Take a photo of a barcode or cover
4.28 AVERAGE
4.28 AVERAGE
emotional
hopeful
reflective
relaxing
fast-paced
Privacy and the end of poetry are my favorite. Like how this collection moves around the year.
emotional
hopeful
reflective
medium-paced
read this to celebrate ada limon being named the new poet laureate and WOW am i glad i finally got to it! i really liked bright dead things but this really solidified my love of her work. it checks all of my boxes which are: poems about nature, poems about death, and books organized into sections after the seasons. how could i not love it
thorns
armed with our white plastic buckets
we set off in the safety of the noonday
heat to snag the full rubus blackberries
at the bend of her family's gravel road.
but before we even reached the end
of the driveway, a goose hung strangled
in the fence wire, bloodless and limp. her
long neck twisted, her hard beak open.
she was dead. though we had been loosed
like loyal ranch dogs, we knew we should
go back, tell someone, offer help. still,
sunburned and stubborn in the way only
long free days can make a body, we walked
to the thicket and picked. when we returned,
bloodied by prickles and spattered with stains,
we were scolded, not for secreting
the news of the dead goose, but for picking
too many berries. for picking all day
in the sun without worry for our own scratched
skin. i can still remember how satisfying
it was. how we picked in near silence, two
girls who were never silent. how we knew
to plunder so well, to take and take
with this new muscle, this new gristle
that grew over us for good.
[also: drowning creek, invasive, "i have wanted clarity in light of my lack of light", open water, heat, and the end of poetry. or just read the whole thing, it's worth it]
thorns
armed with our white plastic buckets
we set off in the safety of the noonday
heat to snag the full rubus blackberries
at the bend of her family's gravel road.
but before we even reached the end
of the driveway, a goose hung strangled
in the fence wire, bloodless and limp. her
long neck twisted, her hard beak open.
she was dead. though we had been loosed
like loyal ranch dogs, we knew we should
go back, tell someone, offer help. still,
sunburned and stubborn in the way only
long free days can make a body, we walked
to the thicket and picked. when we returned,
bloodied by prickles and spattered with stains,
we were scolded, not for secreting
the news of the dead goose, but for picking
too many berries. for picking all day
in the sun without worry for our own scratched
skin. i can still remember how satisfying
it was. how we picked in near silence, two
girls who were never silent. how we knew
to plunder so well, to take and take
with this new muscle, this new gristle
that grew over us for good.
[also: drowning creek, invasive, "i have wanted clarity in light of my lack of light", open water, heat, and the end of poetry. or just read the whole thing, it's worth it]
mysterious
reflective
sad
medium-paced
emotional
reflective
fast-paced
emotional
fast-paced
emotional
challenging
dark
emotional
reflective
medium-paced
Reading this right after reading The Lucky Wreck felt a lot like sitting smack dab in the middle of metal bookends--the earlier book a strong testament to where Limon began publishing her poetry, and the recent book a clear visualization of where she is now as a poet. The poems here feel very much like being perceived while doing the perceiving, which i think may be the feeling we normally get when we pay sufficient attention. This collection is divided four-fold, each division dedicated to a season.
In Spring, for example, Limon writes of as she ponders about a stream and a remarkable bird that resides in said stream, "I am certain, though I am certain / of almost nothing. There is a solitude in the world / I cannot pierce. I would die for it." (Drowning Creek)
Juxtaposed with summer where she writes of trees who look like they're locked in a passionate kiss, "When did kissing become so dangerous? / Or was it always so?" and "I want them to go on kissing, without / fear. I want to watch them and not / feel so abandoned by hands." (It Begins with the Trees)
and compared again to fall where she writes of digital watch parties with friends, "Each week, even though / we are hidden from each other by distance, I know / I am the first to break into tears. Something about the body / moving freely, someone lifting it, or just the body / alone in movement, safe in the black expanse of stage. The body / as rebellion, as defiance, as immune." (How We See Each Other)
And of course, winter, where most poems were tinged with bare hints of nostalgia, "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." (Salvage)
Out of all divisions my favorite is Summer, not because it's my personal favorite season but because it houses my personal favorite poems in this collection. This one in particular, I sent to a friend because it reminded me of her first and foremost, "I like to call things as they are. Before, the only thing I was interested in was love, how it grips you, how it terrifies you, how it annihilates and resuscitates you. I didn’t know then that it wasn’t even love that I was interested in but my own suffering. I thought suffering kept things interesting. How funny that I called it love and the whole time it was pain." (Calling Things As They Are)
and then to the friend group ie the group that's been friends for most of our lives, I sent this: "how mostly we say, Remember / that time, and we will nod because we do / remember that time. Except for the few times / we’ve forgotten, like that one time when H / was trying to remind us of something and when / we asked her what, she said, I don’t know, / but you were there and I was there. And we we were." (Blowing on the Wheel)
And one I'm sending for safekeeping for myself: "Mistral writes: I killed a woman in me: one I did not love. But I do not want to kill / that longing woman in me. I love her and I want her to go on longing / until it drives her mad, that longing, until her desire is something / like a blazing flower, a tree shaking off / the torrents of rain as if it is simply making music."
