January text archive update: poems from 28 poets

And here’s witch hazel, that from underneath
Great vacant boughs will bloom in winter’s teeth.
—Richard Wilbur, "A Wood"

Even in the the chill of winter, new life finds a way. A burgeoning bud on a leafless tree, a blank page marking the turning of the year—or a freshly discovered poem to breathe reinvigorating warmth into the heart and mind.

This month, explore 60 poems newly added to our text archive. You'll find writing by 28 great poets, touching on themes of childhood and exile, mourning and resistance, love and loss, flora and fauna—and, of course, January's own unlikely blooms.

Delve into poems by outstanding contemporary poets of many backgrounds and lived experiences. We've selected work from 10 poets new to our site:

• Raymond Antrobus ("I Want the Confidence Of," "To Sweeten Bitter," "Two Guns in the Sky for Daniel Harris")
• Mona Arshi ("The Bird," "Little Prayer")
• Richard Blanco ("Imaginary Exile")
• Stephanie Burt ("Advice from the Lights," "First Astronomy Globe," "Wildflower Meadow, Medawisla")
• Natalie Diaz ("Abecedarian Requiring Further Examination of Anglikan Seraphym Subjugation of a Wild Indian Rezervation," "Cranes, Mafiosos, and a Polaroid Camera," "Manhattan is a Lenape Word")
• Ilya Kaminsky ("We Lived Happily During the War")
• John Murillo ("Contemporary American Poetry," "from A Refusal to Mourn the Deaths, by Gunfire, of Three Men in Brooklyn," "Poem Ending and Beginning on Lines by Larry Levis," "Variation on a Theme by Elizabeth Bishop")
• Yaddyra Peralta ("Roatán")
• Paisley Rekdal ("Driving to Santa Fe," "Psalm")
• Monica Sok ("The Weaver," "The Woman Who Was Small, Not Because the World Expanded").

Plus, we've added further poems by some of the exceptional poets already on our site: Jericho Brown ("Bullet Points," "Crossing," "Duplex (A poem is a gesture toward home)," "Stake"), Maryann Corbett ("Postlude for Four Hands at the Great Organ"), Jennifer Foerster ("The Outskirts," "Paradise"), and Dorianne Laux ("Moon in the Window").

You can also explore freshly added poems by great poets of the past, both widely known and less frequently read today.

Discover poems by Robert Frost ("Directive," "The Pasture," "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening"), Gerard Manley Hopkins ("As Kingfishers Catch Fire," "Binsey Poplars"), Ben Jonson ("My Picture Left in Scotland," "Simplex Munditiis"), and Vladimir Nabokov ("The Ballad of Longwood Glen," "An Evening of Russian Poetry")—and works by turn-of-the-century Black poets Angelina Weld Grimké ("El Beso," "The Want of You"), Edward Nathaniel Harleston ("I Cannot Sing," "The Snow Storm"), and George Marion McClellan ("Dogwood Blossoms," "A January Dandelion"), all of whose writings laid essential early groundwork for Black poetry in America.

We've also chosen additional poems by poets whose work is already in our archive: Paul Laurence Dunbar ("The Poet and His Song," "We Wear the Mask"), E. Pauline Johnson ("And He Said, Fight On," "Fire-Flowers"), Archibald MacLeish ("Poem in Prose," "The Snowflake Which Is Now and Hence Forever"), Claude McKay ("If We Must Die"), James Merrill ("A Downward Look," "from The Thousand and Second Night," "Upon a Second Marriage"), Dylan Thomas ("Author's Prologue," "Poem on His Birthday"), and Richard Wilbur ("Complaint," "Parable," "A Wood").

We hope you'll enjoy your trip through our winter garden of poems, and pluck a few to take with you for the rest of this brand-new year.