Ada Limón: The New U.S. Poet Laureate

“One of the things I’ve learned this far into a life in language is to be grateful about all of this,” said poet Ada Limón in a 2018 interview with Poets & Writers. “I get to read and spend time with words as a vocation. Yes, it’s work, and there is so much failure and so much getting it wrong. But still, we are so lucky.”  

Limón’s life in language has taken another turn. Last month, Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden named her the 24^th Poet Laureate of the United States. In her appointment, Hayden cited the poet’s ability to connect and how her poems “ground us in where we are and who we share our world with. They speak of intimate truths, of the beauty and heartbreak that is living, in ways that help us move forward.” 

To continue reading, please see my post today at Tweetspeak Poetry.

Poets and Poems: Ada Limón and “The Carrying”

In The Carrying, the fifth collection of poems by Ada Limón, the poet takes the commonplace and turns it into a meditation about the personal. It might be a dog’s leash, a cemetery visit, a snowy day, a blue jay, roadkill, or a street overpass. She sees the obvious things that we all see but looks beyond or inside them to see far more, grasp more, and understand more. 

That dog’s leash provides an occasion to consider warfare, power, and restraint. Seeing a dead animal on the side of the road becomes a discussion with the doctor at the fertility clinic. The flash of a blue jay’s wing leads to a reflection on always making big deals out of everything. 

 

And the image of birds screaming in and flying around nearby trees leads to the meaning, if any, of reaching middle age.

To continue reading, please see my post today at Tweetspeak Poetry.