What do you think?
Rate this book
Bright Dead Things
Bright Dead Things examines the chaos that is life, the dangerous thrill of living in a world you know you have to leave one day, and the search to find something that is ultimately “disorderly, and marvelous, and ours.”
A book of bravado and introspection, of 21st century feminist swagger and harrowing terror and loss, this fourth collection considers how we build our identities out of place and human contact—tracing in intimate detail the various ways the speaker’s sense of self both shifts and perseveres as she moves from New York City to rural Kentucky, loses a dear parent, ages past the capriciousness of youth, and falls in love. Limón has often been a poet who wears her heart on her sleeve, but in these extraordinary poems that heart becomes a “huge beating genius machine” striving to embrace and understand the fullness of the present moment. “I am beautiful. I am full of love. I am dying,” the poet writes. Building on the legacies of forebears such as Frank O’Hara, Sharon Olds, and Mark Doty, Limón’s work is consistently generous and accessible—though every observed moment feels complexly thought, felt, and lived.
A book of bravado and introspection, of 21st century feminist swagger and harrowing terror and loss, this fourth collection considers how we build our identities out of place and human contact—tracing in intimate detail the various ways the speaker’s sense of self both shifts and perseveres as she moves from New York City to rural Kentucky, loses a dear parent, ages past the capriciousness of youth, and falls in love. Limón has often been a poet who wears her heart on her sleeve, but in these extraordinary poems that heart becomes a “huge beating genius machine” striving to embrace and understand the fullness of the present moment. “I am beautiful. I am full of love. I am dying,” the poet writes. Building on the legacies of forebears such as Frank O’Hara, Sharon Olds, and Mark Doty, Limón’s work is consistently generous and accessible—though every observed moment feels complexly thought, felt, and lived.
105 pages, Paperback
First published September 8, 2015
1091 people are currently reading
47619 people want to read
About the author
Ada Limon
34 books2,138 followersAda Limón is the author of three books of poetry, Lucky Wreck, This Big Fake World, and Sharks in the Rivers. She received her Master of Fine Arts in Poetry from New York University. Limón has received fellowships from the New York Foundation for the Arts, the Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center, and was one of the judges for the 2013 National Book Award in Poetry. She works as a creative writing instructor and a freelance writer while splitting her time between Lexington, Kentucky and Sonoma, California (with a great deal of New York in between). Her new book of poems, Bright Dead Things is forthcoming from Milkweed Editions in 2015.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 2,015 reviews
![Profile Image for s.penkevich [mental health hiatus].](/_next/image?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.gr-assets.com%2Fimages%2FS%2Fcompressed.photo.goodreads.com%2Fusers%2F1735525095i%2F6431467._UX200_CR0%2C11%2C200%2C200_.jpg&w=128&q=75)
April 12, 2024
‘I remembered what had been circling in me: I am beautiful. I am full of love. I am dying.’
I am overjoyed to have just heard that Ada Limón was just named by the Library of Congress to be the 24th poet laureate of the United States. This is a huge honor, one she very much deserves and she follows in the footsteps of poetic greats (many of them my favorites) like Joy Harjo, Tracy K. Smith, Louise Glück, Charles Simic and Rita Dove. Her collection Bright Dead Things has always held a special place in my heart, one I fell in love with at the same time I had begun a public poetry project and so her words were frequently found attached to trees around my town. She’s such a perfect poet, one that is as accessible as she is profound, plunging incredible depths and insights with gorgeous prose that is endlessly quotable. She captures everyday moments and enlarges them into poetic cosmos, riffing on relatable emotions and turning longing, loss, desire into an orchestra of feeling that sears through the reader’s heart. As a bookseller, I’ve frequently found myself recommending her works over the years, so I am certainly excited to see her get the accolades she has more than earned.
‘Witness the wet, dead snake,
its long hexagonal pattern weaved
around its body like a code for creation,
curled up cold on the newly tarred road.
Let us begin with the snake: the fact
of death, the poverty of place, of skin
and surface . . .’
-from Torn
An admitted autobiographical poet, Limón bears all in, her fourth collection (as of writing this in 2022 she currently has six) of poems. These are poems that explore ideas of wanting and of transformation, with the second half of the book examining the death of the poet’s mother. With these poems she aims to reconfigure grief into ‘solve-able absence,’ and find ways to move forward, as in Adaptation when she writes:
Still, how the great middle
ticker marched on, and from all its four chambers
to all it forgiveness, unlocked the sternum’s
door, reversed and reshaped until it was a new
bright carnal species, more accustomed to grief,
and ecstatic at the sight of you.’
There is a beautiful kinship with nature in these poems (for this reason, along with being simultaneously accessible and heady, I’ve shelved her in my mind adjacent to Mary Oliver), from mountains and fields and frequent references to the self as a bird. ‘Let’s be owls tonight, stay up in the branches of ourselves,’ she writes in one, comparing herself again to a bird in State Bird , a poem about uprooting that connects deeply with the landscape:
State Bird
Confession: I did not want to live here,
not among the goldenrod, wild onions,
or the dropseed, not waist high in the barrel-
aged brown corn water, not with the million-
dollar racehorses, or the tightly wound
round hay bales. Not even in the old tobacco
weigh station we live in, with its heavy metal
safe doors that frame our bricked bedroom
like the mouth of a strange beast yawning
to suck us in, each night, like air. I denied it,
this new land. But, love, I’ll concede this:
whatever state you are, I’ll be that state’s bird,
the loud, obvious blur of song people point to
when they wonder where it is you’ve gone.
‘Here it is: the new way of living with the world inside of us so we cannot lose it, and we cannot be lost,’ she writes, ‘You and me are us and them, and it and sky.’ These are poems that are like a shoulder to cry on and cry with. Ada Limón is outstanding and if you have somehow missed this collection until now, I would highly recommend checking it out. Or revisiting it in honor of her being appointed Poet Laureate. She has such straightforward language that also endlessly surprises, with such crisp and visceral imagery intertwined with an emotional resonance that will knock the wind out of you. While this is often about loss, it is undeniably a collection about love. ‘How do you love? Like a fist. Like a knife.’ Cheers to Limón.
5/5
‘Say we spend our last moments staring
at each other, hands knotted together,
clutching the dog, watching the sky burn.
Say, It doesn’t matter. Say, That would be
enough. Say you’d still want this: us alive,
right here, feeling lucky.’
-from The Conditional
I am overjoyed to have just heard that Ada Limón was just named by the Library of Congress to be the 24th poet laureate of the United States. This is a huge honor, one she very much deserves and she follows in the footsteps of poetic greats (many of them my favorites) like Joy Harjo, Tracy K. Smith, Louise Glück, Charles Simic and Rita Dove. Her collection Bright Dead Things has always held a special place in my heart, one I fell in love with at the same time I had begun a public poetry project and so her words were frequently found attached to trees around my town. She’s such a perfect poet, one that is as accessible as she is profound, plunging incredible depths and insights with gorgeous prose that is endlessly quotable. She captures everyday moments and enlarges them into poetic cosmos, riffing on relatable emotions and turning longing, loss, desire into an orchestra of feeling that sears through the reader’s heart. As a bookseller, I’ve frequently found myself recommending her works over the years, so I am certainly excited to see her get the accolades she has more than earned.
‘Witness the wet, dead snake,
its long hexagonal pattern weaved
around its body like a code for creation,
curled up cold on the newly tarred road.
