The Best Poetry for Dark Winter Days

The Best Poetry for Dark Winter Days Each collection speaks to a different seasonal mood, but all are worth slowing down with before the new year. Harald Oscar Sohlberg / Bridgeman Images For those of us north of the equator, winter officially arrived last week. The early darkness and the chill in the air demand a change in our habits. For many, the season provokes an unmistakable turn inward-toward our warm homes, or the loved ones we see on holidays, or meditative thoughts that, in other times of year, might be crowded out by the light and noise of the world. Perhaps saying so is sentimental, but these feel like the perfect days and nights for poetry. The form can capture, perhaps better than any other, the muffled quality of cold afternoons and days spent indoors. Its winding paths of language can describe both the season’s comforts and its harsher qualities. As 2025 winds down, we’ve selected some poetry to accompany you through the last days of December. Each collection speaks to a different wintry mood, but all are worth slowing down with before 2026 brings the return of longer, busier days. Selected Poems of Rubén Darío , translated by Lysander Kemp Once, after an epiphany in a high-school class, my best friend declared that she had made up her mind to study literature in college. This was years ago, but I remember that day well: She said that analyzing a Darío poem had made her realize how beautiful an arrangement of words can be. Many of his works double as fairy tales, and have been adapted into children’s books. This is why my first exposure to Darío, one of the best poets to ever write in Spanish, came when I was 3 or 4-in the form of a princess story that I love just as much now. My father, too, can recite from memory a Darío verse he read as a young man: “and the neck of the great white swan that questions me.” This volume of Kemp’s translations includes my favorite Darío poems; their rhymes are lost, but their dreamlike, hypnotic quality is preserved. And the sensual images these verses bring to mind-nightingales and angels and silks-make this collection ideal for evenings beside the hearth. - Gisela Salim-Peyer Rangikura , by Tayi Tibble On a snowy day, you could curl up by the fire with something wholesome and cozy; you could perch by the window with something chilly and somber. Or you could crack open the New Zealand poet Tayi Tibble’s Rangikura , which is none of these things. Playful, forceful, and sexy, it radiates so much heat that choosing it for a holiday read is like fleeing south for the winter. (And in Tibble’s home country, December is summer.) That’s not to say it’s unserious: Tibble reflects on the relentless shame she used to feel about her gender and her Indigenous Māori heritage; she charts how she emerged from timidity like flowers peeking out from a melting...

Preview: ~500 words