Review
Praise for The Carrying
“Limón has a novelistic knack for scene, and the narrative lyrics in this remarkable collection, her fifth, could stand as compressed stories about anxiety and the body.”―New York Times
“Exquisite . . . Limón is always a careful witness, accurately recording the moment, rather than trying to transcend it. Evocative dreams and pivotal memories help make this collection a powerful example of how to carry the things that define us without being broken by them.”―Washington Post
“[In The Carrying] the National Book Award-nominated poet pens paeans to the world's limitless capacity to astonish.”―O, The Oprah Magazine
“Ada Limón is a poet of ecstatic revelation. Her poetry feels fast, full of detail, often playful, and driven by a conversational voice. This book represents a powerful deepening of the poet’s perspective . . . It’s a book of deep wisdom and urgent vulnerability, driven by language that feels not only beautiful but permanent and powerfully wrought, like a mountain. It leads you to the beautiful bright mountaintop of language, then guides you gently down into the rocky valleys of a conscious human heart.”―Tracy K. Smith, Guardian
“Masterful . . . a piercing look into the nature of pain and impermanence. . . . It is a paean to nature itself, to the peace in knowing it's both part of us and greater than us―especially when everything else in the world can seem like it's falling apart.”―BuzzFeed
“With each poem in her new collection, The Carrying, Limón counterbalances her most paralyzing fears with her ability to find small twinges of hope. . . . Each poem is a widening lens of the world, an unburdening of the things we carry deep within ourselves.”―Paris Review
"Merciful and beautiful . . . [Limón] never hides behind words but reveals herself through them―even when the risk is overexposure . . . This is as-the-crow-flies poetry―it goes straight to the heart."―Guardian
“The Carrying is about the contradictory joys and burdens we all carry. . . . The societal connection between womanhood, motherhood and power is at the core of her work. . . . For Limón, carrying both the joys and sorrows of a child-free life is a testament to the human ability to exist with many things piled on our shoulders at once.”―PBS NewsHour
“Tender, illuminating. . . . The anxiety of all of life’s realities permeates Limón’s collection, which makes the work feel piercingly of the moment.”―San Francisco Chronicle
“Ada Limón’s pitch-perfect fifth collection, The Carrying, is full of poems to savor and share. . . . She writes with remarkable directness about painful experiences normally packaged in euphemism and, in doing so, invites the readers to enter a world where abundant joy exists alongside and simultaneous to loss.”―Minneapolis Star Tribune
“[Ada Limón’s] new collection is her best yet, a much needed shot of if not hope, then perseverance amidst much uncertainty.”―NPR
“The Carrying is one of [Ada Limón’s] best. Even in poems about racism, misogyny, violence, and the darkness that often accompanies life, Limón’s resiliency shines through.”―Bitch
“For a book metered by grief, there’s a lot of love here―that shouldn’t come as a surprise, considering Limón’s stylistic control and skill. . . . Limón is very good at pacing her poems to leave us satisfied but also curious. . . . One of the best books of the year.”―The Millions
“Lyrical, tender, and knowing . . . Ada Limón’s poetry connects the personal and the universal.”―Garden & Gun
“With the knowing directness of a letter, Limón’s poems speak to the marrow of our everyday condition. . . . The Carrying is a vital collection for a noisy, brutal time. The power of Limón’s unflinching examination of grief and loss is only surpassed by her love of beauty and compassion.”―BOMB Magazine
“[Limón's] poems come closer than any poems have to Annie Dillard’s essays. . . . She’s that rarest of beasts, a poet who can take you by surprise.”―New Criterion
“Deeply intimate . . . A poetry collection to help you make sense of the world right now. . . . It’s a spinning world that, increasingly, is turning to poetry like Limón’s to make sense of ― or, at least, to assuage the grief of ― it all.”―Bustle
“What drives her poems―what makes her new collection, The Carrying, so moving and masterful―is her dexterity with voice and diction and her giftedness with metaphor. It is her deep wellspring of surprising and evocative images and her syntactic superpowers. Most of all, it’s her intellect and intelligence. The poems are keen reflections of a mind constantly at work, seeing and wondering and moving toward meaning but not always the meaning to which the poem and its reader thought they were headed.”―Poets & Writers
