Reviews tagging 'Grief'

Bright Dead Things: Poems by Ada Limón

9 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

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

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

bashsbooks's review

challenging emotional reflective slow-paced

4.0

Limón's poetry is sometimes brain-sparking and illuminating and sometimes a boring slog. I can't quite put my finger on why - I think at times she doesn't accurately balance how much description the reader needs to see where she's going. A lack of images gets fuzzy and vagueness is hard for the mind focus on. That said, I felt that the poems became clearer and her work altogether more understandable the further I read, so perhaps it was intentional.

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Content Warnings

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

Moderate: Misogyny, Grief, Fire/Fire injury, Alcoholism, and Classism

jazhandz's review

emotional inspiring medium-paced

5.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death, Death of parent, and Grief

Minor: Racism

jayisreading's review

emotional reflective slow-paced

4.0

Limón explores broad themes of loss, grief, love, and hope throughout this collection with such tenderness. Her poems are straightforward and grounded—maybe a little heavy-handed at times—but the simplicity of them opens up the opportunity for the reader to really bask in their affectivity.

Some favorites: “How Far Away We Are,” “I Remember the Carrots,” “Downhearted,” “What It Looks Like to Us and the Words We Use,” “Relentless,” “Oh Please, Let It Be Lightning,” and “Lies About Sea Creatures”

Read for the Sealey Challenge.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death, Death of parent, and Grief

Moderate: Racism

Minor: Drug abuse

savvylit's review

emotional hopeful reflective medium-paced

5.0

Ada Limón is such an incredible poet and I am so glad that I finally picked up one of her collections! In Bright Dead Things, Limón finds beauty in stillness, she falls in love, and she comes to terms with mortality while experiencing loss. Each poem in this collection is so accessible and intimate. Reading them was almost like receiving letters from a dear friend.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death of parent and Grief

Minor: Animal death

spinesinaline's review

challenging emotional inspiring reflective medium-paced

4.75

This was so very good. Fuller thoughts to come

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Content Warnings

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

Moderate: Racism, Sexual content, and Animal death

Minor: Drug abuse