The Passing of the Year Themes

We spend a ton of time in "The Passing of the Year" looking at people and trying to guess what they might be thinking or feeling. Your kindergarten teacher probably always told you not to judge a...

Well, maybe this seems a little obvious for a poem about New Year's, but we just had to get it in here. Without the idea of the passing of time and the feelings that go along with it, this poem ju...

We think "The Passing of the Year" is kind of a sad poem. OK, not a cry-your-eyes-out bummer from beginning to end, but it's a little blue. Most of the emotions it deals with have to do with regr...

So, about that theater metaphor. You know, the one where the speaker pretends that the passing of the year is like the end of a play? The one that basically takes over the entire poem? Well, see...

Even though "The Passing of the Year" is about the moment when the old year changes into the new one, it doesn't really have that much to say about the future.  For the most part, our speaker...