The Carrying
Poems
Published on 9. March 2021
116 pages
978-1-57131-994-4 (ISBN)
Description
NBCC Award Winner: "The narrative lyrics in this remarkable collection... could stand as compressed stories about anxiety and the body." -
The New York Times
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 National Book Award finalist Ada 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."
"Gorgeous, thought-provoking... simple, striking images." - Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"Exquisite." - The Washington Post
"Pitch-perfect... full of poems to savor and share... 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." - Minneapolis Star-Tribune
Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for Poetry
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 National Book Award finalist Ada 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."
"Gorgeous, thought-provoking... simple, striking images." - Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"Exquisite." - The Washington Post
"Pitch-perfect... full of poems to savor and share... 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." - Minneapolis Star-Tribune
Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for Poetry
More details
Other editions
Additional editions
Book
08/2018
Milkweed Editions
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Person
Ada Limón is the author of four books of poetry, including
Bright Dead Things, which was named a finalist for the National Book Award, the National Book Critics Circle Award, and the Kingsley Tufts Award. Her work has appeared in the
New Yorker, the
New York Times, and
American Poetry Review, among others. She lives in both Kentucky and California.
Content
Contents
1.
A Name
Ancestors
How Most of the Dreams Go
The Leash
Almost Forty
Trying
On a Pink Moon
The Raincoat
The Vulture & the Body
American Pharaoh
Dandelion Insomnia
Dream of the Raven
The Visitor
Late Summer after a Panic Attack
Bust
Dead Stars
Dream of Destruction
Prey
2.
The Burying Beetle
How We Are Made
The Light the Living See
The Dead Boy
What I Want to Remember
Overpass
The Millionth Dream of Your Return
Bald Eagles in a Field
I'm Sure about Magic
Wonder Woman
The Real Reason
The Year of the Goldfinches
Notes on the Below
Sundown and All the Damage Done
On a Lamp Post Long Ago
Of Roots & Roamers
Killing Methods
Full Gallop
Dream of the Men
A New National Anthem
Cargo
The Contract Says: We'd Like the Conversation to Be Bilingual
It's Harder
3.
Against Belonging
Instructions on Not Giving Up
Would You Rather
Maybe I'll Be Another Kind of Mother
Carrying
What I Didn't Know Before
Mastering
The Last Thing
Love Poem with Apologies for My Appearance
Sway
Sacred Objects
Sometimes I Think My Body Leaves a Shape in the Air
Cannibal Woman
Wife
From the Ash Inside the Bone
Time Is on Fire
After the Fire
Losing
The Last Drop
After His Ex Died
Sparrow, What Did You Say?
Notes & Acknowledgments
1.
A Name
Ancestors
How Most of the Dreams Go
The Leash
Almost Forty
Trying
On a Pink Moon
The Raincoat
The Vulture & the Body
American Pharaoh
Dandelion Insomnia
Dream of the Raven
The Visitor
Late Summer after a Panic Attack
Bust
Dead Stars
Dream of Destruction
Prey
2.
The Burying Beetle
How We Are Made
The Light the Living See
The Dead Boy
What I Want to Remember
Overpass
The Millionth Dream of Your Return
Bald Eagles in a Field
I'm Sure about Magic
Wonder Woman
The Real Reason
The Year of the Goldfinches
Notes on the Below
Sundown and All the Damage Done
On a Lamp Post Long Ago
Of Roots & Roamers
Killing Methods
Full Gallop
Dream of the Men
A New National Anthem
Cargo
The Contract Says: We'd Like the Conversation to Be Bilingual
It's Harder
3.
Against Belonging
Instructions on Not Giving Up
Would You Rather
Maybe I'll Be Another Kind of Mother
Carrying
What I Didn't Know Before
Mastering
The Last Thing
Love Poem with Apologies for My Appearance
Sway
Sacred Objects
Sometimes I Think My Body Leaves a Shape in the Air
Cannibal Woman
Wife
From the Ash Inside the Bone
Time Is on Fire
After the Fire
Losing
The Last Drop
After His Ex Died
Sparrow, What Did You Say?
Notes & Acknowledgments
