. Norton & Company; unknown edition January 31, 2011)

There’s a light that can make finding a thing look more than faintly like falling across it—you must kneel, make an offering. I threw my compass away years ago. I have passed through that light. —Carl Phillips, from “That it Might Save, or Drown Them”, Wild is the West (‎Farrar, Straus and Giroux (January 23, 2018)

I, who have seen you amid the primal things, Was angry when they spoke your name In ordinary places. — Ezra Pound, from “Francesca,” Selected Poems of Ezra Pound. (New Directions January 17, 1957)

An Aussie January by Stewart Stafford Dead air in the fallen forest, The black goat circled silently, Three hillside crosses sombre, January, warm as an Aussie winter. Boy brandishing a thin, red worm, Cheerful march on raspberry feet, Turning left at the silver potatoes, Leftovers from the gnome’s feast. 4 a.m. wind a rolling bandmaster, Whipping a flagpole cord to a beat, Tingling every wind chime around, The hibernating squirrel missed it. © Stewart Stafford, 2023. All rights reserved.

[The Gaze of an Invisible Stranger] In western Europe and north America In the cities of cruelty, racism, freedom & democracy, Cities of exile and alienation, You see many young people Who’d rather die than greet a stranger, You observe how they master the art of ignoring And not acknowledging the humanity of anyone Who is not their height and weight Whose features, skin color, and eyes are different than theirs… In return, you observe cities filled with older people Who delight at a nod or greeting from any stranger Who are hungry for the slightest kind human touch From any by passerby… Making you, the Invisible Stranger, wonder: Did these same elderly folks raise the young ones? Are they merely inheriting a world of their creation? Do the young ones realize The isolation, loneliness, and desolation awaiting them tomorrow? [Original poem published in Arabic on January 3, 2023, at ahewar.org]

I prefer it by moonlight – George Seferis, tr. by Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard, from “In the Kyrenia District,” The Collected Poems 1924-1955 (‎ Princeton University Press; 1st edition, January 1, 1971)

[Fashionable Beard] I asked a friend growing a fashionable beard playfully: “Has your beard increased your fans?” “You have no idea how much it has!” He responded. “Do you wonder why people can’t see you clearly without it?” I asked. “This beard reminds me every day that people simply refuse to see things as they are – bare and naked. They will notice and see things covered with any cover, except not as they are!” he added with a laughter. [Original poem published in Arabic on January 16, 2023 at ahewar.org]

[Death by Starvation or Boredom] Many are those who work For cheap wages Only to barely survive One breath at a time… Just one more breath… And others who have so much Yet work simply to kill boredom Only to feel that they are saving A world that is drowning Because of their greed And their love for power and wealth… The first one remains one step or less Closer to dying of starvation; While the second one -who provides the wages of the first one- Remain one step or less closer to dying of boredom… And here lies the irony! It’s as if fate insists on breaking All human barriers To force everyone to choose Between death by starvation or boredom… And owe to those who die of both… [Original poem published in Arabic by ahewar.org on January 28, 2023]

The way we fall from each other like halves of an orange, skin dark as pottery in lamplight. I know it, naked in the light of the fridge, cold plummy resins in our mouths, warm sticky resins of our bodies. By nights we drain the pictures from your head and words from my throat until I find nothing but sounds there. And today, by way of light closing around itself until the river is dark and all I see is your white breath. By way of a young woman’s hunger to taste every part of her lover, even his words. —Anne Michaels, from “The Day Of Jack Chambers” Poems: The Weight of Oranges, Miner's Pond, Skin Divers (Knopf; 1st edition, January 4, 2000)

Everything" the dead do not need aspirin or sorrow, I suppose. but they might need rain. not shoes but a place to walk. not cigarettes, they tell us, but a place to burn. or we're told: space and a place to fly might be the same. the dead don't need me. nor do the living. but the dead might need each other. in fact, the dead might need everything we need and we need so much if we only knew what it was. it is probably everything and we will all probably die trying to get it or die because we don't get it. I hope you will understand when I am dead I got as much as possible. Charles Bukowski, The Roominghouse Madrigals: Early Selected Poems (1946-1966) (Black Sparrow Pr; First Edition, January 1, 1988)

I love women whose hidden desires make horses put an end to their lives at the threshold — Mahmoud Darwish, Unfortunately, It Was Paradise: Selected Poems (University of California Press; 0 edition, January 6, 2003)