Let us begin with the snake: the fact
of death, the poverty of place, of skin
and surface . . .’
-from Torn
An admitted autobiographical poet, Limón bears all in, her fourth collection (as of writing this in 2022 she currently has six) of poems. These are poems that explore ideas of wanting and of transformation, with the second half of the book examining the death of the poet’s mother. With these poems she aims to reconfigure grief into ‘solve-able absence,’ and find ways to move forward, as in Adaptation when she writes:
Still, how the great middle
ticker marched on, and from all its four chambers
to all it forgiveness, unlocked the sternum’s
door, reversed and reshaped until it was a new
bright carnal species, more accustomed to grief,
and ecstatic at the sight of you.’
There is a beautiful kinship with nature in these poems (for this reason, along with being simultaneously accessible and heady, I’ve shelved her in my mind adjacent to Mary Oliver), from mountains and fields and frequent references to the self as a bird. ‘Let’s be owls tonight, stay up in the branches of ourselves,’ she writes in one, comparing herself again to a bird in State Bird , a poem about uprooting that connects deeply with the landscape:
State Bird
Confession: I did not want to live here,
not among the goldenrod, wild onions,
or the dropseed, not waist high in the barrel-
aged brown corn water, not with the million-
dollar racehorses, or the tightly wound
round hay bales. Not even in the old tobacco
weigh station we live in, with its heavy metal
safe doors that frame our bricked bedroom
like the mouth of a strange beast yawning
to suck us in, each night, like air. I denied it,
this new land. But, love, I’ll concede this:
whatever state you are, I’ll be that state’s bird,
the loud, obvious blur of song people point to
when they wonder where it is you’ve gone.
‘Here it is: the new way of living with the world inside of us so we cannot lose it, and we cannot be lost,’ she writes, ‘You and me are us and them, and it and sky.’ These are poems that are like a shoulder to cry on and cry with. Ada Limón is outstanding and if you have somehow missed this collection until now, I would highly recommend checking it out. Or revisiting it in honor of her being appointed Poet Laureate. She has such straightforward language that also endlessly surprises, with such crisp and visceral imagery intertwined with an emotional resonance that will knock the wind out of you. While this is often about loss, it is undeniably a collection about love. ‘How do you love? Like a fist. Like a knife.’ Cheers to Limón.
5/5
‘Say we spend our last moments staring
at each other, hands knotted together,
clutching the dog, watching the sky burn.
Say, It doesn’t matter. Say, That would be
enough. Say you’d still want this: us alive,
right here, feeling lucky.’
-from The Conditional
March 17, 2020
One of my favorite books of poetry I've read in ages. It's rare to encounter such convincing optimism at such a high caliber of writing. Her hope sneaks up on you unnoticed until you feel it as your own.
January 30, 2016
This book made me want to be a poet. To make magic with words. To carve out beautiful, vivid, life-filled moments, to define grief or lust or both together.
This book made me write, such as I do. The words made me come to life, as only poetry can. It made me feel young again and my own age at the same time.
Limon writes about longing, and loss (her poems about her stepmother's death brought me painfully back to my mother's dying), and making a life. About New York City and Kentucky and other spaces in this country.
If you like poetry, read this book. And if you don't like poetry, maybe you should think about trying it anyway.
This book made me write, such as I do. The words made me come to life, as only poetry can. It made me feel young again and my own age at the same time.
Limon writes about longing, and loss (her poems about her stepmother's death brought me painfully back to my mother's dying), and making a life. About New York City and Kentucky and other spaces in this country.
If you like poetry, read this book. And if you don't like poetry, maybe you should think about trying it anyway.
July 17, 2022
Ada Limón is an amazing poet, with a strong distinctive voice. A feminist, rough-edged, American Latina, Kentucky/NYC/California/Nebraska/Tennessee voice. It's very good.
I'll show you some examples. I'll hide them under spoilers because I know some people don't like poetry. So, you can only read the ones that interest you or none at all.
Feminist/womanhood
Appreciating the little things in life:
God/Religion
She writes A LOT of poems about death and watching her stepmother die of cancer. They're brutal, and very good reading. There's a whole chapter of the book dealing with poems on death and watching someone you love slowly die.
I'll just put one of those in this review:
Dealing with the death of a loved one
She writes a lot about men, her exes, and her sexual experiences.
Here's one liked about that topic,
Being Latin@
She also has a great poem about her ex getting hit by a bus, and a great one about peeing outside like the pit bull bitch she was with at a car show with an inattentive boyfriend.... oh, there's so much good stuff in here but I can't transcribe the whole book for you! LOL LOL Much as I want to.
Tl;dr - Sometimes I get the urge to read poetry. Perhaps you do, too? It's hard to know what's going on in the modern poetry world (MODERN) because it's not really discussed or paid attention to in everyday life by everyday people. So, I'm here to tell you that this is good stuff and you might want to give her poems a try if you are curious. Take a look below my review for some quotes of hers I added to GR, as well - they can offer you a glimpse of some poems I didn't share here.
I'll definitely pick up another volume of hers. Insightful, slightly funny, feminist, and able to tackle the hard stuff without being maudlin or preachy. Excellent. I think I'm actually going to purchase this one.
...
EDIT: 07/17/2022
Ada Limón Is Named the Next Poet Laureate
"Poetry, she said, can help the nation “become whole again” in a fraught, divided moment."
When Ada Limón quit her marketing job to try writing full time, she assumed that would mean writing fiction. So she spent her working hours imagining the lives of other people. Then, she said, she would plunge into poetry, where she could be herself.
She never published a novel. But as a poet, she has been awarded the highest honor in her field: On Tuesday, the Library of Congress announced she will become the next poet laureate of the United States.
Limón, who has published six books, will begin her tenure this fall as the 24th poet laureate, a position that has been held by some of the country’s most celebrated poets, including Louise Glück, Juan Felipe Herrera, Robert Hass and Tracy K. Smith....
Link to full article: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/12/bo...
I'll show you some examples. I'll hide them under spoilers because I know some people don't like poetry. So, you can only read the ones that interest you or none at all.
Feminist/womanhood
Appreciating the little things in life:
God/Religion
She writes A LOT of poems about death and watching her stepmother die of cancer. They're brutal, and very good reading. There's a whole chapter of the book dealing with poems on death and watching someone you love slowly die.
I'll just put one of those in this review:
Dealing with the death of a loved one
She writes a lot about men, her exes, and her sexual experiences.
Here's one liked about that topic,
Being Latin@
She also has a great poem about her ex getting hit by a bus, and a great one about peeing outside like the pit bull bitch she was with at a car show with an inattentive boyfriend.... oh, there's so much good stuff in here but I can't transcribe the whole book for you! LOL LOL Much as I want to.
Tl;dr - Sometimes I get the urge to read poetry. Perhaps you do, too? It's hard to know what's going on in the modern poetry world (MODERN) because it's not really discussed or paid attention to in everyday life by everyday people. So, I'm here to tell you that this is good stuff and you might want to give her poems a try if you are curious. Take a look below my review for some quotes of hers I added to GR, as well - they can offer you a glimpse of some poems I didn't share here.
I'll definitely pick up another volume of hers. Insightful, slightly funny, feminist, and able to tackle the hard stuff without being maudlin or preachy. Excellent. I think I'm actually going to purchase this one.
...
EDIT: 07/17/2022
Ada Limón Is Named the Next Poet Laureate
"Poetry, she said, can help the nation “become whole again” in a fraught, divided moment."
