My Year in Poems

Reflecting on 2023 and looking ahead to 2024

Happy New Year, friends! Thanks so much for joining me on this journey. I’ve never undertaken a newsletter before, and I confess that I’m a bit nervous about it. But to have had so many of my friends sign up already has been truly encouraging. I appreciate each of you and look forward to enjoying literature and stories together.

Looking Backward

This past year was my fourth time through sharing a poem a day on Facebook. I started back in 2016, as American political discourse was becoming increasingly rancorous (see this post for more on that: “Poetry as a Way of Life.”)

I repeated the experiment in 2018 and again in 2020. For some reason, long-ago-forgotten, I took two years off and started up again in 2023. Finding and sharing these poems has been a labor of love, and I hope they also provide a little positive disruption to my friends’ timelines and enrich the social media experience.

The hashtag I chose this year was #worldinwords, which I thought succinctly captured the imaginative force of a good poem. The best poems create a world in miniature, with the author bringing to life characters and ideas that are otherwise inaccessible. I’m often pleasantly surprised by which poems resonate with my friends, so as we closed out 2023, I identified the 10 most popular of the year. See that list below, where you’ll also find links to access any you would like to read. Do please let me know which are your favorites.

Top 10 Poems from 2023

“The Tyger” by William Blake (#10)

Blake’s poem is memorable for its imagery, repetition, and central question about the source of pain and terror that’s all too ubiquitous: “What immortal hand or eye, / Could frame thy fearful symmetry?” The most perplexing challenge the poem poses is in its haunting line, “Did he who made the Lamb make thee?”—an allusion to Blake’s companion poem “The Lamb” (in addition to Christian and Hebrew scriptures). If we know something of the creator based on his creations, how do we square the loving with the awful? There are no answers in this poem, only questions, but they are a compelling prod to multiple and meaningful re-readings.

“Grief” by Barbara Crooker (#9)

Crooker’s poem was new to me this year, but I appreciated the way she captured the experience of grief as being stuck, with time compared to insistently running water, a river passing the mourner by. The use of the poem’s title as the subject of the first line immediately involves readers in that swift movement and has him desperate for some kind of anchor. The powerful use of enjambment continuing line by line keeps the reader imbalanced, matching the experience of the speaker’s grief. These run-on lines are interspersed with hard stops (such as in line 8) that convey the speaker’s resolve and insistence that crossing over the river of grief, going with the flow, is a form of betrayal to their loved one. This poem sticks with you long after you finish.

“Wondrous” by Sarah Freligh (#8)

How can language conjure characters out of thin air and make us care about them, Freligh ponders. Perhaps in the same way it conjures the past, as Freligh herself does in this poignant poem. The simplicity of the situation described (a mother reading E. B. White’s Charlotte’s Web to her children) opens up to surprising depths by intertwining the speaker’s, her mother’s, and White’s processing love and loss through the creative use of language.

“Seven Stanzas at Easter” by John Updike (#7)

I regularly share this poem at Easter for its ability to defamiliarize what we could easily take for granted. Updike’s unsentimental depiction of Jesus’ resurrection is never not shocking. The description of Christ’s victory over death in scientific terms (“the cells’ dissolution,” “the molecules reknit,” “the amino acids rekindle”) underscores the primacy of spiritual realities as undergirding material ones. And the vivid imagery and insistent tone of the poem’s close can help us recover the astonishment and, yes, hope that we should feel at such news.

“God’s Grandeur” by Gerard Manley Hopkins (#6)

I talk a bit about Hopkins and his poetry in this post from several years back: “An Experiment in Poetry: Gerard Manley Hopkins Marries Thought to Feeling.” “God’s Grandeur” in particular is a rich poem, both theologically and aesthetically. Hopkins uses the sonnet form (in this case, the Italian [aka the Petrarchan] sonnet), but with his unique twist of irregular rhythm and line length. Be sure to read this one out loud for full effect (or listen here). The lush sounds and dense alliteration reinforce the awe (or “ah!”) of God’s grandeur that we’re meant to experience.

“For the Student Who Used AI to Write a Paper” by Joseph Fasano (#5)

The human element of this poem—a teacher pleading with his student to embrace what’s best for him even if difficult—stands in stark contrast to the mechanical and utilitarian production of words via generative artificial intelligence. I confess to not understanding the opening lines (“Now I let it fall back / in the grasses”). The referent for “it” is unclear, for example (the student’s paper? his frustration? the student’s excuses?), and “grasses” is an unusual choice. Perhaps the enigma is explained, or at least justified, by the final line (“Love is for the ones who love the work”). Reading, writing, communicating, understanding all take work, but what else are we here for?