“Ada Limon’s new poems in The Carrying are like a winter garden―somber, full of grief and patience, suddenly visible lines from here to there. To watch a poet in full possession of her power tending the earth with this kind of care feels like an inspiration that comes with a chastened edge: time, they remind, is all we have.”―Literary Hub
“All of Limón’s books have found a home on my bookshelf, each volume a heartfelt reckoning of what it is be alive. In her collections, I find a grace that demonstrates her versatility and wisdom as well as a ‘surrendering.’ She explains that the central question of her work is, ‘How do we live in the world?’ Yet she’s a poet as comfortable with questions as with answers.”―Guernica
“[Ada Limón] might be the mom of Latinx poetry, and I mean that in the best way possible. . . . Límon is talented in a way that’s both intimidating and inspiring, and is definitely a strong pillar of contemporary poetry.”―Book Riot
“Ada Limón’s The Carrying delves into the deeply personal as the speaker uncovers what might be her infertility. . . . The book points us to look at all the things we ask of our bodies, all the things we ask it to carry through this remarkable and unstable world.”―Chicago Review of Books
“Wisely observant . . . Limón’s poems personify the twinned-narrative of despair and tenacity that has become part of America’s current political and social reality. Indeed, The Carrying is a spark of courage in our dark and troubled times.”―PANK
“Limón’s work is a reminder that you can write poetry about big ideas.”―America Magazine
“Exquisite poems about love, fertility, desire, this natural world we move through, the political climate, so much more.”―Roxane Gay, Goodreads
“Superb. . . . Although the subject matter is often mournful, the endurance of nature also comes to light. Even though an individual may perish, there is consistency in the life cycles of bumblebees, dandelions, and race horses―all of which are examined with gorgeous language and imagery that makes Limón’s collection hard to put down, even in the moments that cause a deep, sorrowful ache.”―Chicago Review of Books
“This is the kind of poetry that strikes that rare balance: deftly crafted and profound but also completely accessible. The collection is about creation, death and everything in between, with so much attention to the thrumming world that just by reading it you become more aware, more in tune with the life around you.”―BookPage
“Ada Limón is one of the country's finest poets. . . . Honest, lyrical observations on love, loneliness, life, death and all the mysteries in between. . . . She performs a near-miraculous feat in balancing razor-sharp imagery with deep ambivalence. . . . The Carrying beautifully conveys the power of poetry in an age that needs it most.”―Shelf Awareness
“Ada Limón teaches me that language can still surprise me. She shows me that the juxtaposition of words not previously joined can catch me off-guard, make me feel that shimmer of resonance, of curiosity.”―Signature
“Gorgeous, thought-provoking . . . This fearless collection shows a poet that can appreciate life's surprises.”―Publishers Weekly (starred review)
“A stunning collection. . . . Limón writes movingly about finding the spectacular in the everyday. . . . A reverent, extraordinary take on the world. Don’t miss this life-affirming collection.”―Library Journal (starred review)
“A master of examining themes from unexpected angles, Limón rotates her topics in kaleidoscopic turns. . . . Page after page, this proves to be a startling and tender, magnificent collection.”―Booklist
"Extraordinary . . . you realize that you witnessed something mesmerizing."―Foreword Reviews
“In her dazzling, precise, transformative collection, The Carrying, Ada Limón offers us meditations on mortality, womanhood, the body, and that which grows in the earth, all the while slyly positing: How we should treat each other in this precarious life? Like humans, is her answer. Like humans.”―Jami Attenberg, author of The Middlesteins
“In her powerful new collection, Ada Limón asks: ‘What if, instead of carrying // a child, I am supposed to carry grief?’ And later: ‘isn’t there still something singing?’ To which I say: yes. In these poems, joy and longing and grief sing with a music that―regardless of what I am burdened or blessed to carry―makes me want to live passionately and fully in the difficult world. The Carrying is a gift."―Natasha Trethewey
“It is no wonder that Ada Limón’s wonderful new book, The Carrying, is full of goldfinches and strawberries and dandelions and hostas and, as she writes, ‘all good things that come from the ground.’ It’s also no wonder that it’s full of the life that death makes. And the living that dying is. For this book is a garden. And like a garden, it will nourish you. It will feed you.”―Ross Gay
Praise for Bright Dead Things