When Ada Limón quit her marketing job to try writing full time, she assumed that would mean writing fiction. So she spent her working hours imagining the lives of other people. Then, she said, she would plunge into poetry, where she could be herself.
She never published a novel. But as a poet, she has been awarded the highest honor in her field: On Tuesday, the Library of Congress announced she will become the next poet laureate of the United States.
Limón, who has published six books, will begin her tenure this fall as the 24th poet laureate, a position that has been held by some of the country’s most celebrated poets, including Louise Glück, Juan Felipe Herrera, Robert Hass and Tracy K. Smith....
Link to full article: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/12/bo...
August 25, 2025
If I wasn’t married
And she wasn’t married
I’d ask Ada Limón to espouse me
For she is an Aries
And I am an Aries
And both of us are into poetry
She’s Mexican-American
I’m Belgo-Luso-Canadian
But I sing in a mariachi band
And my eyes they are chestnut
Like her eyes are chestnut
And we both have a beautiful hand
There’s only one problem
A really big problem
She’s in love with some bozo called Marquardt
And me with a French girl
A ravishing French girl
Isn’t life so unbearably hard?
Read
April 29, 2023I am starting to think that Ada Limon is my favourite contemporary poet. I say that without having done the due diligence of looking through the other poetry collections I have read, so I am buying into the hype of the moment where I flip over the last page and sit there, staring out the window at that crow chasing the other crow to the top of the building in front of me - the two crows have been the topic of much discussion between me and my father, and how they seem to be scared of the much smaller pigeons that chase them down for some reason. Is it territorial? Is it sport? Who knows. All I know is this - Limon connects me to nature in a deeply intimate fashion, and no I don’t own any of her collections. I have taken them out from the library. But I want to go out and hunt for them now, hitting the used bookstore circuit over and over again until I find them. And if I fail, I am okay to just walk right into the bookstore near me and shell out for them fully. But, for me, hunting for the book is both territorial and sport, so I will do that first.
I loved these poems:
-What It Looks Like to Us and the Words We Use
-Relentless
-After You Toss Around the Ashes
-In the Country of Resurrection
-Oh Please, Let It Be Lightning
Here is What It Looks Like to Us and the Words We Use:
All these great barns out here in the outskirts,
black creosote boards knee-deep in the bluegrass.
They look so artfully abandoned, even in use.
You say they look like arks after the sea’s
dried up, I say they look like pirate ships,
and I think of that walk in my valley where
J said, You don’t believe in God? And I said,
No. I believe in this connection we all have
to nature, to each other, to the universe.
And she said, Yeah, God. And how we stood there,
low beasts among the white oaks, Spanish moss,
and spider webs, obsidian shards stuck in our pockets,
woodpecker flurry, and I refused to call it so.
So instead, we looked up at the unruly sky,
its clouds in simple animal shapes we could name
though we knew they were really just clouds–
disorderly, and marvelous, and ours.
I loved these poems:
-What It Looks Like to Us and the Words We Use
-Relentless
-After You Toss Around the Ashes
-In the Country of Resurrection
-Oh Please, Let It Be Lightning
Here is What It Looks Like to Us and the Words We Use:
All these great barns out here in the outskirts,
black creosote boards knee-deep in the bluegrass.
They look so artfully abandoned, even in use.
You say they look like arks after the sea’s
dried up, I say they look like pirate ships,
and I think of that walk in my valley where
J said, You don’t believe in God? And I said,
No. I believe in this connection we all have
to nature, to each other, to the universe.
And she said, Yeah, God. And how we stood there,
low beasts among the white oaks, Spanish moss,
and spider webs, obsidian shards stuck in our pockets,
woodpecker flurry, and I refused to call it so.
So instead, we looked up at the unruly sky,
its clouds in simple animal shapes we could name
though we knew they were really just clouds–
disorderly, and marvelous, and ours.
January 2, 2016
Really well-wrought lyrical confessional poems with a hint of ironic distancing and the flat-surprise tone that is the earmark of contemporary young mainstream poets. Lovely for its thing, which is not my thing.
January 8, 2022
An elevating collection of poetry that straddles the gap between life and death and the sheer sorrow and beauty it occupies. At just over 100 pages, Bright Dead Things is conversational, confessional and elegant; split into four parts: thematically each representing aspects of nature, grief, love and travel.
Limon's style allows for extremely easy reading, effortlessly weaving the throes of grief and loss alongside nature, femininity, identity, hope, nostalgia and aspiration. This collection opens you up and lets you bleed, then sews you back together, left feverishly hopeful and buoyant.
In Down Here, a dog's patience is perfectly conveyed, supposing 'eternity is the one inside the drawer, inside the buttonhole', wonderfully encapsulating the agony of waiting.
What Remains Grows Ravenous relates to the anguish over her step-mother's death, powerfully ruminating that 'The word widower looks like window. Something you can see yourself in, in the dark'.
In Relentless, a conversation arises between mother and daughter. They talk trivially about the weather. Then begin talking about talking about the weather in splendid meta: 'We could go on like this forever'. This is a compelling elegy that expertly exudes the abject sorrow accompanying loss: 'How strange this silent longing for death, as if you could make the sun not come up'. Yet it also sketches vivid imagery of nature's incessantness and ignorance through human suffering: 'the world's wheeling and wheeling its seasons like a cruel continuation of stubborn force'.
Perhaps some of the most poignant and insightful lines of the collection are found in Before, which perfectly abridges the agony sought in nostalgia, of looking back on life now truant, never able to be reclaimed - the overwhelming and painful absence of what once was written in one intense line: "If you live, you look back and beg for it again, the hazardous bliss before you know what you would miss".
Limon's style allows for extremely easy reading, effortlessly weaving the throes of grief and loss alongside nature, femininity, identity, hope, nostalgia and aspiration. This collection opens you up and lets you bleed, then sews you back together, left feverishly hopeful and buoyant.
In Down Here, a dog's patience is perfectly conveyed, supposing 'eternity is the one inside the drawer, inside the buttonhole', wonderfully encapsulating the agony of waiting.
What Remains Grows Ravenous relates to the anguish over her step-mother's death, powerfully ruminating that 'The word widower looks like window. Something you can see yourself in, in the dark'.
In Relentless, a conversation arises between mother and daughter. They talk trivially about the weather. Then begin talking about talking about the weather in splendid meta: 'We could go on like this forever'. This is a compelling elegy that expertly exudes the abject sorrow accompanying loss: 'How strange this silent longing for death, as if you could make the sun not come up'. Yet it also sketches vivid imagery of nature's incessantness and ignorance through human suffering: 'the world's wheeling and wheeling its seasons like a cruel continuation of stubborn force'.
Perhaps some of the most poignant and insightful lines of the collection are found in Before, which perfectly abridges the agony sought in nostalgia, of looking back on life now truant, never able to be reclaimed - the overwhelming and painful absence of what once was written in one intense line: "If you live, you look back and beg for it again, the hazardous bliss before you know what you would miss".
