WINNER OF THE NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD FOR POETRY 2019
Ada Limón is a poet of ecstatic revelation . . . a book of deep wisdom and urgent vulnerability’ Tracy K. Smith, Guardian
‘Vulnerable, tender, acute . . . The Carrying is a gift’ Natasha Trethewey, Pulitzer Prize-winning poet and former US Poet Laureate
‘Exquisite poems’ Roxane Gay
From National Book Critics Circle Award Winner Ada Limón 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 Limón 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.’
The Carrying leads us deeper towards the hard-won truth of what it means to live in an imperfect world.
Ada Limón is a poet of ecstatic revelation . . . a book of deep wisdom and urgent vulnerability’ Tracy K. Smith, Guardian
‘Vulnerable, tender, acute . . . The Carrying is a gift’ Natasha Trethewey, Pulitzer Prize-winning poet and former US Poet Laureate
‘Exquisite poems’ Roxane Gay
From National Book Critics Circle Award Winner Ada Limón 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 Limón 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.’
The Carrying leads us deeper towards the hard-won truth of what it means to live in an imperfect world.
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Reviews
I was ambushed by her power to move - several poems brought a lump to my throat. She never hides behind words but reveals herself through them . . . It describes an effortful time that makes these apparently effortless, quick-release poems all the more merciful and beautiful. There is nothing self-indulgent here but there is humorous self-assertion . . . Part of the pleasure of reading Limon is the way she transports you to a Kentucky punctuated by the noise of trains, the presence of horses, the planting of seeds. This is as-the-crow files poetry - it goes straight to the heart.