A Finalist for the National Book Award and National Book Critics Circle Award
A Best Poetry Book of 2015: New York Times and Buzzfeed
“Effortlessly lyrical.”―New York Times
“Bright Dead Things buoyed me in this dismal year. I’m thankful for this collection, for its wisdom and generosity, for its insistence on holding tight to beauty even as we face disintegration and destruction.”―Celeste Ng
“These poems are, as my students might say, hella intimate. They are meticulously honed and gorgeously crafted. They marry the lyric poem’s interior emotional intensity with its exterior mode of social conveyance and aesthetic beauty. . . . The best compliment one can give a book of poems is that the book loves the reader. Bright Dead Things doesn’t just love poetry; it loves the reader. My hunch is, Reader, you’ll love it too.”―Huffington Post
“Bright Dead Things breeds a particular mixture of wildness. The mixture is by turns melodious and tight. Limón’s poems are like fires: charring the page, but leaving a smoke that remains past the close of the book.”―The Millions
“Limón’s work is destined to find a place with readers on the strength of her voice alone. Her intensity here is paradoxically set against the often slow burn of life in Kentucky, and the results will please readers.”―Flavorwire
“Poet and Critic Stephen Burt says, ‘Prose sense is to poetry as tonality is to music.’ And I see that sense of prose cushioned in each poem included in this leguminous compilation. The works wear complexity on their sleeves with reassuring accessibility on their faces; to say it more succinctly, there’s a tough grilling of the soul and champagnes served to the measure of each one’s taste.”―The Rumpus
“In Bright Dead Things, there’s a fierce jazz and sass (‘this life is a fist / of fast wishes caught by nothing, / but the fishhook of tomorrow’s tug’) and there’s sadness―a grappling with death and loss that forces the imagination to a deep response. The radio in her new, rural home warns ‘stay safe and seek shelter’ and yet the heart seeks love, risk, and strangeness―and finds it everywhere.”―Gregory Orr
“Limón doesn’t write as if she needs us. She writes as if she wants us. Her words reveal, coax, pull, see us. In Bright Dead Things we read desire, ache, what human beings rarely have the heart or audacity to speak of alone―without the help of a poet with the most generous of eyes.”―Nikky Finney
“Limón does far more than merely reflect the world: she continually transforms it, thereby revealing herself as an everyday symbolist and high level duende enabler. At the end of one poem she writes, ‘What the heart wants? The heart wants / her horses back,’ and suddenly even this most urban reader feels wild and free.”―Matthew Zapruder
“Both soft and tender, enormous and resounding, her poetic gestures entrance and transfix.”―Richard Blanco
“In her newest volume of poems, Limón delves into the divided self―self separated by geography, by loss, by change, by circumstance. . . . Generous of heart, intricate and accessible, the poems in this book are wondrous and deeply moving.”―Library Journal (starred review)
“A poet whose verse exudes warmth and compassion, Limón is at the height of her creative powers, and Bright Dead Things is her most gorgeous book of poems.”―Los Angeles Review of Books
“Richly written and felt.”―Publishers Weekly
About the Author
Ada Limón is the twenty-fourth U.S. Poet Laureate as well as the author of The Hurting Kind and five other collections of poems. These include, most recently, The Carrying, which won the National Book Critics Circle Award and was named a finalist for the PEN/Jean Stein Book Award, and Bright Dead Things, which was named a finalist for the National Book Award, the National Book Critics Circle Award, and the Kingsley Tufts Award. Limón is a recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, and her work has appeared in the New Yorker, the New York Times, and American Poetry Review, among others. She is the former host of American Public Media’s weekday poetry podcast The Slowdown. Born and raised in California, she now lives in Lexington, Kentucky.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Trying
I’d forgotten how much
I like to grow things, I shout
to him as he passes me to paint
the basement. I’m trellising
the tomatoes in what’s called
a Florida weave. Later, we try
to knock me up again. We do it
in the guest room because that’s
the extent of our adventurism
in a week of violence in Florida
and France. Afterwards,
the sun still strong though lowering
inevitably to the horizon, I check
on the plants in the back, my
fingers smelling of sex and tomato
vines. Even now, I don’t know much
about happiness. I still worry
and want an endless stream of more,
but some days I can see the point
in growing something, even if
it’s just to say I cared enough.
