Art by Alice Brasser
Burning the Old Year by Naomi Shihab Nye
Letters swallow themselves in seconds.
Notes friends tied to the doorknob,
transparent scarlet paper,
sizzle like moth wings,
marry the air.
So much of any year is flammable,
lists of vegetables, partial poems.
Orange swirling flame of days,
so little is a stone.
Where there was something and suddenly isn’t,
an absence shouts, celebrates, leaves a space.
I begin again with the smallest numbers.
Quick dance, shuffle of losses and leaves,
only the things I didn’t do
crackle after the blazing dies.
Some more poems to end the year:
"We hug the world until it stings,
We curse it then and sigh for wings.
We live, we love, we woo, we wed,
We wreathe our brides, we sheet our dead.
We laugh, we weep, we hope, we fear,
And that’s the burden of the year."
-The Year by Ella Wheeler Wilcox
"I go to the mountain side
of the house to cut saplings,
and clear a view to snow
on the mountain. But when I look up,
saw in hand, I see a nest clutched in
the uppermost branches.
I don’t cut that one.
I don’t cut the others either.
Suddenly, in every tree,
an unseen nest
where a mountain
would be."
-Choices by Tess Gallagher
"New Year’s morning—
everything is in blossom!
I feel about average." -After the Gentle Poet Kobayashi Issa by Robert Hass
Goodbye, 2018: Interview Series
This morning, I decided to approach a few people who inspired me in 2018 to ask them to review their year through a short series of questions and answers titled Goodbye, 2018.
Here are the some of the responses so far:
1. Poet Tishani Doshi (Chennai)
2. Graffiti artist Guesswho (Bangalore) 3. Artist Pakhi Sen (New Delhi) 4. Artist Yulia Nefedova (Moscow) You can read the interviews at www.thealiporepost.com
“I want to infect you with the tremendous excitement of living, because I believe that you have the strength to bear it.”
-Tennessee Williams
The final instalment of recommended links for the year:
How to Make Your Own Sacred Space
The Best Movie Posters of 2018
Review of the Year 2018: Top 25 Graphic Design
Best of 2018: Top 36 Photographs From Around the World + Top 17 Food Art Creations of the Year
Your Life Is a Poem: in conversation with Naomi Shihab Nye
...apart from these extremely cool Tumblr accounts I discovered this year:
The Museum of Utopia
Women in Art History
this isn't happiness (yearlong discovery mode!)
The Vault Of The Atomic Space Age
Rookie Magazine (dig deep into their archive for the good stuff!))
Art by Dmitry Evtushenko
Lastly...
2018 has been a year of learning, making better decisions and learning to ask for help when it was needed. It has been special and humbling and taught me plenty. I can already feel that 2019 is going to be incredible because I have decided to own it! :)
Passing on the positivity hat, I wish you all a great year ahead! Happy New Year to us all! :D I hope that 2019 gets us all closer to our dreams and makes better human beings out of everybody!
Do watch this ^ GIF by Boglio while listening to ghost choir by Louie Zong (the song makes me laugh).
Peace. Don't drink and drive. See you on the other side.
-Rohini / The Alipore Post