The Carrying: Poems (Paperback)

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The Carrying: Poems By Ada Limón Cover Image
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Staff Reviews


Chosen by: Heidi

A friend sent me the poem “Instructions on Not Giving Up” (p.66) and I was instantly hooked on Ada Limón. This collection will give you the raw ache in your throat that only really good poetry can. Read it and welcome spring to the world with fresh eyes. 

 

— From March 2023 Staff Picks

Description


WINNER OF THE NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD

FINALIST FOR THE PEN/JEAN STEIN BOOK AWARD

From U.S. Poet Laureate Ada Lim n comes The Carrying--her most powerful collection yet.

Vulnerable, tender, acute, these are serious poems, brave poems, exploring with honesty the ambiguous moment between the rapture of youth and the grace of acceptance. A daughter tends to aging parents. A woman struggles with infertility--"What if, instead of carrying / a child, I am supposed to carry grief?"--and a body seized by pain and vertigo as well as ecstasy. A nation convulses: "Every song of this country / has an unsung third stanza, something brutal." And still Lim n shows us, as ever, the persistence of hunger, love, and joy, the dizzying fullness of our too-short lives. "Fine then, / I'll take it," she writes. "I'll take it all."

In Bright Dead Things, Lim n showed us a heart "giant with power, heavy with blood"--"the huge beating genius machine / that thinks, no, it knows, / it's going to come in first." In her follow-up collection, that heart is on full display--even as The Carrying continues further and deeper into the bloodstream, following the hard-won truth of what it means to live in an imperfect world.



Product Details
ISBN: 9781571315137
ISBN-10: 1571315136
Publisher: Milkweed Editions
Publication Date: April 13th, 2021
Pages: 120
Language: English