For poets, misery is the muse. Joy is often dismissed as too boring to depict, and indeed courting contentment has produced far fewer good poems than heartbreak or death. It can also court far fewer readers. No true-crime fan will be surprised to learn that Dante’s Inferno gets substantially more attention than his Paradiso. We crave the slog through hell, not the ascent into heaven. That truth is one of poetry’s unexpected links to journalism.
In my line of work, bad news gets top billing. And the headlines have been especially dire. Last year, when the churn of current events threatened to leave me mentally and physically spent, I asked my colleagues to count up their moments of bliss: big or small, profound or ridiculous. I wanted to see what we were shutting out of the public report of our lives. In a way, I wanted a lifeline. And I got it. The results were so moving in their enumeration of domestic wins that I decided to bring the exercise back. So here, again, are some of the things that kept us sane in 2024: some hard-won, most unbidden. May it remind you that bliss doesn’t need to be wordless. From all of us, the very best for the season.—Carmine Starnino, editor-in-chief
