Maybe poets are just unhappy people

Lord Kitchener

There is no human experience that has not been dealt with in literature.  Poetry from its primordial beginnings in ritual, myth and cosmic function tackled real human existence.  The phenomenon of New Year is just one of these issues, and wide and varied are the poems that have been produced to either celebrate or mark the New Year in Western literature.

There are two considerations here, one is that the focus will be on Western poetry, and the other is that while in all cultures the New Year is heralded with great celebrations, many notable poems in English may hardly be regarded as celebrating the New Year, and are more associated with the opposite.   These poems focus the New Year with a Janus-headed approach,