“So much of any year is flammable,” writes Naomi Shihab Nye in her poem “Burning the Old Year”—and whether the old year ignited or crackled or sputtered in ways good or bad for you, New Year’s marks a time of transition and transformation, a time for considering how we may choose to carry ourselves into the future. “I begin again with the smallest numbers,” Nye says later in the poem, and so too do we begin again, word by word, line by line, with a new year of art and poetry on the horizon.
Begin 2017 with poetry by reading our selection of poems for New Year’s, and sign up for Poem-a-Day to receive a poem in your inbox for every day of the new year, as well as our Academy of American Poets newsletter for the latest updates and news from the Academy.