“Watching the Six-Part Pride and Prejudice, Mid-Chemo, with My Sister” by Donna Masini (#4)

How we long for happy endings. How we don’t often get them. That tension is at the heart of Masini’s intimate portrayal of sisterly affection in the midst of agonizing circumstance. The tension is introduced in the opening juxtaposition of “start stopping.” It’s clever, and reminds us that unlike life, we have some control of stories—what we write or read, when and how we do so. But so often we have little control of our lives outside the story. Even still, we need the stories to make sense of and cope with what befalls us. Story, in fact, insofar as we affirm it, provides the broader framing of our lives. The speaker, after all, keeps her sister alive by sharing her story with us. And the ambiguity of the final line (“The movie was unbelievable. / Unbelievable.”) has choked me up each time I’ve revisited the poem.

“To My Dear and Loving Husband” by Anne Bradstreet (#3)

I shared this poem on my husband’s birthday because it encapsulates so much of what I appreciate about our relationship—a true partnership that makes us both rich beyond measure (even if not fiscally—ha!). The opening “if / then” hypothetical syllogisms also seem somewhat fitting in a poem used to honor a philosopher (my husband, not Bradstreet’s). I also love the boastful tone Bradstreet’s speaker adopts. It’s a bit sassy. And the ending note that extends their love beyond death with hints at the resurrection. Appropriately enough, Bradstreet is my ancestor (12 generations back), so the health of her marriage does, I suppose, directly bear on mine.

“Annabel Lee” by Edgar Allan Poe (#2)

A hauntingly beautiful poem whose lilting melody is deeply incongruent with its message. (Hint: it’s not a love poem, at least not one you’d want directed toward you.) Even still, Poe is a master craftsman, and his ability to establish atmosphere and create a believable character is on full display here. I shared this poem on FB after watching Netflix’s Pale Blue Eye, an intriguing detective story built from Poe-esque gothic elements and packed with allusions to his work. Poe himself is a character, and while many critics feel the film missed its mark, I found it a fun homage to the great writer’s work.

“The Puzzle” by Howard Nemerov (#1)

I suspect this poem led the pack primarily because I shared a picture of my recently completed puzzle with it, though admittedly the poem is a good one. I appreciate how Nemerov uses puzzle-solving as an analogy of our search for wholeness. While that seems an obvious comparison, Nemerov handles it deftly and complexifies it with religious overtones. The children who work on the puzzle “bow their heads,” a nod to the divine law behind the law of nature and to the source of our discontent over a broken world. It’s only devotion that can fix it—cleverly explored through the act of rebuilding a scene piece by puzzle piece. There’s a particularly clever word play on “mosaic law” in there, too, that is the key to aligning “the real world” (the broken world of the puzzle and of our lives) with the ideal.

Dowdle Folk Art Puzzle, Paris City of Lights

My Favorites of 2023

Beyond the ones listed above, I found several poems last year that profoundly resonated with me. Below are the ones that most stood out (presented in the order in which I originally shared them on FB). For now, I’m just offering the list and links, but I plan to devote a separate blog post (or posts) to exploring what I appreciated about them. Do take some time to check out a few for now, and we’ll revisit them as time goes by. Let me know, too, which ones I should especially focus on.

• “Undivided attention” by Taylor Mali

• “I Return to the Church” by Carolyn Marie Rodgers

• “Mercy” by David Baker

• “Canticle in the Fish’s Belly” by Rachel Richardson

• “The Map of the World Confused with Its Territory” by Susan Stewart

• “The Amen Stone” by Yehuda Amichai

• “Prayer” by Christian Wiman

• “The Word That Is a Prayer” by Ellery Akers

• “We Used Our Words We Used What Words We Had” by Franny Choi

• “The Work of Happiness” by May Sarton

• “With Neighbors One Afternoon” by William Stafford

Hopes and Plans for the Coming Year

So I’ve been thinking about how to approach 2024 with my goal of sharing more poetry in mind. I want to continue on offering FB friends a poem a day, but to keep it fresh, I thought it might be good to cover a different poet each week (#poetweekly). I’ll start with Emily Dickinson. Next week, I’ll collect up the ones I’ve shared on FB and offer a bit of commentary. That will be my plan for each poet I cover, with one post released each Monday. (God [and my schedule] willing!)

It will be a good exercise for me, to write more and to promote literature that I love. I hope it will be of benefit to others, too. I’ll be interested to get your feedback and suggestions. I think there’s a way to post comments on these posts, but admittedly I’m still learning the ins and outs of Substack. I may have to make adjustments, but you can always email me at mbaggett@hc.edu with ideas.

Thanks for joining me! And please share if there’s anyone you think may appreciate this exploration of poetry, literature, and really stories of all kinds!

Sincerely,

Marybeth