January 27, 2023
❀ blog ❀ thestorygraph ❀ letterboxd ❀ tumblr ❀ ko-fi ❀
Lighting does indeed strike twice and so does Ava Limón’s poetry. This past summer I was very much taken by Limón’s latest collection, The Hurting Kind, so much so that I was keen to make my way through her backlist. In Bright Dead Things Limón showcases not only her skill for language, but her ability to breathe life into words and sentences. From the gorgeously rendered , or otherwise striking, imagery underlining most of the poems in this collection to the understated yet captivating reflections on life, nature, memory and connection. One does not so much read Limón’s poems, as experiences them. There is a lushness to her description, and the rhythm created by her words feels like a breeze. The images, memories, and feelings she conveys within these poems are tinged by melancholy, which renders them all the more affecting. I admire the way within this collection, and at times within the same poem, Limón is able to shift between introspection, where what she writes feels very intimate and specific to her, to observations about nature, and questions related to life and death.
A truly stunning collection that was able to simultaneously draw me away from my reality and make me reflect on all of the big and the little things that make-up every-day life. Limón is easily my favorite poet and I can’t wait to read more of her work.
Lighting does indeed strike twice and so does Ava Limón’s poetry. This past summer I was very much taken by Limón’s latest collection, The Hurting Kind, so much so that I was keen to make my way through her backlist. In Bright Dead Things Limón showcases not only her skill for language, but her ability to breathe life into words and sentences. From the gorgeously rendered , or otherwise striking, imagery underlining most of the poems in this collection to the understated yet captivating reflections on life, nature, memory and connection. One does not so much read Limón’s poems, as experiences them. There is a lushness to her description, and the rhythm created by her words feels like a breeze. The images, memories, and feelings she conveys within these poems are tinged by melancholy, which renders them all the more affecting. I admire the way within this collection, and at times within the same poem, Limón is able to shift between introspection, where what she writes feels very intimate and specific to her, to observations about nature, and questions related to life and death.
A truly stunning collection that was able to simultaneously draw me away from my reality and make me reflect on all of the big and the little things that make-up every-day life. Limón is easily my favorite poet and I can’t wait to read more of her work.
August 24, 2017
Each of these poems has a weight measured in depth; as a collection they create a perfect circle of teeth-gnashing humanity - a circumference dotted with points of joy, pain, celebration, humor and loss.
I was fortunate to see Limón in July of this year doing a reading here in Northern California. She read 11 poems, most of them new work - her presence and narrative voice complemented the words in poetic totality. I wish that she had read "The Great Blue Heron of Dunbar Road" found in this collection - it's the type of poem that breaks you without malice, letting you slip between its fingers to shatter on the floor into the million pieces that will make of you something new.
October 7, 2021
Bright Dead Things was Book Five in my October poetry project (yes, I'm a little behind schedule, but I'll catch up!). This was a reread and I liked it even more this time around. After the past couple years, all the darkness and the hopefulness really spoke to me. Recommended!
November 18, 2016
These poems are in four numbered sections. The first seems to be about dislocation and isolation, the second about loss and grief.
I found most of the poems I liked in section three.
Some highlights:
Glow
"...Before now, I don't
know if I have ever loved anyone, or if
I have ever been loved, but men have
been very good to me, have seen
my absurd out-of-place-ness, my bent
grin and un-called-for loud laugh
and have wanted to love me for it,
have been so warm in their wanting
that sometimes I wanted to love them, too.
And I think that must be worth something,
that it should be a celebrated thing...."
The Good Fight
"...Like a fist. Like a knife.
But I want to be more like a weed,
a small frog trembling in air...."
Oh Please, Let It Be Lightning
"...And it didn't matter
what was beyond us, or what came before us,
or what town we lived in, or where the money came from,
or what new night might leave us hungry and reeling,
we were simply going forward, riotous and windswept,
and all too willing to be struck by something shining
and mad, and so furiously hot it could kill us."
The Conditional
I found most of the poems I liked in section three.
Some highlights:
Glow
"...Before now, I don't
know if I have ever loved anyone, or if
I have ever been loved, but men have
been very good to me, have seen
my absurd out-of-place-ness, my bent
grin and un-called-for loud laugh
and have wanted to love me for it,
have been so warm in their wanting
that sometimes I wanted to love them, too.
And I think that must be worth something,
that it should be a celebrated thing...."
The Good Fight
"...Like a fist. Like a knife.
But I want to be more like a weed,
a small frog trembling in air...."
Oh Please, Let It Be Lightning
"...And it didn't matter
what was beyond us, or what came before us,
or what town we lived in, or where the money came from,
or what new night might leave us hungry and reeling,
we were simply going forward, riotous and windswept,
and all too willing to be struck by something shining
and mad, and so furiously hot it could kill us."
The Conditional
June 15, 2016
I am gleaming. Promise you'll see me gleam.
-Ada Limon, from "Lashed to the Helm, All Stiff and Stark"
I went to this book seeking solace on the week of the Orlando massacre, the deadliest mass shooting in recent U.S. history, which was also a hate crime targeting the LGBTQ community and the Latinx community. I went to this book because I craved optimism and hope at a time when those qualities seemed hard to come by. And it's true that Ada Limon's strong-voiced lyric poems are woven through with positivity and pluckiness, marked by a determination to affirm life in all its largeness and spikiness, its wanton loves and lusts and gluttonies, its often childlike selfishness and, most of all, its awesome animal vigor, its adrenaline-driven thrust to survive at all costs.
...I remember the unruly
feathered fowl of my earlier years
that draped the flimflam landscape
of the home of the first girl I ever kissed.... (from "Day of Song, Day of Silence")
Quite a few of the poems in the book resonated with my current mood. Limon has a way of pulling disastrous news events into the embrace of her poems that feels startlingly immediate, intimate, almost casual: "Yesterday, so many dead in Norway" is a sentence fragment appearing in the poem "How Far Away We Are" that seems, almost offhandedly, to allude to the 2011 Anders Breivik killings, while another poem begins with the sentence "Big blue horizon wakes me / from a car catnap and the boys / tell me about Boston, the bombs," in an apparent allusion to the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing. Stripped of all but one or two identifiers, these large-scale tragedies are made to feel deeply personal; the wounds are made to feel fresh once again.
I expected to be emotionally moved by those poems; what caught me off-guard were a handful of delicate, elliptical poems near the end of the collection concerning a couple's uncertain fertility and their fear of not being able to have a child. "Call to Post," "Lashed to the Helm, All Stiff and Stark," "The Conditional" -- these poems surprised me with their emotional power, and they will probably stay with me longer than the poems mentioned previously.
Say we never meet her. Never him.
Say we spend our last moments staring
at each other, hands knotted together,
clutching the dog, watching the sky burn.
Say, It doesn’t matter. Say, That would be
enough. Say you’d still want this: us alive,
right here, feeling lucky. (from "The Conditional")
Other favorite poems in this collection included "How to Triumph Like a Girl", "I Remember the Carrots," and "Prickly Pear and Fisticuffs". The book also includes four poems about owls and two poems about whales, poems that I probably should have loved as much as the aforementioned due to my affinity for their subject matter. But it was the poems that surprised me into loving them that really captured my heart.
-Ada Limon, from "Lashed to the Helm, All Stiff and Stark"
I went to this book seeking solace on the week of the Orlando massacre, the deadliest mass shooting in recent U.S. history, which was also a hate crime targeting the LGBTQ community and the Latinx community. I went to this book because I craved optimism and hope at a time when those qualities seemed hard to come by. And it's true that Ada Limon's strong-voiced lyric poems are woven through with positivity and pluckiness, marked by a determination to affirm life in all its largeness and spikiness, its wanton loves and lusts and gluttonies, its often childlike selfishness and, most of all, its awesome animal vigor, its adrenaline-driven thrust to survive at all costs.
