Reviews tagging 'Death'

Bright Dead Things: Poems by Ada Limón

15 reviews

alyssapusateri's review

dark hopeful reflective sad medium-paced

3.75

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Animal cruelty, Animal death, Body horror, Gore, Death, Death of parent, Grief, and Blood

Moderate: Fire/Fire injury and Suicidal thoughts

Minor: Sexual content, Drug use, Alcohol, and Racial slurs

mimpart's review

emotional funny hopeful inspiring reflective sad medium-paced

5.0

A beautiful, beautiful volume.

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Death of parent and Death

words_and_coffee's review

dark emotional hopeful inspiring mysterious reflective sad medium-paced

5.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Grief, Death, Death of parent, and Terminal illness

Moderate: Animal death, Racial slurs, Xenophobia, and Racism

Minor: Alcoholism and Drug abuse

lidia7's review

emotional reflective medium-paced

Lyrical but not convoluted, accessible but challenging enough, with both relatable and profound lines. I enjoyed this collection a lot as a poetry dilettante.

from Mowing:

I imagine what it must be like to stay hidden, disappear in the dusky nothing and stay still in the night. It’s not sadness, though it may sound like it. I’m thinking about people and trees and how I wish I could be silent more, be more tree than anything else, less clumsy and loud, less crow, more cool white pine, and how it’s hard not to always want something else, not just to let the savage grass grow.

from The Long Ride:

(...) How good it is to love
live things, even when what they've done
is terrible, how much we each want to be
the pure exonerated creature, to be turned loose
into our own wide open without a single
harness of sin to stop us.

from The Wild Divine:

and I thought, this was what it was to be blessed-
to know a love that was beyond an owning, beyond
the body and its needs, but went straight from wild
thing to wild thing, approving of its wildness.

favorite poem: Field Bling

other poems I *really* enjoyed: The Quiet Machine, I Remember The Carrots, The Tree of Fire, Someplace Like Montana, In The Country of Resurrection, The Problem With Travel, The Great Blue Heron of Dunbar Road, Lies About Sea Creatures, Service

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Grief, Death, and Death of parent

Moderate: Animal death and Racial slurs

seventhswan's review

reflective slow-paced

3.0

 Most of these poems didn't resonate with me - there was a lot of repetitive nature imagery and artificially-hyphenated phrases, which wasn't my thing. However, the two or three poems that I did connect with, particularly State Bird, I *really* liked. Overall I think perhaps this collection was overhyped based on the couple of popular (and excellent!) poems that circulate on Poetry Twitter; I'd read more of Limon's work in future but probably not as a whole collection, cover to cover. 

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Death

blueteacup's review

emotional hopeful inspiring reflective

5.0

Ada Limón is a brilliant poet who’s a master of conveying strong emotions through imagery.  In her poem “The Last Move” she compares herself to a woman’s body in a water tank, describing how the faucet would spurt or gurgle, to convey feelings of isolation and losing a part of herself when she moved from New York to Kentucky. 

Her descriptions of the bluegrass of Kentucky, old horses, death in her family and other strong concepts made each poem feel unique but similar.  Almost every poem lured you in with an interesting concept, then shattered you with a powerful last line. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Terminal illness, Death, and Cancer

Minor: Racism

fleen's review

reflective slow-paced

3.75

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Death and Car accident

barefootsong's review against another edition

emotional reflective slow-paced

4.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death, Grief, and Death of parent

Moderate: Animal death

jazhandz's review

emotional inspiring medium-paced

5.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death, Death of parent, and Grief

Minor: Racism

magicshop's review against another edition

emotional reflective sad slow-paced

4.0

                                             Here it is:
the new way of living with the world

inside of us so we cannot lose it,
and we cannot be lost. You and me,

are us and them, and it and sky.
It’s hard to believe we didn’t

know that before; it’s hard to believe
we were so hollowed out, so drained,

only so we could shine a little harder
when the light finally came. 

i'm in love with ada limón 👏

favorites:

• days of song, days of silence
• i remember the carrots
• miracle fish
• the vine
• we are surprised
• the problem with travel
• the tree of fire

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Death, Death of parent, and Homophobia