‘To the Wild Sky,’ &c.

A New Year’s Day column with poetry, music, jokes, and more

La Laguna de los Tres in Patagonia, Argentina, in December 2025 (Photo by David Piegaro)

Happy new year, my friends and readers. (Is there a real difference?) I always think of the Tennyson poem, “Ring Out, Wild Bells,” from In Memoriam. It begins,

Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky,
The flying cloud, the frosty light:
The year is dying in the night;
Ring out, wild bells, and let him die.

Last year, I said,

It’s not just a great New Year’s poem—it’s a great poem, in my book. (I’m no Helen Vendler, I acknowledge.)

Where did I say that? In my music podcast, Music for a While—this episode. But back to music in a moment.

I’ll paste two more stanzas of Tennyson’s poem:

Ring out the grief that saps the mind
For those that here we see no more;
Ring out the feud of rich and poor,
Ring in redress to all mankind.

Ring out a slowly dying cause,
And ancient forms of party strife;
Ring in the nobler modes of life,
With sweeter manners, purer laws.

Maybe one more stanza:

Ring out false pride in place and blood,
The civic slander and the spite;
Ring in the love of truth and right,
Ring in the common love of good.

What is the difference between “common love of good” and the phrase oft heard in our politics today: “the common good”? We can discuss that in another article ...

In the aforementioned podcast, I said,

I’m sure this great and beloved poem has been set to music more than once. But I know, for sure, it has been set to music by Jonathan Dove, the English composer born in 1959. He set it for chamber chorus and piano. He did not set the entire poem—five of the eight stanzas ...

For a recording by the group Voces8—with the composer at the piano—go here.

***

A quick pause for a comment on the phrase “happy new year.” (The phrase, the salutation, the wish.) At a forum several weeks ago, I had cause to remember how Bill Buckley pronounced the name of the great, diagonal street in New York. We say “Broadway.” Bill might have been the last of the Mohicans who said “Broadway.”

Well, I can hear him say, “Happy new year!” We say, “Happy new year!” But Bill—was different (gloriously so).

***

In mid-December, the Wall Street Journal published a report that read like a movie script: “Disguised and in Danger: How a Nobel Peace Prize Winner Escaped Venezuela.” It was written by José de Córdoba, Vera Bergengruen, and Alex Leary. (The first, I am happy to call a friend.) (I would be happy to call the other two friends too, but I have not had the pleasure of meeting them.)

Our friend Donald Mace Williams—an all-purpose writer—was inspired to write a poem:

“María’s Rescue”

Before this, she had shown us she was brave,
Opposing him, which meant an outlawed life,
But now it must have seemed that each great wave
Had been Maduro-raised, a hovering knife.

Battered and soaked, she with the gallant crew
Survived, an in absentia laureate
Who with God’s help will guide her country through
A tyrant sea to where free ways await.

***

Last month, I published my eulogy of David Pryce-Jones. Daniel Hannan commented that David seemed to have known everybody. And that is true. After a while, I stopped asking David, “Did you ever meet ...?” and simply said, “Tell me about [so-and-so].”

Once, I asked him something like, “Who are the most impressive people you have ever met? Give me two or three names, please. I won’t hold you to a list. Just give me a couple of names that come to you.”

Aldous Huxley, he said. And David Jones. (No “Pryce-.”)

David Jones, who lived from 1895 to 1974, was “a British painter and modernist poet.” I have quoted from Wikipedia. Some further lines:

In 1965, Kenneth Clark took him to be the best living British painter, while both T. S. Eliot and W. H. Auden put his poetry among the best written in their century. Jones’s work gains form from his Christian faith and Welsh heritage.

(Not sure what “gains form” means. Anyway ...)

David gave me a copy of Jones’s In Parenthesis. I am looking at it now. The cover (front cover) quotes Eliot, from his introduction: “a work of genius.” What is In Parenthesis? Again, Wikipedia:

... a work of literature by David Jones first published in England in 1937. Although Jones had been known solely as an engraver and painter prior to its publication, the book won the Hawthornden Prize and the admiration of writers such as W. B. Yeats and T. S. Eliot.

Yeats too. Goodness.

Based on Jones’s own experience as an infantryman in the First World War, In Parenthesis narrates the experiences of English private John Ball in a mixed English-Welsh regiment ...