...I remember the unruly
feathered fowl of my earlier years
that draped the flimflam landscape
of the home of the first girl I ever kissed.... (from "Day of Song, Day of Silence")
Quite a few of the poems in the book resonated with my current mood. Limon has a way of pulling disastrous news events into the embrace of her poems that feels startlingly immediate, intimate, almost casual: "Yesterday, so many dead in Norway" is a sentence fragment appearing in the poem "How Far Away We Are" that seems, almost offhandedly, to allude to the 2011 Anders Breivik killings, while another poem begins with the sentence "Big blue horizon wakes me / from a car catnap and the boys / tell me about Boston, the bombs," in an apparent allusion to the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing. Stripped of all but one or two identifiers, these large-scale tragedies are made to feel deeply personal; the wounds are made to feel fresh once again.
I expected to be emotionally moved by those poems; what caught me off-guard were a handful of delicate, elliptical poems near the end of the collection concerning a couple's uncertain fertility and their fear of not being able to have a child. "Call to Post," "Lashed to the Helm, All Stiff and Stark," "The Conditional" -- these poems surprised me with their emotional power, and they will probably stay with me longer than the poems mentioned previously.
Say we never meet her. Never him.
Say we spend our last moments staring
at each other, hands knotted together,
clutching the dog, watching the sky burn.
Say, It doesn’t matter. Say, That would be
enough. Say you’d still want this: us alive,
right here, feeling lucky. (from "The Conditional")
Other favorite poems in this collection included "How to Triumph Like a Girl", "I Remember the Carrots," and "Prickly Pear and Fisticuffs". The book also includes four poems about owls and two poems about whales, poems that I probably should have loved as much as the aforementioned due to my affinity for their subject matter. But it was the poems that surprised me into loving them that really captured my heart.
November 20, 2015
Approachable in the nicest possible way, by which I mean you re-read lines for the thrill of hearing them again in your head, not because you're confused. Intelligent and warm and surprising and unafraid of simple candor. Like "Miracle Fish, a prose poem that begins "I used to pretend to believe in God. Mainly, I liked so much to talk to someone in the dark."
I also love the poems that tell longer, more complicated stories, all of which seem personal and yet circumspect. There's a palpable sense of respect for every person in these poems (and every other living thing, to include the beautifully considered whales), and yet there's enough intimacy to make the stories feel raw, moving, and true. The one called "Play It Again," for instance, where her parents are listening to Frankie Valli in the Castro District:
She's in the window
crying because the city is too big, and also
because we are at war, and he goes to work
in tough schools that need teachers,
Spanish-speaking teachers not scared of much
except how to make rent and make the world maybe
better or easier or livable. Nights, they get stoned
in small apartments and eat enchiladas in the warm corn-filled kitchens
and she's going to paint and have big ideas,
and he's going to save the world with curriculum . . .
It's that last line that gets me, really. "He's going to save the world with curriculum." This is a wonderful book I expect to return to again and again.
I also love the poems that tell longer, more complicated stories, all of which seem personal and yet circumspect. There's a palpable sense of respect for every person in these poems (and every other living thing, to include the beautifully considered whales), and yet there's enough intimacy to make the stories feel raw, moving, and true. The one called "Play It Again," for instance, where her parents are listening to Frankie Valli in the Castro District:
She's in the window
crying because the city is too big, and also
because we are at war, and he goes to work
in tough schools that need teachers,
Spanish-speaking teachers not scared of much
except how to make rent and make the world maybe
better or easier or livable. Nights, they get stoned
in small apartments and eat enchiladas in the warm corn-filled kitchens
and she's going to paint and have big ideas,
and he's going to save the world with curriculum . . .
It's that last line that gets me, really. "He's going to save the world with curriculum." This is a wonderful book I expect to return to again and again.
December 31, 2018
Limon has a really approachable, conversational tone, which is not a bad thing at all! But it might not be my thing. And I think that approachable/conversational doesn't necessarily have to correspond to predictable, but at times reading her poems, I felt like I could see what was coming, or at least gather this sort of overall cadence where she wanders through an observation (often about nature) to end on some larger, hopeful insight. Because I could gather this pattern, some of the hopefulness felt unearned, or maybe trite, for how at least formally, the reader could see what was coming; the hopefulness could feel more like a goal than something arising organically.
My favorite moments were when Limon strayed from this voice/pattern, when the speaker got even just the tiniest hint of petulant/bitter, or when she would play with idioms/cliches -- i.e., "Someday, son, none of this / will be yours" from "We Are Surprised" -- sort of subverting what you would expect from the conversational tone. And while I'm not a fan of her voice, I think she does well with imagery and sound. That's about all though -- I enjoyed the read, but don't think I'll really return to this collection/poet.
My favorite moments were when Limon strayed from this voice/pattern, when the speaker got even just the tiniest hint of petulant/bitter, or when she would play with idioms/cliches -- i.e., "Someday, son, none of this / will be yours" from "We Are Surprised" -- sort of subverting what you would expect from the conversational tone. And while I'm not a fan of her voice, I think she does well with imagery and sound. That's about all though -- I enjoyed the read, but don't think I'll really return to this collection/poet.
Read
May 24, 2020Isn’t it funny? How the cold numbs everything but grief.
March 18, 2023
wanted to love this book so bad but alas
August 23, 2020
this was such a lovely book. something that will always stay with me is the line about believing in the connection we all have to nature, each other, and the universe.
May 15, 2022
Ada Limon brings you into her bright world, shares herself completely. This collection of poems begins a bit too contrived, missing something, maybe a lack of craft, but in part 3 of its 4 parts Limon lets go, her spirit, her whole being pours into her poems, she shares the complexity and ambiguity of life, painting a thorough picture.
Prose elements of poetry dominate throughout this work (and there are a few prose poems). Limon is not out to impress with her words or style, she’s communicating. This collection is completely readable and there’s no interpretive barrier as in so much poetry. Part 1 poems like “State Bird” fit the classic New Yorker model but it’s really later poems like “The Wild Divine” “Accident Report” and “Service” that she really lets go. The poetry achieves a creative wildness similar to freer forms, rock music, modern dance, her popularity as a poet is well-earned and well-deserved.
With its prose elements and readability, its energy and personality, this is the perfect book to recommend to someone who maybe reads prose but wants to try poetry, or someone who wants to read very likable poems. That is not in any way looking down on her achievement here, it takes an unusual and extraordinary (and unappreciated) level of talent to write poems like this. The over 6,000 reviews of this particular book are a testament to that. Brava.
Prose elements of poetry dominate throughout this work (and there are a few prose poems). Limon is not out to impress with her words or style, she’s communicating. This collection is completely readable and there’s no interpretive barrier as in so much poetry. Part 1 poems like “State Bird” fit the classic New Yorker model but it’s really later poems like “The Wild Divine” “Accident Report” and “Service” that she really lets go. The poetry achieves a creative wildness similar to freer forms, rock music, modern dance, her popularity as a poet is well-earned and well-deserved.
With its prose elements and readability, its energy and personality, this is the perfect book to recommend to someone who maybe reads prose but wants to try poetry, or someone who wants to read very likable poems. That is not in any way looking down on her achievement here, it takes an unusual and extraordinary (and unappreciated) level of talent to write poems like this. The over 6,000 reviews of this particular book are a testament to that. Brava.
