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    The Carrying: Poems
    The Carrying: Poems
    The Carrying: Poems
    Ebook108 pages1 hour

    The Carrying: Poems

    By Ada Limón

    4.5/5

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    About this ebook

    NBCC Award Winner: “The narrative lyrics in this remarkable collection . . . could stand as compressed stories about anxiety and the body.” —The New York Times

    Vulnerable, tender, acute, these are serious poems, brave poems, exploring with honesty the ambiguous moment between the rapture of youth and the grace of acceptance. A daughter tends to aging parents. A woman struggles with infertility—“What if, instead of carrying / a child, I am supposed to carry grief?”—and a body seized by pain and vertigo as well as ecstasy. A nation convulses: “Every song of this country / has an unsung third stanza, something brutal.” And still National Book Award finalist Ada Limón shows us, as ever, the persistence of hunger, love, and joy, the dizzying fullness of our too-short lives. “Fine then, / I’ll take it,” she writes. “I’ll take it all.”

    “Gorgeous, thought-provoking . . . simple, striking images.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review)

    “Exquisite.” —The Washington Post

    “Pitch-perfect . . . 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

    Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for Poetry
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherOpen Road Integrated Media
    Release dateAug 14, 2018
    ISBN9781571319944
    Author

    Ada Limón

    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. Born and raised in California, she now lives in Lexington, Kentucky.

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    Reviews for The Carrying

    4.5/5

    104 ratings5 reviews

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    • 5/5

      Dec 5, 2022

      This poetry book held so many emotions tied to grief and identity. I frequently find myself hesitant to read contemporary poetry, or seek out new poets, but discovering this book and Ada Limon's work-- much of which is so raw and vulnerable-- is something that I truly appreciate. Limon exemplifies what it looks like to embrace the process of grieving and finding one's identity when one is unable to fulfill the expectations set on them. She is incredibly inventive in her phrasing and word selection, which makes this book of processing truly beautiful and fulfilling to read.
    • 3/5

      Mar 11, 2023

      I struggled through many of the poems in this collection, not often finding the essential connection that makes poetry work for me, when it does. And then I struggled to understand why. This collection will definitely speak to many readers in a vital way. The poet's talent is evident. Her recurring themes of the need to nurture, the ambivalence of a woman toward her own body, the import of the natural world---these are all proven winners in the literary race for my favor. What often wallops me when I read a Really Good Poem is a new perspective on a familiar thing. And yet, Limon's perspective is usually what puts me off. I don't see things the way she does, and when pointed in her direction, I'd rather not shift. Hers is not an opposing view, it's just cock-eyed to my view. I sought in vain for the "magic" in her language. There were three, maybe four selections I read and read again, with pleasure and understanding---"Of Roots and Roamers", "The Visitor", "Sundown and All the Damage Done". Still, I don't expect to remember them long. Poetry is first, last and always deeply personal. Two of Limon's poems will stick with me because while incredibly personal to her, they are still comprehensible to me despite being outside my own experience: "The Real Reason" touched me; "The Contract Says..." made me angry for all the right reasons.
    • 3/5

      Aug 10, 2022

      Liked some poems better than others, but still pretty good.
    • 5/5

      Aug 16, 2021

      I listened to this on audio while working and while trying to fall asleep - possibly 5 times now. Each time I have a new favorite poem.
    • 5/5

      Aug 8, 2019

      Rarely do I buy hardcover poetry, especially by unfamiliar poets, but I took a chance here because of the reviews and the few poems I read online. I was richly rewarded with this wonderful collection. The poems reflect so broad a range of sexual longing, grieving, loving, the importance of gardening and the natural world, and the power of family. Poetry is all about the words, and reading these poems aloud shows the beauty of her talent.

    Book preview

    The Carrying - Ada Limón

    1

    A NAME

    When Eve walked among

    the animals and named them—

    nightingale, red-shouldered hawk,

    fiddler crab, fallow deer—

    I wonder if she ever wanted

    them to speak back, looked into

    their wide wonderful eyes and

    whispered, Name me, name me.

    ANCESTORS

    I’ve come here from the rocks, the bone-like chert,

    obsidian, lava rock. I’ve come here from the trees—

    chestnut, bay laurel, toyon, acacia, redwood, cedar,

    one thousand oaks

    that bend with moss and old-man’s beard.

    I was born on a green couch on Carriger Road between

    the vineyards and the horse pasture.

    I don’t remember what I first saw, the brick of light

    that unhinged me from the beginning. I don’t remember

    my brother’s face, my mother, my father.

    Later, I remember leaves, through car windows,

    through bedroom windows, through the classroom window,

    the way they shaded and patterned the ground, all that

    power from roots. Imagine you must survive

    without running? I’ve come from the lacing patterns of leaves,

    I do not know where else I belong.

    HOW MOST OF THE DREAMS GO

    First, it’s a fawn dog, and then

    it’s a baby. I’m helping him

    to swim in a thermal pool,

    the water is black as coffee,

    the cement edges are steep

    so to sink would be easy

    and final. I ask the dog

    (that is also the child),

    Is it okay that I want

    you to be my best friend?

    And the child nods.

    (And the dog nods.)

    Sometimes, he drowns.

    Sometimes, we drown together.

    THE LEASH

    After the birthing of bombs of forks and fear,

    the frantic automatic weapons unleashed,

    the spray of bullets into a crowd holding hands,

    that brute sky opening in a slate-metal maw

    that swallows only the unsayable in each of us, what’s

    left? Even the hidden nowhere river is poisoned

    orange and acidic by a coal mine. How can

    you not fear humanity, want to lick the creek

    bottom dry, to suck the deadly water up into

    your own lungs, like venom? Reader, I want to

    say: Don’t die. Even when silvery fish after fish

    comes back belly up, and the country plummets

    into a crepitating crater of hatred, isn’t there still

    something singing? The truth is: I don’t know.

    But sometimes I swear I hear it, the wound closing

    like a rusted-over garage door, and I can still move

    my living limbs into the world without too much

    pain, can still marvel at how the dog runs straight

    toward the pickup trucks breaknecking down

    the road, because she thinks she loves them,

    because she’s sure, without a doubt, that the loud

    roaring things will love her back, her soft small self

    alive with desire to share her goddamn enthusiasm,

    until I yank the leash back to save her because

    I want her to survive forever. Don’t die, I say,

    and we decide to walk for a bit longer, starlings

    high and fevered above us, winter coming to lay

    her cold corpse down upon this little plot of earth.

    Perhaps we are always hurtling our bodies toward

    the thing that will obliterate us, begging for love

    from the speeding passage of time, and so maybe,

    like the dog obedient at my heels, we can walk together

    peacefully, at least until the next truck comes.

    ALMOST FORTY

    The birds were being so bizarre today,

    we stood static and listened to them insane

    in their winter shock of sweet gum and ash.

    We swallow what we won’t say: Maybe

    it’s a warning. Maybe they’re screaming

    for us to take cover. Inside, your father

    seems angry, and the soup’s grown cold

    on the stove. I’ve never been someone

    to wish for too much, but now I say,

    I want to live a long time. You look up

    from your work and nod. Yes, but

    in good health. We turn up the stove

    again and eat what we’ve made together,

    each bite an ordinary weapon we wield

    against the shrinking of mouths.

    TRYING

    I’d forgotten how much

    I like to grow things, I shout

    to him as he passes me to paint

    the basement.

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