New Year’s Day
by Kim Addonizio https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems-and-poets/poems/detail/42518 In Addonizio’s poem, “New Year’s Day”, the poem could literally mean January 1st. The mention of snow on the ground in line two supports this idea, but most people make new year’s resolutions around this time of year in hopes of becoming thinner, healthier, richer, and better. To me, Addonizio chose the title “New Year’s Day” to represent the change we see in people for the better. Addonizio uses the weather to exemplify these new beginnings. Lines 1-5 talk about rain washing away the last of the snow and grass starting to grow again. To me, this is a pretty clear that the rain is washing away one season and getting ready for a newer, brighter one. It's not until the end of the poem does Addonizio use weather as a descriptor of a “new year”. Lines 39-42 discuss the “cold blessing of the rain” coming down on the narrator’s face rather than washing away the snow. This symbolizes the shedding of an old skin and ultimately becoming someone new. The middle section of the poem utilizes people instead of the weather to symbolize new beginnings. The narrator is known to be alone because while she’s wondering about her west coast lovers she mentions, “Here in Virginia I walk across the fields with only a few young cows for company” (Lines 8-10). Somehow these young cows remind her of the shy girls she went to junior high with. The narrator wonders if these now women are like her and “must sometimes stand at a window late at night, looking out on a silent backyard, at one rusting lawn chair and the sheer walls of other people’s houses” (Lines 18-22). This further creates a feeling of loneliness. She imagines that they probably also cry for past lovers and wonder how they got this far without knowing anything. If the narrator is trying to connect with them, it means she probably does the same thing. Lines 29-38 signals a shift in the poem because all of a sudden the narrator stops feeling pity for herself and these other women and says, “I don’t know why I’m walking out here with my coat darkening and my boots sinking in, coming up with a mild sucking sound I like to hear. I don’t care where those girls are now. Whatever they’ve made of it they can have. Today I want to resolve nothing.” These lines signal the ultimate beginning because the narrator unknowingly decides she wants to become new. Even though she wants to “resolve nothing”, the rain coming down on her face symbolizes her transformation.
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SarahI'm an AP English student and high school senior who loves everything about lemons and Grey's Anatomy. This is my blog to talk about literature and everything English. Archives
March 2017
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