I plan to read a poem a day this year, aloud. I always told my students that poetry was meant to be read out loud. And in reference to the poem by Tennyson that I chose for the first day of 2020, I told someone yesterday morning that the actual date may be arbitrary, but human beings need a reset date, a time to start over and think and examine our lives and begin again. It’s that time of year, a time to start anew, to throw out the things that are not working or that are slowly dying.

I put some covers of books I suggest for celebrating the new year down the side of this post. Enjoy.

“Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky,
The flying cloud, the frosty light:
The year is dying in the night;
Ring out, wild bells, and let him die.

Ring out the old, ring in the new,
Ring, happy bells, across the snow:
The year is going, let him go;
Ring out the false, ring in the true.

Ring out the grief that saps the mind,
For those that here we see no more;
Ring out the feud of rich and poor,
Ring in redress to all mankind.

Ring out a slowly dying cause,
And ancient forms of party strife;
Ring in the nobler modes of life,
With sweeter manners, purer laws.

Ring out the want, the care, the sin,
The faithless coldness of the times;
Ring out, ring out my mournful rhymes,
But ring the fuller minstrel in.

Ring out false pride in place and blood,
The civic slander and the spite;
Ring in the love of truth and right,
Ring in the common love of good.

Ring out old shapes of foul disease;
Ring out the narrowing lust of gold;
Ring out the thousand wars of old,
Ring in the thousand years of peace.”

?Alfred, Lord Tennyson