Nearly a hundred poems appear in The New Yorker each year. In 2017, these included selections by Paul Muldoon, whose decade-long tenure as the magazine’s poetry editor ended in November, and by Kevin Young, who has succeeded him. We published work by the National Book Award winner Frank Bidart, the current U.S. Poet Laureate, Tracy K. Smith, and such greats as Chana Bloch and John Ashbery, who both died this year. We welcomed several newcomers to our pages, as well, among them Hafizah Geter, Paul Tran, and Tiana Clark. Below is a glimpse at our year in poetry; you can also access these poems in full, along with many others, at the complete poetry archive. Happy reading!
“Mourning What We Thought We Were,” by Frank Bidart (January 23rd)
We were born into an amazing experiment.
At least we thought we were. We knew there was no
escaping human nature: my grandmother
taught me that: my own pitiless nature
taught me that: but we exist inside an order, I
thought, of which history
is the mere shadow—
“The Infinite,” by Charles Simic (February 6th)
The infinite yawns and keeps yawning.
Is it sleepy?
Does it miss Pythagoras?
The sails on Columbus’s three ships?
Does the sound of the surf remind it of itself?
Does it ever sit over a glass of wine
and philosophize?
“The Break-In,” by Hafizah Geter (March 6th)
There are times when every spectator is hungry,
times a thief takes nothing, leaves you a fool
in your inventory.
How one trespass could make all others
suddenly visible. My mother counted
her jewelry and called
overseas. My father counted women
afraid one of us would go
missing. When I close my eyes
I hear my mother saying, “A’aha, this new country,”
my cousins exclaiming “Auntie!”
between the clicking line and their tongues.
“Seen,” by Michele Glazer (March 27th)
Nature that wants to fill in
the gap the Falls
falls in and the eye falls
“At Sea,” by Rebecca Morgan Frank (April 17th)
Every three seconds, to recall captivity,
the mind slipping in on itself and its past,
and knowing it. She sounds like a politician:
I cannot recall. I am afraid I do not remember.
“The Soul’s Soundtrack,” by Yusef Komunyakaa (May 15th)
An echo of Sam Cooke hangs
in bruised air, & for a minute
the silence of fate reigns over
day & night, a tilt of the earth
body & soul caught in a sway
going back to reed & goatskin,
back to trade winds locked
inside an “Amazing Grace”
that will never again sound
the same after Charleston . . .
“Time, in Whales,” by Emily Jungmin Yoon (May 15th)
Our legs of yellow skin next to one another,
calves spread, I think of beached whales, the arcs of their bellies,
clean and gleaming. A whale would lie in the shape
of something cold, the body sipping on itself
like a drain. Gravity sucks a whole whale onto sand.
You study Korean, whispering, Murorŭda, murorŭda,
meaning, literally, Water rises, but really meaning to improve or
to rise in sap, in springtime trees. Come spring, it will be your birthday.
“What Use Is Knowing Anything If No One Is Around,” by Kaveh Akbar (June 5th & 12th)
. . . I was delivered
from dying like a gift card sent in lieu of a pound
of flesh. My escape was mundane, voidable. Now
I feed faith to faith, suffer human noise, complain
about this or that heartache. The spirit lives in between
the parts of a name. It is vulnerable only to silence
and forgetting. I am vulnerable to hammers, fire,
and any number of poisons . . .
“Dying for Dummies,” by Chana Bloch (July 3rd)
To the oldest I’m a novice.
“These seventy-five-year-olds,
they think they know everything,”
says Cousin Leo. He’s ninety.
Who thinks, Leo? Who knows?
“Project,” by Rae Armantrout (August 28th)
Your clock’s been turned to zero,
though there is no zero on a clock.
Your skin is petal soft no matter
how old the starter kit was—
but you will get tired or bored.
That’s when the clock starts up.
“Disorder and Light,” by John Ashbery (September 18th)
. . . Comes in and ankles around like
he owned the place (which he did, in a sense).
Fast action on their part drew her on.
This wasn’t morning. It was more like
a week from now. I’ll be on your side, searching
for what we both know is there: our crumbling infrastructure.
“John Whirlwind’s Doublebeat Songs, 1956,” by Ray Young Bear (September 25th)
It is now almost daylight,
I said to the firefly.
For the last time
illuminate yourself.
For the last time.
“Chrome,” by Paul Tran (September 25th)
American soldiers peeling his house apart, straw by straw.
His uncles wearing nothing but nametags around their necks, lying
in a ditch of saw-toothed rocks. Flies spewing from a missing eye.
We grab doughnuts at a panaderia in North Park. A stereo beneath
La Virgen croons “Como La Flor” while I probe a glazed exit wound:
wedding ring he never gave my mother. Too poor for love, too ruined
for ritual. I dance with him. My feet atop his feet, shadow in his shadow.
“White Gays,” by Jameson Fitzpatrick (October 2nd)
Privilege is a man
taking up two seats on the train.
Now four, putting his feet up.
It is also my not having
to describe his leather loafers for you
to fill in the white space of his body
straight and able
and also my body’s proximity
to his, socially and physically,
on this train he is taking from
the Hamptons and I am taking
from the Pines.
“Nashville,” by Tiana Clark (October 9th)
. . . Who said it? A hyphen—crackles and bites,
burns the body to a spray of white wisps, like when the hot comb,
with its metal teeth, cut close to petroleum jelly edging the scalp—
sizzling. Southern Babel, smoking the hive of epithets hung fat
above bustling crowds like black-and-white lynching photographs,
mute faces, red finger pointing up at my dead, some smiling,
some with hats and ties—all business, as one needlelike lady
is looking at the camera, as if looking through the camera, at me,
in the way I am looking at my lover now—halcyon and constant.
“Indigo,” by Ellen Bass (October 16th)
I want him to have been my child’s father.
I want to have married a man who wanted
to be in a body, who wanted to live in it so much
that he marked it up like a book, underlining,
highlighting, writing in the margins, I was here.
Not like my dead ex-husband, who was always
fighting against the flesh, who sat for hours
on his zafu chanting om and then went out
and broke his hand punching the car.
“Declaration,” by Tracy K. Smith (November 6th)
He has
sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people.
“Repentance,” by Natasha Trethewey (November 20th)
Perhaps to exchange loyalty for betrayal
Vermeer erased the dog and made of the man
a mirror framed by the open door Pentimento
the word for a painter’s change of heart revision
on canvas means the same as remorse after sin
Were she to rise a mirror behind her the woman
might see herself as I did turning to rise
from my table then back as if into Vermeer’s scene
“The West,” by Eileen Myles (November 27th)
It’s as simple as being
a sculpture, having
a life. This is not the book
of instruction I had intended
but this is
when the emptiness noticed
its own beginning like
that church I saw when
I was young
that was simply melting
This is for those who
would not name
that building . . .
“Autumn,” by Louise Glück (December 11th)
The part of life
devoted to contemplation
was at odds with the part
committed to action.
*
Fall was approaching.
But I remember
it was always approaching
once school ended.
*
Life, my sister said,
is like a torch passed now
from the body to the mind.
Sadly, she went on, the mind
is not there to receive it.
