The carrying Poems

Review by Booklist Review

Limón is the author of four previous books of poetry, including the widely acclaimed Bright Dead Things (2015). Her latest centers around questions of child rearing and aging bodies, of speakers frustrated by futile attempts at conception, and of life's tiny jubilations along the way. A master of examining themes from unexpected angles, Limón rotates her topics in kaleidoscopic turns, revealing the inner thoughts of a speaker who tends to a backyard garden (I can't stop / putting plants in the ground. There's a hunger in me, // a need to watch something grow). Elsewhere, the speaker envies the asexual reproduction of dandelions, a trickster flower that simply replicates itself (bam, another me, / bam, another me). Even in Bust, one of the book's most complex and dynamic poems, Limón blends seemingly disparate images of women's anatomy into a causal, almost nonchalant parlance that entices the reader into its realm. Also notable is a series of letters composed in tandem with poet Natalie Diaz. Page after page, this proves to be a startling and tender, magnificent collection.--Diego Báez Copyright 2018 Booklist

From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.

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Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

"I will/ never get over making everything/ such a big deal," declares Limón (Bright Dead Things) in her gorgeous, thought-provoking fifth collection, in which small moments convey "the strange idea of continuous living." Materialist rather than metaphysical, these poems are deeply concerned with interconnectedness: "my/ body is not just my body." Flora and fauna suffuse these poems, and the green-ness is almost overwhelming, but Limón duly confronts life's difficulties. "It's taken/ a while for me to admit, I'm in a raging battle/ with my body," she writes, facing bouts of vertigo and struggling to conceive a child: "perhaps the only thing I can make// is love and art." She also tackles such social ills as misogyny, racism, and war. In "A New National Anthem," she writes, "the truth is, every song of this country/ has an unsung third stanza, something brutal/ snaking underneath." Limón's typically tight narrative lyrics feature simple, striking images, ("Women gathered in paisley scarves with rusty iced tea"), and her unsettling dream poems avoid becoming exercises in surrealism. Four "letter-poems" to poet Natalie Diaz also demonstrate versatility, shifting into looser meditations that sprawl across the page. "I live my life half afraid, and half shouting/ at the trains when they thunder by," Limón claims, but this fearless collection shows a poet that can appreciate life's surprises. (Aug.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

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Review by Library Journal Review

National Book Award finalist Limón (Bright Dead Things) here weaves nature, family, and grief into a stunning collection. Several poems recount the loss of the speaker's first husband from a drug overdose, but although pains are often described-whether caused by grief, infertility, or a crooked spine-Limón's poems sing with the joy of life: "I wish to be untethered and tethered all at once, my skin/ singes the sheets and there's a tremor in the marrow." The poet mourns not only for people lost but also for irreplaceable things such as languages: "In the time it takes to say I love you, or move in with someone,/ ...all the intricate words/ of a language become extinct." Many poems begin or turn on the unexpected, as in "The Vulture & the Body": "What if, instead of carrying// a child, I am supposed to carry grief?" Occasionally, there are too many unessential details, and although most of Limón's similes are strikingly good, she sometimes settles for the easy: "I saw seven cardinals brash and bold/ as sin in a leafless tree." Nevertheless, in accessible language, Limón writes movingly about finding the spectacular in the everyday VERDICT Limón's vision is realistic, at times bleak, yet these poems often brim with optimism, revealing a reverent, extraordinary take on the world. Don't miss this life-affirming collection.-Doris Lynch, Monroe Cty. P.L., Bloomington, IN © Copyright 2018. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

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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. Excerpted from The Carrying: Poems by Ada Limón All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.

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