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4.28 AVERAGE
4.28 AVERAGE
On here I think it says I read this book twice. I’ve listened to the audiobook twice and read the physical book twice. I will probably read this collection several more times.
I would like to preface this with, I have deep love in my heart for Ada Limón and I review this so meticulously so that I can get an understanding of the type of writer I am via understanding what I’m not drawn to in poetry and why.
Anyways, I’m not going to lie this one didn’t do it for me, at least not right now in this present moment…i have a feeling I’ll come back around to this and love it at some point.
This collection felt like one that was focused on form. I’m the biggest NOT fan of whatever the two line poetry template is, it’s hard for me to get invested when there’s line breaks that don’t have any meaning other than “I’ve committed to writing this poem in sets of two lines”.
Something i kept thinking over and over while reading this is “I think she had writers block and resorted to the same 3 exercises to get her brain going”…I’m sorry it just felt like the same 3 poems over and over and over. The aforementioned couplet-ish poem, a narrative poem about her family (that either didn’t offer much I hadn’t read about already or was completely focused on the narrative of the story rather than the poetry of it), and a poem about nature…her specialty of course but something about them kept falling flat. While there is usually profound meaning delicately explicated in these scenes, these poems felt like she was just telling us about the scene and expected us to do the leg work of finding the poetry in it. Which I’m sure many people can do but as someone who is not very connected to nature, especially Kentucky nature, I felt like I was reading field journals and that’s it.
There was also some uncharacteristically cliche lines scattered consistently throughout that were jarring enough to take me out of the mood because…it just all seemed so, unlike her.
Tbh there were only a few dog-eared pages when usually it’s 80% of the book.
Maybe it’s my fault, i can barely relate to poems about family, i can never relate if those poems are about grandparents, I’m not a nature gal and maybe I’m doing that thing where I expect (demand) pain from an artist, rejecting anything that’s less than a gut wrenching hurt as “not good enough”.
But she said it best herself….“Why am i not allowed delight?”
Of course “The End of Poetry” changed the course of my life. I’ve had that memorized for months, repeat it to myself daily. Those words held me together when everything was falling apart so I’m grateful to this collection for birthing that. There aren’t words to describe what that poem does for me, how it holds my whole life in its hands.
Anyways, I’m not going to lie this one didn’t do it for me, at least not right now in this present moment…i have a feeling I’ll come back around to this and love it at some point.
This collection felt like one that was focused on form. I’m the biggest NOT fan of whatever the two line poetry template is, it’s hard for me to get invested when there’s line breaks that don’t have any meaning other than “I’ve committed to writing this poem in sets of two lines”.
Something i kept thinking over and over while reading this is “I think she had writers block and resorted to the same 3 exercises to get her brain going”…I’m sorry it just felt like the same 3 poems over and over and over. The aforementioned couplet-ish poem, a narrative poem about her family (that either didn’t offer much I hadn’t read about already or was completely focused on the narrative of the story rather than the poetry of it), and a poem about nature…her specialty of course but something about them kept falling flat. While there is usually profound meaning delicately explicated in these scenes, these poems felt like she was just telling us about the scene and expected us to do the leg work of finding the poetry in it. Which I’m sure many people can do but as someone who is not very connected to nature, especially Kentucky nature, I felt like I was reading field journals and that’s it.
There was also some uncharacteristically cliche lines scattered consistently throughout that were jarring enough to take me out of the mood because…it just all seemed so, unlike her.
Tbh there were only a few dog-eared pages when usually it’s 80% of the book.
Maybe it’s my fault, i can barely relate to poems about family, i can never relate if those poems are about grandparents, I’m not a nature gal and maybe I’m doing that thing where I expect (demand) pain from an artist, rejecting anything that’s less than a gut wrenching hurt as “not good enough”.
But she said it best herself….“Why am i not allowed delight?”
Of course “The End of Poetry” changed the course of my life. I’ve had that memorized for months, repeat it to myself daily. Those words held me together when everything was falling apart so I’m grateful to this collection for birthing that. There aren’t words to describe what that poem does for me, how it holds my whole life in its hands.
I'm not really one to pick poetry to read, but this was lovely. I'm glad my book club picked it.
medium-paced
Why did I wait so long to read Ada Limon? Her poetry feels like home, the home where I grew up in southern Indiana: gentle and devastating. The flowers, the trees, the birds - the layer of magic that comes from knowing them by name. The harshness and beauty of berry picking and visiting the cemetery, experiencing life and death as a woman and a whole being in a web of living beings. At first it was so light, and suddenly I was tearing up on the sidewalk.
"If I could ever play an instrument for real I like the idea of playing the jawbone, that rattle of something dead in your hands, that thing that beats back at the sky and says, I’m still here..." Ada Limon's poetry collection dissects the world gently, noticing both pain and beauty.
emotional
hopeful
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
emotional
reflective
fast-paced
16th book of 2024.
My first Limón. I liked the personal poems and the nature, two things I care about myself. I think all good writing is, in essence, autobiographical. Some poems were far better than others, of course. She has a talent for looking at a bird and realising that that bird, or the that moment, reflects something bigger about herself or her experience. One that really struck me was
I also thought highly, particularly, of the beginning of,
My first Limón. I liked the personal poems and the nature, two things I care about myself. I think all good writing is, in essence, autobiographical. Some poems were far better than others, of course. She has a talent for looking at a bird and realising that that bird, or the that moment, reflects something bigger about herself or her experience. One that really struck me was
Joint Custody
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.
I also thought highly, particularly, of the beginning of,
The Hurting Kind
I.
On the plane I have a dream I've left half my
torso on the back porch with my beloved. I have to go
back for it, but it's too late, I'm flying
and there's only half of me.
Back in Texas, the flowers I've left on
the counter (I stay alone there so the flowers
are more than flowers) have wilted and knocked over the glass.
At the funeral parlour with my mother, we are holding her father's suit
and she says, He'll swim in these.
For a moment, I'm not sure what she means,
until I realise she means the clothes are too big.
I go with her like a shield in case they try to upsell her
the ridiculously ornate urn, the elaborate body box.
It is a nice bathroom in the funeral parlour,
so I take the opportunity to change my tampon.
When I come out my mother says,
Did you have to change your tampon?
And it seems, all at once, a vulgar life. Or not
vulgar, but not simple, either.