Ada Limón
Author of Bright Dead Things: Poems
About the Author
Works by Ada Limón
99 Cent Heart 3 copies
Limon, Ada Archive 1 copy
In Praise of Mystery 1 copy
And, Too, the Fox 1 copy
The Hurting Kind: Poems 1 copy
Associated Works
Ink Knows No Borders: Poems of the Immigrant and Refugee Experience (2019) — Contributor — 70 copies
Alone Together: Love, Grief, and Comfort in the Time of COVID-19 (2020) — Contributor — 62 copies, 7 reviews
Bullets Into Bells: Poets and Citizens Respond to Gun Violence (2017) — Contributor — 61 copies, 3 reviews
The Best American Poetry 2022 (The Best American Poetry series) (2022) — Contributor — 46 copies, 1 review
Daughters of Latin America: An International Anthology of Writing by Latine Women (2023) — Contributor — 24 copies, 1 review
Here She Comes Now: Women in Music Who Have Changed Our Lives (2015) — Contributor — 23 copies, 1 review
When She Named Fire: An Anthology of Contemporary Poetry by American Women (2008) — Contributor — 12 copies
Bodies Built for Game: The Prairie Schooner Anthology of Contemporary Sports Writing (2019) — Contributor — 6 copies
Latino Poetry: The Library of America Anthology (LOA #382) (Library of America, 382) (2024) — Contributor — 4 copies
Tagged
Common Knowledge
- Canonical name
- Limón, Ada
- Birthdate
- 1976-03-28
- Gender
- female
- Nationality
- USA
- Birthplace
- Sonoma, Californië, USA
- Places of residence
- Sonoma, Californië, USA
Lexington, Kentucky, USA - Occupations
- poet
- Awards and honors
- Poet Laureate of the United States
Members
Reviews
Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful! “Calling Things What They Are” and “It’s the Season I Often Mistake” are two standouts for me, but the whole collection is impeccable and heart-wrenching.
I liked Limón’s “Bright Dead Things” more than this collection, but nevertheless she continues to impress and move me with her work! I’m in awe of how Limón manages to capture experiences in ways I’ve never thought about, and with a kind of eloquence that is uniquely hers alone.
An absolutely magical collection of poems full of yearning, liveliness, rage, and beauty. Ada Limón almost paints more than writes here: she offers up such clear pictures and moments and has them overflowing with emotion and story. I LOVED these pieces and will continue to read whatever Limón shares.
Lists
Awards
You May Also Like
Associated Authors
Statistics
- Works
- 14
- Also by
- 16
- Members
- 1,227
- Popularity
- #20,922
- Rating
- 4.1
- Reviews
- 23
- ISBNs
- 26
- Favorited
- 5
I wandered over to the poetry section, two shelves worth by the bar, and this Ada Limón volume got my attention. I'd heard good things of Limón but never had read her, until opening this book and reading the amazing poem smartly printed on the front flap, as well as being the first poem in the book proper, a poem about fillies at the race track, titled "How to Triumph Like A Girl", which goes in part, It's an incredible, ebullient poem, and turns out it won the Pushcart Prize, though I didn't yet know that, so its power is no secret. I flipped forward a few pages and found something almost as good, a prose poem titled "Mowing", but the tone has changed from bravura to something more like vulnerability:Right, that's my decision made. I bought it.
I spent today reading the whole thing and it's so good. The first two sections are narrative, in that the first focuses on her move from New York to Kentucky to be with her husband, and the second focuses on the death of her stepmother. The first has 17 poems, every one of them something I'd read again and again. There's the two already mentioned, a baseball poem showcasing domestic contentment, a poem of rebellion against that contentment ("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."), almost every poem bringing in nature as something that can save us ("A view / of some tree breathing and the mind's wheels / ease up on the pavement's tug. That tree, / that one willowy thing over there, / can save a life, you know?")
The second section of 15 poems speaks to living with a forced awareness of mortality, caring for a dying loved one and how to respond. In the prose poem "After You Toss Around the Ashes", Limón writes, "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." We're all busy dying, but lines like "How good it is to love live things" (in "The Long Ride") and "there is so much life all over the place" (in "In the Country of Resurrection") show Limón embracing the measure of life we're all allowed.
The last two sections, another 30 poems, seem to lack the organizing narrative focus of the first two, but are more generally about how to live, and be, in this wild and blessed world. There's a lot of nature here, and a general optimism; she reads quite a bit like Mary Oliver or Wendell Berry. In "The Wild Divine" she writes of a neighbor's horse:She writes other poems about birds and herons, whales and mud swallows, but other poems as well that are more internal, or about people she's loved in her past. These poems are generally presenting a speaker who is optimistic and determined in her ability to find contentment and sufficiency amid life's uncertainties. And in the final poem, "The Conditional", after asking the rhetorical question, "Say tomorrow doesn't come..." and imagining the end of the world, she concludesNow, go, and be blessed.… (more)