In Craig Morgan Teicher's review in NYT, this collection is referred to as "a pandemic book," and was repeatedly praised for the ability to "counter isolation." Limon does that by paying close attention. Like what Luisa A. Igloria says in this review, "neither judging nor praising but just actively paying attention is enough." Limon also "asks for our attention to stay tender," as observed by Jeevika Verma in this NPR review. Attention remains to be an underestimated, undervalued resource and it's what Limon gives most of: attention to the seemingly mundane, attention to the people who are physically isolated from their loved ones and communities, attention to the ever-present want to go back to the way things were, and attention to the way things are--arguably the hardest of them all to pay sufficient attention to.
(for day 2 of The Sealey Challenge 2023)
In Spring, for example, Limon writes of as she ponders about a stream and a remarkable bird that resides in said stream, "I am certain, though I am certain / of almost nothing. There is a solitude in the world / I cannot pierce. I would die for it." (Drowning Creek)
Juxtaposed with summer where she writes of trees who look like they're locked in a passionate kiss, "When did kissing become so dangerous? / Or was it always so?" and "I want them to go on kissing, without / fear. I want to watch them and not / feel so abandoned by hands." (It Begins with the Trees)
and compared again to fall where she writes of digital watch parties with friends, "Each week, even though / we are hidden from each other by distance, I know / I am the first to break into tears. Something about the body / moving freely, someone lifting it, or just the body / alone in movement, safe in the black expanse of stage. The body / as rebellion, as defiance, as immune." (How We See Each Other)
And of course, winter, where most poems were tinged with bare hints of nostalgia, "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." (Salvage)
Out of all divisions my favorite is Summer, not because it's my personal favorite season but because it houses my personal favorite poems in this collection. This one in particular, I sent to a friend because it reminded me of her first and foremost, "I like to call things as they are. Before, the only thing I was interested in was love, how it grips you, how it terrifies you, how it annihilates and resuscitates you. I didn’t know then that it wasn’t even love that I was interested in but my own suffering. I thought suffering kept things interesting. How funny that I called it love and the whole time it was pain." (Calling Things As They Are)
and then to the friend group ie the group that's been friends for most of our lives, I sent this: "how mostly we say, Remember / that time, and we will nod because we do / remember that time. Except for the few times / we’ve forgotten, like that one time when H / was trying to remind us of something and when / we asked her what, she said, I don’t know, / but you were there and I was there. And we we were." (Blowing on the Wheel)
And one I'm sending for safekeeping for myself: "Mistral writes: I killed a woman in me: one I did not love. But I do not want to kill / that longing woman in me. I love her and I want her to go on longing / until it drives her mad, that longing, until her desire is something / like a blazing flower, a tree shaking off / the torrents of rain as if it is simply making music."
In Craig Morgan Teicher's review in NYT, this collection is referred to as "a pandemic book," and was repeatedly praised for the ability to "counter isolation." Limon does that by paying close attention. Like what Luisa A. Igloria says in this review, "neither judging nor praising but just actively paying attention is enough." Limon also "asks for our attention to stay tender," as observed by Jeevika Verma in this NPR review. Attention remains to be an underestimated, undervalued resource and it's what Limon gives most of: attention to the seemingly mundane, attention to the people who are physically isolated from their loved ones and communities, attention to the ever-present want to go back to the way things were, and attention to the way things are--arguably the hardest of them all to pay sufficient attention to.
(for day 2 of The Sealey Challenge 2023)