Limón possesses what all good poets hope to possess: a preternaturally heightened sense of what constitutes living. She shows us suffering and desire; creating and wanting to create; the fraught ways we love and touch; repulsion, fear, rapture; the difficult act of simply standing still. She unearths our vitalities from their habitual hiding places—a conversation with one's mother, a highway overpass, a common garden weed, the shine of a beetle's shell—so we all might access them, too ... I am struck by its penetrating poetic vision of communal surviving. Limón's brilliance is in her way of searching, in how she burrows into the unknown to find its roots in known, tangible things ... Amid the intense emotional resonance of Limón's work, one might easily overlook the sheer artistry of her writing. Some lines are so beautiful that they themselves carry the power of resistance, a balm against inevitable processes of change and loss.
Even though an individual may perish, there is consistency in the life cycles of bumblebees, dandelions, and race horses—all of which are examined with gorgeous language and imagery that makes Limón’s collection hard to put down, even in the moments that cause a deep, sorrowful ache. The tone is conversational yet eloquent, as if the speaker is retelling the most whimsical or challenging moments of their day after mentally working out the details of the story all afternoon. At times, these dialogues become brutally honest and confessional. In other instances, they’re more convivial ... The Carrying perhaps doesn’t only refer to the burdens we carry, but also the small joys that carry us through the incessant turmoil of existence. It’s difficult to balance such polarized emotions, but Limón deftly navigates these extremes.
The Carrying (Milkweed) is Ada Limón’s fifth and best book ... exquisite poems ... [Limón] is always a careful witness, accurately recording the moment rather than trying to transcend it. That leads to achingly graceful lines at times and to blunt insights at others ... a powerful example of how to carry the things that define us without being broken by them.
Ada Limón’s pitch-perfect fifth collection, The Carrying, is full of poems to savor and share. In it, she offers avenues to survival and persistence in the face of immense grief ... She writes with remarkable directness about painful experiences normally packaged in euphemism and, in doing so, invites the readers to enter a world where abundant joy exists alongside and simultaneous to loss. One doesn’t negate the other.
The Carrying won't disappoint fans. The 62 poems in this stellar new collection, divided into three sections, offer honest, lyrical observations on love, loneliness, life, death and all the mysteries in between ... Her poems are like trees, branching three-dimensionally in myriad directions. She performs a near-miraculous feat in balancing razor-sharp imagery with deep ambivalence ... It is this undying insistence on the goodness of the world that stays with the reader. The Carrying beautifully conveys the power of poetry in an age that needs it most.
I was ambushed by [Limón's] power to move – several poems brought a lump to my throat. Yet her popularity is about more than accessibility. She never hides behind words but reveals herself through them – even when the risk is overexposure ... [Limón] knows how to change direction at the last moment, knows an ending can be an elsewhere ... Part of the pleasure of reading Limón is the way she transports you to a Kentucky punctuated by the noise of trains, the presence of horses, the planting of seeds. She does not ignore the world’s cruelties but tries not to be held hostage by them. This is as-the-crow flies poetry – it goes straight to the heart.
... Ada Limón reveals the natural world as only she can, parsing from seemingly commonplace images profound inquiries into sacrifice, motherhood, memory, and humanity’s complicity in the degradation of our environment. Whether her focus is drawn to a seal navigating the choppy waves beneath the Golden Gate Bridge or the mouth of a cave at Mammoth Cave National Park, Limón’s poems keenly navigate the intersection of observation, self-reflection, and imagination ... Rather than reducing the size and complexity of our world or the universe, Limón embraces its complexity, the beauty in a simple truth ... We will never fully grasp the bigness this universe has to offer, but we can look and listen and learn where this bigness resides within us. The Carrying, like so much of Limón’s work, is where I go to begin this understanding.
Limón’s ability to express her speaker’s connection to the earth, her desire to bring forth life in all its forms, is breathtaking ... What makes Limón’s poetry so engaging is its vibrant voice, at once reflective and otherworldly, yet grounded in vernacular ... This compelling voice makes the entire collection both accessible and emotionally centered. The speaker is so easy for a reader to identify with because of Limón’s carefully chosen language ... With masterful language, emotional grounding, and powerful imagery, Ada Limón has created a poetry collection that carries so much more than its simple title implies.
Just as The Carrying is perhaps Limón’s most intimate view of the body, it’s also her most external view of America, a country in turmoil ... Though The Carrying indicates an artist at odds with her body, the myths of womanhood, and America at large, Limón nonetheless carries the little lights of the world alongside her pain ... What Limón carries throughout these poems is intense attention and devotion to art. Her new work suggests that this is an imperfect but nonetheless essential salve to a shaken body and a disordered world.
The vein of greatness that pulses through the work of Ada Limón is remarkably subtle, in the same way that beauty in a human isn’t a rote assemblage of chiseled noses, high cheekbones, and full lips. Her extraordinary poems act the part of an autumn leaf slowly descending from on high—only when it reaches the ground, and you regroup your thoughts, do you realize that you witnessed something mesmerizing.
A master of examining themes from unexpected angles, Limón rotates her topics in kaleidoscopic turns ... Even in 'Bust,' one of the book’s most complex and dynamic poems, Limón blends seemingly disparate images of women’s anatomy into a causal, almost nonchalant parlance that entices the reader into its realm ... Page after page, this proves to be a startling and tender, magnificent collection.
The Carrying is her most intimate work yet, one that adeptly portrays the fragility and fierceness of her body ... The Carrying is a blunt exploration of loss, and wisely observant of how 'real gladness' and pain manifest in both animals and humans. Limón’s poems personify the twinned-narrative of despair and tenacity that has become part of America’s current political and social reality. Indeed, The Carrying is a spark of courage in our dark and troubled times, one that implores us to remain awake so we can remake our toughest selves 'while everyone else is asleep.' ”
The collection investigates the question of whether one must procreate to be worthy ... Limón catalogues, in luscious alliterative language, the 'fuchsia funnels' and cherry branches with their 'cotton candy-covered blossoms' ... Limón clearly delights in nature’s flash and dazzle, but she also sees beyond it to the power of persistence itself, as seen in the 'patient and plodding' green skin that grows back each spring no matter how hard the winter.
Limón’s typically tight narrative lyrics feature simple, striking images ... her unsettling dream poems avoid becoming exercises in surrealism ... this fearless collection shows a poet that can appreciate life’s surprises.
Limón's vision is realistic, at times bleak, yet these poems often brim with optimism, revealing a reverent, extraordinary take on the world. Don't miss this life-affirming collection.