Read
May 7, 2016Ada Limon writes accessible and easily digestible poems, a plus from the start. Among the themes treated here are being a woman, being Mexican, and, in one section, death--specifically the death of her step-mother, which became grist for a set of poems.
Some cool lines I jotted down as I read are as follows:
"I'm like a fence, or a cow, or that word, yonder"
"not just to let the savage grass grow...."
"the clowned-out clouds"
"spring's pushed out every tizzy-tongued flower known to the valley's bosom of light"
"tongue out to catch what was left of the world"
"Every moon will be a moon of surrender and lemon seeds"
"Let's be owls tonight, stay up in the branches of ourselves.."
As is true with any collection, the strengths were variable. Some poems seemed self-consciously poetic, but others were true, with that certain je ne sais quo that just tells you "I've read a good poem. Damn!" An example is the poem harboring the book's title:
I Remember the Carrots
I haven't given up on trying to live a good life,
a really good one even, sitting in the kitchen
in Kentucky, imagining how agreeable I'll be--
the advance of fulfillment, and of desire--
all these needs met, then unmet again.
When I was a kid, I was excited about carrots,
their spidery neon tops in the garden’s plot.
And so I ripped them all out. I broke the new roots
and carried them, like a prize, to my father
who scolded me, rightly, for killing his whole crop.
I loved them: my own bright dead things.
I'm thirty-five and remember all that I've done wrong.
Yesterday I was nice, but in truth I resented
the contentment of the field. Why must we practice
this surrender? What I mean is: there are days
I still want to kill the carrots because I can.
Then there's this:
The Riveter
What I didn’t say
when she asked me
why I knew so much
about dying, was that,
for me, it was work.
When Dad called to say
we had a month, I made a list.
I called in my team
to my office in a high rise,
those Rosies of know-how,
those that had lost someone loved,
those that had done the assembly line
of a home death, and said,
What’s this about not keeping
her on TPN? One woman,
who was still soft with sadness
said, It depends on whether
she wants to die of heart failure
or to drown in her own fluids.
I nodded, and wrote that down
like this was a meeting
about a client who wasn’t happy.
What about hospice? I asked.
They said, They’ll help,
but your Dad and you guys
will do most of it.
I put a star by that.
We had a plan of action.
When this happens, we do this.
When that happens, we do that.
But what I forgot
was that it was our plan,
not hers, not the one doing the dying,
this was a plan for those
who still had a next.
See, our job was simple:
keep on living. Her job was harder,
the hardest. Her job,
her work, was to let the machine
of survival break down,
make the factory fail,
to know that this war was winless,
to know that she would singlehandedly
destroy us all.
Limon also mixed it up nicely. Although there are no form poems, she includes prose poems and isn't overly partial to the single-block stanza, mixing it up now and then. What's more, she's made The New Yorker with one of these poems. End of story. Or poem, I should say. Here you go. Something that impressed even Paul Muldoon:
State Bird
Confession: I did not want to live here,
not among the goldenrod, wild onions,
or the dropseed, not waist high in the barrel-
aged brown corn water, not with the million-
dollar racehorses, or the tightly wound
round hay bales. Not even in the old tobacco
weigh station we live in, with its heavy metal
safe doors that frame our bricked bedroom
like the mouth of a strange beast yawning
to suck us in, each night, like air. I denied it,
this new land. But, love, I’ll concede this:
whatever state you are, I’ll be that state’s bird,
the loud, obvious blur of song people point to
when they wonder where it is you’ve gone.
Some cool lines I jotted down as I read are as follows:
"I'm like a fence, or a cow, or that word, yonder"
"not just to let the savage grass grow...."
"the clowned-out clouds"
"spring's pushed out every tizzy-tongued flower known to the valley's bosom of light"
"tongue out to catch what was left of the world"
"Every moon will be a moon of surrender and lemon seeds"
"Let's be owls tonight, stay up in the branches of ourselves.."
As is true with any collection, the strengths were variable. Some poems seemed self-consciously poetic, but others were true, with that certain je ne sais quo that just tells you "I've read a good poem. Damn!" An example is the poem harboring the book's title:
I Remember the Carrots
I haven't given up on trying to live a good life,
a really good one even, sitting in the kitchen
in Kentucky, imagining how agreeable I'll be--
the advance of fulfillment, and of desire--
all these needs met, then unmet again.
When I was a kid, I was excited about carrots,
their spidery neon tops in the garden’s plot.
And so I ripped them all out. I broke the new roots
and carried them, like a prize, to my father
who scolded me, rightly, for killing his whole crop.
I loved them: my own bright dead things.
I'm thirty-five and remember all that I've done wrong.
Yesterday I was nice, but in truth I resented
the contentment of the field. Why must we practice
this surrender? What I mean is: there are days
I still want to kill the carrots because I can.
Then there's this:
The Riveter
What I didn’t say
when she asked me
why I knew so much
about dying, was that,
for me, it was work.
When Dad called to say
we had a month, I made a list.
I called in my team
to my office in a high rise,
those Rosies of know-how,
those that had lost someone loved,
those that had done the assembly line
of a home death, and said,
What’s this about not keeping
her on TPN? One woman,
who was still soft with sadness
said, It depends on whether
she wants to die of heart failure
or to drown in her own fluids.
I nodded, and wrote that down
like this was a meeting
about a client who wasn’t happy.
What about hospice? I asked.
They said, They’ll help,
but your Dad and you guys
will do most of it.
I put a star by that.
We had a plan of action.
When this happens, we do this.
When that happens, we do that.
But what I forgot
was that it was our plan,
not hers, not the one doing the dying,
this was a plan for those
who still had a next.
See, our job was simple:
keep on living. Her job was harder,
the hardest. Her job,
her work, was to let the machine
of survival break down,
make the factory fail,
to know that this war was winless,
to know that she would singlehandedly
destroy us all.
Limon also mixed it up nicely. Although there are no form poems, she includes prose poems and isn't overly partial to the single-block stanza, mixing it up now and then. What's more, she's made The New Yorker with one of these poems. End of story. Or poem, I should say. Here you go. Something that impressed even Paul Muldoon:
State Bird
Confession: I did not want to live here,
not among the goldenrod, wild onions,
or the dropseed, not waist high in the barrel-
aged brown corn water, not with the million-
dollar racehorses, or the tightly wound
round hay bales. Not even in the old tobacco
weigh station we live in, with its heavy metal
safe doors that frame our bricked bedroom
like the mouth of a strange beast yawning
to suck us in, each night, like air. I denied it,
this new land. But, love, I’ll concede this:
whatever state you are, I’ll be that state’s bird,
the loud, obvious blur of song people point to
when they wonder where it is you’ve gone.
August 2, 2022
in conversation with her audience, ada limón invites us on her exploration of one’s sense of belonging and self, grief and loss, and faith in an attempt to make sense of both the losses and changes in her life. it is through this that our poet finds beauty in death, and joy in being alive for we are lucky to experience the trials and tribulations of life; to be witness to death, shifts in locations and the ever-changing relationships we welcome into our lives.
the writing here is lyrical, limón’s skills beautifully evident. i became enamoured with the hopefulness attached to her written word despite the sensitivity and seriousness of the topics throughout her poetry. i found an inner sense of peace throughout and will carry her outlook on grief with me forever.