José Martí is recognized as the George Washington of Cuba or perhaps better yet, as the Simon Bolivar, the liberator of South America. He was born in Havana on January 28, 1853, to Spanish parents. His mother, Leonor Pérez Cabrera, was a native of the Canary Islands and his father, Mariano Martí Navarro, came from Valencia. Families were big then, and it was not long before José had seven sisters. While still very young his parents took him to Spain, but it was just two years later that they returned to Santa Clara where his father worked as a prison guard. His parents enrolled José at a local public school. In September of 1867, Martí signed up at the Escuela Profesional de Pintura y Escultura de La Habana, an art school for painting and sculpture in Havana. Instead of pursuing art as a career, Martí felt that his real talents were as a writer and poet. By the early age of 16, he had already contributed poems and articles to the local newspapers. In 1865 after hearing the news of Abraham Lincoln’s assassination, he was inspired to seek freedom for the slaves in his country, and to achieve Cuban independence from Spain. In 1868, Cuban landowners started fighting in what came to be known as the Ten Years’ War. Even at this early age, Martí had definite opinions regarding political affairs, and wrote papers and editorials in support of the rebels. His good intentions backfired and he was convicted of treason. After confessing, he was sentenced to serve six years at hard labor. His parents did what they could to have their son freed but failed, even though at the age of sixteen he was still considered a minor. In prison, Martí’s legs were tightly shackled causing him to become sick with severe lacerations on his ankles. Two years later at the age of eighteen, he was released and sent to Spain where he continued his studies. Because of complications stemming from his time in prison, he had to undergo two surgical operations to correct the damage done to his legs by the shackles. End of part 1.

The great light cage has broken up in the air, freeing, I think, about a million birds whose wild ascending shadows will not be back, and all the wires come falling down. No cage, no frightening birds; the rain is brightening now. The face is pale that tried the puzzle of their prison and solved it with an unexpected kiss, whose freckled unsuspected hands alit." — Elizabeth Bishop, “Rain Towards Morning,” from “Four Poems,” The Complete Poems 1927-1979 (Farrar Straus Giroux, January 1, 1983)

nobody can save you nobody can save you but yourself. you will be put again and again into nearly impossible situations. they will attempt again and again through subterfuge, guise and force to make you submit, quit and/or die quietly inside. nobody can save you but yourself and it will be easy enough to fail so very easily but don’t, don’t, don’t. just watch them. listen to them. do you want to be like that? a faceless, mindless, heartless being? do you want to experience death before death? nobody can save you but yourself and you’re worth saving. it’s a war not easily won but if anything is worth winning then this is it. think about it. think about saving your self. Charles Bukowski, Sifting Through the Madness for the Word, the Line, the Way: New Poems (Ecco, January 6, 2004)

Your whole body is A glass of wine Or sweetness destined for me. When I raise my hand, I find in every place a dove Seeking for me, As if, my love, You were made of clay For my very hands of a potter. Your knees, your breasts, Your waist, Disappear in me like in a hollow Of a thirsting earth Where they lose A form, And together We become like a single river, Like a single grain of sand. — Pablo Neruda, “The Potter,” The Essential Neruda: Selected Poems. (City Lights Publishers; Bilingual edition April 1, 2004) Originally published January 1st 1979.

From my loneliness, a lantern takes shape to be used in an emergency during rainstorms. Or donated to miners working in a gold mine. From my loneliness, a carriage is made to be used at tourist spots. Or when the express train derails in bad weather. From my loneliness, a bridge will be built to be used during and after the war for tanks to cross. Or to suddenly be blown up. From my loneliness, a knife is honed to cut paper or peel an apple. And when it rusts, it will be plunged into my heart. — Zeeshan Sahil, “Knife,” Light and Heavy Things: Selected Poems of Zeeshan Sahil. Translated by by Christopher Kennedy. (BOA Editions Ltd., June 4, 2013) Originally published January 1st 2013.

January brings the snow, Makes our feet and fingers glow. February brings the rain, Thaws the frozen lake again. March brings breezes, loud and shrill, To stir the dancing daffodil. April brings out the primrose sweet, Scatters daisies at our feet. May brings flock of pretty lambs, Skipping by their fleecy dams, June brings tulips, lilies, roses, Fills the children's hands with posies. Hot July brings cooling showers, Apricots, and gillyflowers. August brings the sheaves of corn, Then the harvest home is borne. Warm September brings the fruit; Sportsmen then begin to shoot. Fresh October brings the pheasant; Then to gather nuts is pleasant. Dull November brings the blast; Then the leaves are whirling fast. Chill December brings the sleet, Blazing fire, and Christmas treat.