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4.28 AVERAGE
4.28 AVERAGE
Tender, tender poems... love these, much about the natural world and the personal, both full of beauty, grief, longing and pain.
sorta unfair to 1/5 a poetry collection but this just was not for me. i failed to connect with most of the poems and imagery. some real nice moments interspaced with rows and rows of lines that i just slogged through.
Beautiful poems tied to nature. I especially loved the title poem, “The Hurting Kind,” and found “Forsythia” yo be comforting.
My review is that when the audio book ended, I started it again. I love it so much.
Ironically, the collection I saw previewed that made me want to read Ada Limon's work in the first place turns out to be my least favorite of the three I read. Thankfully it was still enjoyable and had some great moments that I related to quite deeply.
I won't re-type the entirety of the poem Joint Custody, but as a former child of parents and step-parents and odd custody and visitation situations, the sentiment lands very strongly.
My favorite excerpts both relate to family and the types of emotions we inherit from those that come before us.
What is lineage,
if not a gold thread of pride and guilt?
and
I have always been too sensitive, a weeper
from a long line of weepers.
I am the hurting kind. I keep searching for proof.
I won't re-type the entirety of the poem Joint Custody, but as a former child of parents and step-parents and odd custody and visitation situations, the sentiment lands very strongly.
My favorite excerpts both relate to family and the types of emotions we inherit from those that come before us.
What is lineage,
if not a gold thread of pride and guilt?
and
I have always been too sensitive, a weeper
from a long line of weepers.
I am the hurting kind. I keep searching for proof.
This is a lovely collection of work. While her themes don't resonate with me as strongly, I can't deny that Limon is a powerhouse. I borrowed my copy from a dear friend. Seeing his notes and own lines sprinkled throughout made for a touching reading experience.
I always feel strange giving an overarching review to a poetry collection, rather than viewing each piece individually. Instead, here are some of my favorite lines:
"There is a solitude in this world I cannot pierce"
- "Drowning Creek"
"These unearned moments are a tribute to the dead"
- "Forsythia"
"Now, something’s breaking always on the skyline, falling over and against the ground, sometimes unnoticed, sometimes covered up like sorrow, sometimes buried without even a song.”
- "Not the Saddest Thing in the World"
"Could you refuse me if I asked you to point again at the horizon, to tell me something was worth waiting for?"
- "Stillwater Cove"
"Her desire is something like a blazing flower, a tree, shaking off, the torrent of rain, as if it is simply making music"
- "Banished Wonders"
"I want to honor a man who wants to hold a wild thing, only for a second, long enough to admire it, Foley, and then wants to watch it safely. Return to its life, bends to be sure the grass closes up behind it."
- "Cyrus & the Snakes"
"What good is accuracy admist the perpetual scattering that unspools the world?"
- "It’s the Season I Often Mistake"
"Mercy is not frozen in time, but flits about frantically, unsure where to land."
– "Runaway Child"
"There is a truth in that smooth indifference, a clean honesty about our otherness that feels not like the moral but the story."
- "Intimacy"
"What is lineage, if not a gold thread of pride and guilt?"
– "The Hurting Kind"
"If I had known, would I have still made mistake after mistake until I had only the trunk of me left, stripped and nearly bare of leaves?"
- "Against Nostalgia"
"Who doesn’t want to hold their individual God, to be redeemed by pleasing the only one you serve?"
– "Obedience"
I always feel strange giving an overarching review to a poetry collection, rather than viewing each piece individually. Instead, here are some of my favorite lines:
"There is a solitude in this world I cannot pierce"
- "Drowning Creek"
"These unearned moments are a tribute to the dead"
- "Forsythia"
"Now, something’s breaking always on the skyline, falling over and against the ground, sometimes unnoticed, sometimes covered up like sorrow, sometimes buried without even a song.”
- "Not the Saddest Thing in the World"
"Could you refuse me if I asked you to point again at the horizon, to tell me something was worth waiting for?"
- "Stillwater Cove"
"Her desire is something like a blazing flower, a tree, shaking off, the torrent of rain, as if it is simply making music"
- "Banished Wonders"
"I want to honor a man who wants to hold a wild thing, only for a second, long enough to admire it, Foley, and then wants to watch it safely. Return to its life, bends to be sure the grass closes up behind it."
- "Cyrus & the Snakes"
"What good is accuracy admist the perpetual scattering that unspools the world?"
- "It’s the Season I Often Mistake"
"Mercy is not frozen in time, but flits about frantically, unsure where to land."
– "Runaway Child"
"There is a truth in that smooth indifference, a clean honesty about our otherness that feels not like the moral but the story."
- "Intimacy"
"What is lineage, if not a gold thread of pride and guilt?"
– "The Hurting Kind"
"If I had known, would I have still made mistake after mistake until I had only the trunk of me left, stripped and nearly bare of leaves?"
- "Against Nostalgia"
"Who doesn’t want to hold their individual God, to be redeemed by pleasing the only one you serve?"
– "Obedience"
challenging
reflective
medium-paced
Wanted to read more poetry collections for National Poetry Month, but I got a late start and had to wait for the ones I wanted. Since this one is by a poet laureate, I thought I might like it more, but the vagueness of themes and tendency toward nature as subject matter didn't connect with me. There were some poems I enjoyed, the title poem included, but the collection as a whole didn't spark a lot from me in feeling. Maybe on a reread in the future, if that were ever to happen.