“say tomorrow doesn’t come.
say the moon becomes an icy pit.
say the sweet-gum tree is petrified.
say the sun’s a foul black tire fire.
say the owl’s eyes are pinpricks.
say the raccoon’s a hot tar stain.
say the shirt’s plastic ditch-litter
say the kitchen’s a cow’s corpse.
say we never get to see it: bright
future, stuck like a bum star, never
coming close, never dazzling.
say we never meet her. never him.
say we spend our last moments staring
at each other, hands knotted together,
clutching the dog, watching the sky burn.
say, it doesn’t matter. say, that would be
enough. say you’d still want this: us alive,
right here, feeling lucky.”
the writing here is lyrical, limón’s skills beautifully evident. i became enamoured with the hopefulness attached to her written word despite the sensitivity and seriousness of the topics throughout her poetry. i found an inner sense of peace throughout and will carry her outlook on grief with me forever.
“say tomorrow doesn’t come.
say the moon becomes an icy pit.
say the sweet-gum tree is petrified.
say the sun’s a foul black tire fire.
say the owl’s eyes are pinpricks.
say the raccoon’s a hot tar stain.
say the shirt’s plastic ditch-litter
say the kitchen’s a cow’s corpse.
say we never get to see it: bright
future, stuck like a bum star, never
coming close, never dazzling.
say we never meet her. never him.
say we spend our last moments staring
at each other, hands knotted together,
clutching the dog, watching the sky burn.
say, it doesn’t matter. say, that would be
enough. say you’d still want this: us alive,
right here, feeling lucky.”
December 26, 2018
“It’s not sadness, though it may sound like it. I’m thinking about people and trees and how I wish I could be silent more, be more tree than anything else, less clumsy and loud, less crow, more cool white pine, and how it’s hard not to always want something else, not just to let the savage grass grow.”
i have no words i loved this so much
i have no words i loved this so much
July 26, 2023
the girls that get it get it (i'm not one of them)
December 4, 2019
This includes some stellar poems including the one that convinced me to buy it, How To Triumph Like A Girl. (link: http://gulfcoastmag.org/journal/252/h...)
These poems are confident and work with admirable chutzpah, but there’s nothing arrogant or condescending about them. Limon has a great voice and you just kind of want to be friends with her. (If only she’d run for president!) The poems are accessible and honest, sometimes funny, sometimes daring, often optimistic. I like that. The setting is mostly tangible rural American.
The book is separated into four sections and I found the first and last the strongest. The second deals with the death of her stepmother, whom she both loved and didn’t like. There are other family poems, too, and love poems and poems of displacement. “State Bird” is about living somewhere (Kentucky) rather than where you’d like to (Brooklyn) for the sake of a partner. It’s really a gorgeous poem. It begins honestly -
Confession: I did not want to live here,
not among the goldenrod, wild onions...
It then kind of wavers and I, for one, thought it was about to falter but the conclusion soars.
In a couple cases the opposite happens. You are rapt with what’s happening and then the end fades out or hits the wrong note. “Prickly Pear and Fisticuffs” would be one example, at least for me.
Still I’d certainly recommend this for those who like a strong voice and a mostly uplifting read. My favorites were How to Triumph Like a Girl, Roadside Attractions with the Dogs of America, Lies About Sea Creatures, The Great Blue Heron of Dunbar Road, State Bird and During the Impossible Age of Everyone.
Here's a link to Roadside Attractions with the Dogs of America: https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/r...
These poems are confident and work with admirable chutzpah, but there’s nothing arrogant or condescending about them. Limon has a great voice and you just kind of want to be friends with her. (If only she’d run for president!) The poems are accessible and honest, sometimes funny, sometimes daring, often optimistic. I like that. The setting is mostly tangible rural American.
The book is separated into four sections and I found the first and last the strongest. The second deals with the death of her stepmother, whom she both loved and didn’t like. There are other family poems, too, and love poems and poems of displacement. “State Bird” is about living somewhere (Kentucky) rather than where you’d like to (Brooklyn) for the sake of a partner. It’s really a gorgeous poem. It begins honestly -
Confession: I did not want to live here,
not among the goldenrod, wild onions...
It then kind of wavers and I, for one, thought it was about to falter but the conclusion soars.
In a couple cases the opposite happens. You are rapt with what’s happening and then the end fades out or hits the wrong note. “Prickly Pear and Fisticuffs” would be one example, at least for me.
Still I’d certainly recommend this for those who like a strong voice and a mostly uplifting read. My favorites were How to Triumph Like a Girl, Roadside Attractions with the Dogs of America, Lies About Sea Creatures, The Great Blue Heron of Dunbar Road, State Bird and During the Impossible Age of Everyone.
Here's a link to Roadside Attractions with the Dogs of America: https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/r...
October 4, 2020
It was too approachable and simple, it relied too much on romance and the "I said"/"You said", the "you" being that mysterious guy who helps spin the world around and who is behind every poem's accouchement. Also, I don't like it when books romanticise life in the countryside.
A pretty, if too obvious and clumsy one:
I Remember the Carrots
I haven’t given up on trying to live a good life,
a really good one even, sitting in the kitchen
in Kentucky, imagining how agreeable I’ll be –
the advance of fulfillment, and of desire –
all these needs met, then unmet again.
When I was a kid, I was excited about carrots,
their spidery neon tops in the garden’s plot.
And so I ripped them all out. I broke the new roots
and carried them, like a prize, to my father
who scolded me, rightly, for killing his whole crop.
I loved them: my own bright dead things.
I’m thirty-five and remember all that I’ve done wrong.
Yesterday I was nice, but in truth I resented
the contentment of the field. Why must we practice
this surrender? What I mean is: there are days
I still want to kill the carrots because I can.
A pretty, if too obvious and clumsy one:
I Remember the Carrots
I haven’t given up on trying to live a good life,
a really good one even, sitting in the kitchen
in Kentucky, imagining how agreeable I’ll be –
the advance of fulfillment, and of desire –
all these needs met, then unmet again.
When I was a kid, I was excited about carrots,
their spidery neon tops in the garden’s plot.
And so I ripped them all out. I broke the new roots
and carried them, like a prize, to my father
who scolded me, rightly, for killing his whole crop.
I loved them: my own bright dead things.
I’m thirty-five and remember all that I’ve done wrong.
Yesterday I was nice, but in truth I resented
the contentment of the field. Why must we practice
this surrender? What I mean is: there are days
I still want to kill the carrots because I can.
November 21, 2021
Aquest poemari conté el que és, des de fa uns anys, un dels meus poemes preferits. Però encara no l'havia llegit en el conjunt de tota l'obra. Es titula 'Before', si voleu buscar-lo per internet i llegir-lo.
Ada Limón té una de les veus més singulars i poèticament ben parides del panorama estatunidenc. El paisatge i la naturalesa que l'envolta és la porta d'entrada a una poesia intimista i observadora de l'entorn social i cultural. Una meravella que malauradament no s'ha traduït ni al català ni al castellà, encara.
*
Oops, I've read it again.
Ada Limón té una de les veus més singulars i poèticament ben parides del panorama estatunidenc. El paisatge i la naturalesa que l'envolta és la porta d'entrada a una poesia intimista i observadora de l'entorn social i cultural. Una meravella que malauradament no s'ha traduït ni al català ni al castellà, encara.
*
Oops, I've read it again.
