Ada Limón is the author of six books of poetry, including The Carrying, which won the National Book Critics Circle Award and was named a finalist for the PEN/Jean Stein Book Award. Her book Bright Dead Things was nominated for the National Book Award, the National Book Critics Circle Award, and the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award. Her work has been supported most recently by a Guggenheim Fellowship. She is the new host of American Public Media’s weekday poetry podcast, The Slowdown. She grew up in Sonoma, California and now lives in Lexington, Kentucky where she writes and teaches remotely. She is the 24th Poet Laureate of the United States.
Judges’ Citation
Again and again the clarity of vision and depth of emotion in this lovely book turns the ordinary on its head, asking us to slow down, to see the world askew, and thus anew.
Again and again the clarity of vision and depth of emotion in this lovely book turns the ordinary on its head, asking us to slow down, to see the world askew, and thus anew. Tinged with grief and longing, and buoyed by wonder in the natural world and the possibility of human connection, these are poems that seem to move effortlessly—in the way that only a deft touch can do. The precision of syntax—at once plainspoken and fiercely lyrical—unfolds its revelations masterfully and with a kind of grace that is often heartbreaking. The Hurting Kind is a marvel.
Selected poems
by Ada Limón
Why did I never see it for what it was:
abundance? Two families, two different
kitchen tables, two sets of rules, two
creeks, two highways, two stepparents
with their fish tanks or eight-tracks or
cigarette smoke or expertise in recipes or
reading skills. I cannot reverse it, the record
scratched and stopping to that original
chaotic track. But let me say, I was taken
back and forth on Sundays and it was not easy
but I was loved each place. And so I have
two brains now. Two entirely different brains.
The one that always misses where I’m not,
and the one that is so relieved to finally be home.
Copyright © 2022 by Ada Limón, The Hurting Kind, Corsair Poetry
Joint Custody
On the black wet branches of the linden,
still clinging to the umber leaves of late fall,
two crows land. They say, Stop, and still I want
to make them into something they are not.
Odin’s ravens, the bruja’s eyes. What news
are they bringing of our world to the world
of the gods? It can’t be good. More suffering
all around, more stinging nettles and toxic
blades shoved into the scarred parts of us,
the minor ones underneath the trees. Rain
comes while I’m still standing, a trickle of water
from whatever we believe is beyond the sky.
The crows seem enormous but only because
I am watching them too closely. They do not
care to be seen as symbols. A shake of a wing,
and both of them are gone. There was no message
given, no message I was asked to give, only
their great absence and my sad privacy
returning like the bracing, empty wind
on the black wet branches of the linden.
Copyright © 2022 by Ada Limón, The Hurting Kind, Corsair Poetry
Privacy
On the top of Mount Pisgah, on the western
slope of the Mayacamas, there’s a madrone
tree that’s half-burned from the fires, half-alive
from nature’s need to propagate. One side
of her is black ash, and at her root is what
looks like a cavity hollowed out by flame.
On the other side, silvery-green broadleaf
shoots ascend toward the winter light
and her bark is a cross between a bay
horse and a chestnut horse, red and velvety
like the animal’s neck she resembles. Staring
at the tree for a long time now, I am reminded
of the righteousness I had before the scorch
of time. I miss who I was. I miss who we all were,
before we were this: half-alive to the brightening sky,
half-dead already. I place my hand on the unscarred
bark that is cool and unsullied, and because I cannot
apologize to the tree, to my own self I say, I am sorry.
I am sorry I have been so reckless with your life.
Copyright © 2022 by Ada Limón, The Hurting Kind, Corsair Poetry