To all it forgiveness, unlocked the sternum’sĭoor, reversed and reshaped until it was a newīright carnal species, more accustomed to grief, Ticker marched on, and from all its four chambers With these poems she aims to reconfigure grief into ‘ solve-able absence,’ and find ways to move forward, as in Adaptation when she writes: 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. 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.Īround its body like a code for creation,Īn admitted autobiographical poet, Limón bears all in, her fourth collection (as of writing this in 2022 she currently has six) of poems. 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.

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. 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. Smith, Louise Glück, Charles Simic and Rita Dove. 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. 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. ‘ I remembered what had been circling in me: I am beautiful. 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. 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. 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.”Ī 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.

Bright dead things limon