***
The Raincoat
When the doctor suggested surgery
and a brace for all my youngest years,
my parents scrambled to take me
to massage therapy, deep tissue work,
osteopathy, and soon my crooked spine
unspooled a bit, I could breathe again,
and move more in a body unclouded
by pain. My mom would tell me to sing
songs to her the whole forty-five-minute
drive to Middle Two Rock Road and forty-
five minutes back from physical therapy.
She’d say, even my voice sounded unfettered
by my spine afterwards. So I sang and sang,
because I thought she liked it. I never
asked her what she gave up to drive me,
or how her day was before this chore. Today,
at her age, I was driving myself home from yet
another spine appointment, singing along
to some maudlin, but solid song on the radio,
and I saw a mom take her raincoat off
and give it to her young daughter when
the storm took over the afternoon. My god,
I thought, my whole life I’ve been under her
raincoat thinking it was somehow a marvel
that I never got wet.
***
Dead Stars
Out here, there’s a bowing even the trees are doing.
Winter’s icy hand at the back of all of us.
Black bark, slick yellow leaves, a kind of stillness that feels
so mute it’s almost in another year.
I am a hearth of spiders these days: a nest of trying.
We point out the stars that make Orion as we take out
the trash, the rolling containers a song of suburban thunder.
It’s almost romantic as we adjust the waxy blue
recycling bin until you say, Man, we should really learn
some new constellations.
And it’s true. We keep forgetting about Antila, Centarus,
Draco, Lacerta, Hydra, Lyra, Lynx.
But mostly we’re forgetting we’re dead stars too, my mouth is full
of dust and I wish to reclaim the rising―
to lean in the spotlight of streetlight with you, toward
what’s larger within us, toward how we were born.
Look, we are not unspectacular things.
We’ve come this far, survived this much. What
would happen if we decided to survive more? To love harder?
What if we stood up with our synapses and flesh and said, No.
No, to the rising tides.
Stood for the many mute mouths of the sea, of the land?
What would happen if we used our bodies to bargain
for the safety of others, for earth,
if we declared a clean night, if we stopped being terrified,
if we launched our demands into the sky, made ourselves so big
people could point to us with the arrows they make in their minds,
rolling their trash bins out, after all of this is over?
***
Wonder Woman
Standing at the swell of the muddy Mississippi
after the Urgent Care doctor had just said, Well,
sometimes shit happens, I fell fast and hard
for New Orleans all over again. Pain pills swirled
in the purse along with a spell for later. It’s taken
a while for me to admit, I am in a raging battle
with my body, a spinal column thirty-five degrees
bent, vertigo that comes and goes like a DC Comics
villain nobody can kill. Invisible pain is both
a blessing and a curse. You always look so happy,
said a stranger once as I shifted to my good side
grinning. But that day, alone on the riverbank,
brass blaring from the Steamboat Natchez,
out of the corner of my eye, I saw a girl, maybe half my age,
dressed, for no apparent reason, as Wonder Woman.
She strutted by in all her strength and glory, invincible,
eternal, and when I stood to clap (because who wouldn’t have),
she bowed and posed like she knew I needed a myth,
―a woman, by a river, indestructible.
***
The Year of the Goldfinches
There were two that hung and hovered
by the mud puddle and the musk thistle.
Flitting from one splintered fence post
to another, bathing in the rainwater’s glint
like it was a mirror to some other universe
where things were more acceptable, easier
than the place I lived. I’d watch for them:
the bright peacocking male, the low-watt
female on each morning walk, days spent
digging for some sort of elusive answer
to the question my curving figure made.
Later, I learned that they were a symbol
of resurrection. Of course they were,
my two yellow-winged twins feasting
on thorns and liking it.