January 17, 2021
4 stars
vibrant, poignant, and wonderfully conversational. felt like those magical after hours of a small party, where you and just a few friends find yourselves huddled for a last call confessing everything that's been weighing both small and heavy on your heart. "The Riveter," in particular, is striking and haunting. as a collection, a brilliant reminder that loss is only so deep as the love that precedes and follows it.
recommend for anyone looking to read more poetry, which I'm certainly trying to do
vibrant, poignant, and wonderfully conversational. felt like those magical after hours of a small party, where you and just a few friends find yourselves huddled for a last call confessing everything that's been weighing both small and heavy on your heart. "The Riveter," in particular, is striking and haunting. as a collection, a brilliant reminder that loss is only so deep as the love that precedes and follows it.
recommend for anyone looking to read more poetry, which I'm certainly trying to do
December 3, 2022
Once, she asked to just be thrown into the river where we used to go, still alive, but not living anymore. After it was done, I couldn’t go back to my life. You understand, right? It wasn’t the same. I couldn’t tell if I loved myself more or less. It wasn’t until later, when I moved in with him and stood outside on our patchy imperfect lawn, that I remembered what had been circling in me: I am beautiful. I am full of love. I am dying."
i cannot overstate my love for poet laureate ada limón and her dark use/fascination with horses.
i cannot overstate my love for poet laureate ada limón and her dark use/fascination with horses.
September 13, 2023
BRIGHT DEAD THINGS
by Ada Limon
Completed: September 28, 2022
Format: Paperback
ISBN: 9781571314710
Rating (X/10): 9.1
——
"Cable-knit to the hilt."
Earlier this year, Ada Limon was selected as the 24th Poet Laureate of the United States. As poetry is an important part of my life, I purchased Ada Limon’s three books of poetry. Admittedly, I was a bit underwhelmed with her work, but I think her poet laureate election draws from a deeper well than her books alone. Ms. Limon is an accomplished teacher and has countless accolades to her name across two decades of writing success – and let’s be honest – being a single, middle-aged, lesbian, Latina woman doesn’t hurt when vying for awards.
The title of the book, "Bright Dead Things," initially seems to be allegory for a carrot pulled from the ground (even the book cover is orange), but as the book progresses, the reader discovers that the title references Ms. Limon’s mother.
I have three main comments about the book:
First, I enjoyed section one of the book. Poetry is an artform, and no single person will understand or relate to every poem in a book. This is no exception for me with this book, but I did understand and enjoy most of section one.
Second, I think Ms. Limon included too many poems about her mother dying, despite that being the main theme of the book. The problem with dwelling on a theme excessively is that it causes reader fatigue. By the end of the book, I was so jaded and frustrated by “ugh, another mother dying poem” that the power of the theme had dissolved. The initial love and sympathy I felt for Ms. Limon, her mother, and the dying theme was quickly replaced with a jaded annoyance, and quite frankly, I felt bored by the end.
Third, I love existentialism as much as any poetry reader, but I feel that Ms. Limon uses existentialism as a crutch far too often. Many of her poems are needlessly confusing and twisting, resulting in little more than incoherent words randomly assigned to the page. As I stated previously, I don’t expect to understand every poem in a book, but what allows me to endure that feeling of failure is knowing that the author has given me a chance to solve a riddle. Even if I fail to understand a poem, knowing that a solution exists gives me hope and also inspires me to improve as a poetry reader. The problem with many of Ms. Limon’s poems is that they are intensely existential and heavily veiled. In these poems, a solution to the puzzle does not exist. I don’t mind a couple of these sorts of poems in a single book, but this book seemed to be absolutely saturated with existentialism. Many of the poems are so pure and unwavering in their existentialism that it causes the poems to have no meaning at all, and thus the author is simply wasting the time of the reader.
I really enjoyed the poems where Ms. Limon flexed her diverse cultural, sexual, and political background. Poetry is meant to push boundaries and expose readers to unknown experiences, and Ms. Limon certainly accomplishes that in "Bright Dead Things," but I felt a bit cheated that these themes were often subtle and far between one another. I am hoping that I will discover more of these background themes in her other two books.
Ms. Limon inspires many people in a way that I admittedly have not fully understood, but I’m trying to learn and appreciate Ms. Limon. Although this review is my personal opinion, sometimes I think it is important to weigh the opinions of other people when giving a personal opinion. For this reason, I give "Bright Dead Things" 4/5 stars.
by Ada Limon
Completed: September 28, 2022
Format: Paperback
ISBN: 9781571314710
Rating (X/10): 9.1
——
"Cable-knit to the hilt."
Earlier this year, Ada Limon was selected as the 24th Poet Laureate of the United States. As poetry is an important part of my life, I purchased Ada Limon’s three books of poetry. Admittedly, I was a bit underwhelmed with her work, but I think her poet laureate election draws from a deeper well than her books alone. Ms. Limon is an accomplished teacher and has countless accolades to her name across two decades of writing success – and let’s be honest – being a single, middle-aged, lesbian, Latina woman doesn’t hurt when vying for awards.
The title of the book, "Bright Dead Things," initially seems to be allegory for a carrot pulled from the ground (even the book cover is orange), but as the book progresses, the reader discovers that the title references Ms. Limon’s mother.
I have three main comments about the book:
First, I enjoyed section one of the book. Poetry is an artform, and no single person will understand or relate to every poem in a book. This is no exception for me with this book, but I did understand and enjoy most of section one.
Second, I think Ms. Limon included too many poems about her mother dying, despite that being the main theme of the book. The problem with dwelling on a theme excessively is that it causes reader fatigue. By the end of the book, I was so jaded and frustrated by “ugh, another mother dying poem” that the power of the theme had dissolved. The initial love and sympathy I felt for Ms. Limon, her mother, and the dying theme was quickly replaced with a jaded annoyance, and quite frankly, I felt bored by the end.
Third, I love existentialism as much as any poetry reader, but I feel that Ms. Limon uses existentialism as a crutch far too often. Many of her poems are needlessly confusing and twisting, resulting in little more than incoherent words randomly assigned to the page. As I stated previously, I don’t expect to understand every poem in a book, but what allows me to endure that feeling of failure is knowing that the author has given me a chance to solve a riddle. Even if I fail to understand a poem, knowing that a solution exists gives me hope and also inspires me to improve as a poetry reader. The problem with many of Ms. Limon’s poems is that they are intensely existential and heavily veiled. In these poems, a solution to the puzzle does not exist. I don’t mind a couple of these sorts of poems in a single book, but this book seemed to be absolutely saturated with existentialism. Many of the poems are so pure and unwavering in their existentialism that it causes the poems to have no meaning at all, and thus the author is simply wasting the time of the reader.
I really enjoyed the poems where Ms. Limon flexed her diverse cultural, sexual, and political background. Poetry is meant to push boundaries and expose readers to unknown experiences, and Ms. Limon certainly accomplishes that in "Bright Dead Things," but I felt a bit cheated that these themes were often subtle and far between one another. I am hoping that I will discover more of these background themes in her other two books.
Ms. Limon inspires many people in a way that I admittedly have not fully understood, but I’m trying to learn and appreciate Ms. Limon. Although this review is my personal opinion, sometimes I think it is important to weigh the opinions of other people when giving a personal opinion. For this reason, I give "Bright Dead Things" 4/5 stars.
September 28, 2016
Obviously, I am still learning the nuances of poetry but boy, when I read something special, it really resonates and clambers around in my skull, like a bat loose in the house. This collection, Bright Dead Things is filled with moments like this and I can not recommend it higher. Please try it for yourself and I am going to seek out her earlier work.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 2,015 reviews