The work

is often described as an epic poem. Some critics, such as Evelyn Cobley and Umberto Rossi (who carried out a detailed analysis of Part 7), consider In Parenthesis a destructured novel, not a poem. In his preface and the dedication, Jones refers to the text as a “writing.”

Yes: a “writing.” A profound and original one.

***

“Gary Graffman, Piano Virtuoso and Renowned Teacher, Dies at 97.” That is a headline in the New York Times. (The obit is here.) I knew Graffman and his wife, Naomi, a bit, I’m happy to say. They gave me some very good information about the music business for a piece I was writing.

The Graffmans lived kitty-corner from Carnegie Hall. They liked to eat late. And too few restaurants were open late, in their opinion. They appreciated Molyvos, a Greek restaurant (no longer there, unfortunately). The food was excellent—“You have to start with the octopus!” they said—but also: it was open late.

Oh, there’s so much to say about Gary Graffman. Let me mention his unforgettably titled memoirs: I Really Should Be Practicing.

***

Last Sunday, I published an article centered on my second-grade teacher (Vina Krins). A friend and reader writes,

Dear Jay,

I was blessed to be in touch with mine during the last years of her life. The last time I saw her, three weeks before she died, will always be a special memory.

And my wife taught second grade for 30 years. She knows that she had some students who feel about her the way I felt about mine.

***

Care for a little language, in this (offbeat) New Year’s column? Over the holidays, I learned a phrase from my niece, Lena: “to rock star in.” You have not been involved in any of the preparations (for a party or some other event). You are just rock-starring in. Showing up at the appointed hour, having done nothing to help in advance.

I love it.

***

In my series on William F. Buckley Jr., in honor of his centennial, I mentioned that he once asked me (something like), “What do you want out of life?”

Responding to this, a reader writes,

Perhaps my standards are excessively low, but I have decided to declare success in life based on two factors. I was able to support myself in a lifestyle I find pleasant with a job that I liked far more than I disliked it. And my children (now aged 36 to 42) still talk to me and allow me to see my grandchildren. I really don’t know what else I could want.

***

Care to hear a joke? In a sportscast, David French, Vivek Dave, and I discussed gambling in America, which has reached alarming proportions. This is a grave topic, obviously. But a reader has sent me a very good joke.

A father was fed up with his son’s willingness to gamble on anything and sent him to a renowned psychologist hoping that he could be cured. The psychologist began by asking the young man about his habit. The son answered that he would bet on anything. “For example, I am willing to bet you $100 that you have a birthmark on your back.” The psychologist, thinking that he could show the young man the folly of his ways, quickly took off his shirt to show him he was wrong.

After the session, the psychologist called the father to proudly proclaim his triumph and progress. “Oh no!” the father exclaimed. “He bet me $1,000 that he would have the shirt off your back within five minutes of meeting you!”

***

Another reader writes,

... I came across this lovely little performance of the National Anthem before a New York Islanders game and it struck me as something you’d like.

Oh, yes. That performance is here.

She (our reader) continues,

I’m not a huge fan of the saxophone, and I’m no Islanders fan, but man, this guy put on quite the show! And what really cracks me up is his showboating on the final note! He held it for almost twelve seconds!

I suppose if anyone has the right to showboat it’s a 104-year-old WWII vet.

He is Dominick Critelli, as this article tells us. He immigrated to America when he was eight. He has been playing the sax since he was 13. He was in the Battle of the Bulge. “I lost a lot of friends,” he said, at the time of his recent performance, and “I’m doing this for them.”

***

Well, how ’bout that picture above my column here? It was taken by my friend David Piegaro, a son of New Jersey who graduated from Princeton last year. He is in Patagonia, hiking and exploring with friends. Sending me the photo, he said, “Nature cooperated for a great shot!” Did it ever. But all credit, too, to the man who snapped the shot.

May I end with a Sunday School anecdote? A cute-kid story? Once, a girl was wearing a vest or something from Patagonia (the brand), and I said, “Where is Patagonia?” She said, “Um, I think near the Natural History Museum?” She was thinking of the store; I was thinking of South America.

We joked about that for months. And she never forgot the answer: “Argentina and Chile.”

Happy new year!