Reviews with content warning for Death of parent - Bright Dead Things: Poems

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

Content Warnings

rachbreads's review

Go to review page

reflective slow-paced

3.5

Overall, as I dig more into poetry and different types of poets/collections/etc. I'm learning that I actually prefer poetry with a bit more form/rhyme, etc. than the prose poetry Limón favors. Still so many beautiful turns of phrase and thoughtful moments. I've listed some favorites below.

The Quiet Machine

I'm learning so many different ways to be quiet...There's daytime silent when I stare, and a nighttime silent when I do things.

I Remember the Carrots

I haven't given up on trying to live a good life

State Bird

whatever state you are, I'll be that state's bird

After You Toss Around the Ashes

I couldn't go back to my life. You understand, right? It wasn't the same. I couldn't tell if I loved myself more or less.

Content Warnings

chickentenderness's review

Go to review page

emotional hopeful mysterious reflective sad slow-paced

3.5

To preface, I am not a big poetry reader, so this is an uninformed opinion. I am reading poetry books to get a sense of what I like in poetry books, and perhaps this just isn’t what I like so much. There are some really stunning poems here, and snippets. Some lovely moments of clarity of feeling. My favorite poems of the book had that crisp moment and sharpness, something I could really feel alongside her.

Much of this book is wandering, meandering—this is clearly intentional and exploratory and even prefaced in the reviews on the back cover. She reads to me as tenuous and exploratory and grasping (meant kindly). She’s at once settled and unsettled. That particular feeling did resonate with me, but at the same time I often found her writing difficult to grasp. The language of her poetry was sometimes so unconnected or indistinct that I struggled with it.

Perhaps I’m just at a different stage of my life, perhaps I should give this another read when I’m 35. All this to say that it’s a very beautiful read, but did not land the way I thought it might.

Content Warnings

barefootsong's review against another edition

Go to review page

emotional reflective slow-paced

4.0

Content Warnings

versmonesprit's review

Go to review page

emotional hopeful reflective sad medium-paced

2.0

This was a mixed bag for me, and by mixed, I mean truly: I found some of these poems absolutely glorious, but others cringy and boring to no end. Limón’s pen is best when writing about grief and identity; not about daily life and especially, Kentucky. I don’t think I’ll pick up another book by her, but at those glorious instances, I saw the merit her other works might have.

Content Warnings

More...