The Carrying: Poems

by Ada Limón Narrated by Ada Limón

Overview

WINNER OF THE NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD

FINALIST FOR THE PEN/JEAN STEIN BOOK AWARD

From U.S. Poet Laureate 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.”

In Bright Dead Things, Limón 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.

Editorial Reviews

Publishers Weekly

★ 06/18/2018
“I will/ never get over making everything/ such a big deal,” declares Limón (Bright Dead Things) in her gorgeous, thought-provoking fifth collection, in which small moments convey “the strange idea of continuous living.” Materialist rather than metaphysical, these poems are deeply concerned with interconnectedness: “my/ body is not just my body.” Flora and fauna suffuse these poems, and the green-ness is almost overwhelming, but Limón duly confronts life’s difficulties. “It’s taken/ a while for me to admit, I’m in a raging battle/ with my body,” she writes, facing bouts of vertigo and struggling to conceive a child: “perhaps the only thing I can make// is love and art.” She also tackles such social ills as misogyny, racism, and war. In “A New National Anthem,” she writes, “the truth is, every song of this country/ has an unsung third stanza, something brutal/ snaking underneath.” Limón’s typically tight narrative lyrics feature simple, striking images, (“Women gathered in paisley scarves with rusty iced tea”), and her unsettling dream poems avoid becoming exercises in surrealism. Four “letter-poems” to poet Natalie Diaz also demonstrate versatility, shifting into looser meditations that sprawl across the page. “I live my life half afraid, and half shouting/ at the trains when they thunder by,” Limón claims, but this fearless collection shows a poet that can appreciate life’s surprises. (Aug.)

From the Publisher

Praise for The Carrying

Winner of the 2018 National Book Critics Circle Award
ALA Notable Book of 2018
Finalist for the 2019 PEN/Jean Stein Book Award

“Limón has a novelistic knack for scene, and the narrative lyrics in this remarkable collection, her fifth, could stand as compressed stories about anxiety and the body.”—New York Times

“Exquisite . . . Limón is always a careful witness, accurately recording the moment, rather than trying to transcend it. Evocative dreams and pivotal memories help make this collection a powerful example of how to carry the things that define us without being broken by them.”—Washington Post

“[In The Carrying] the National Book Award-nominated poet pens paeans to the world's limitless capacity to astonish.”—O, The Oprah Magazine

“Limón is a poet of ecstatic revelation. Her poetry feels fast, full of detail, often playful, and driven by a conversational voice. This book represents a powerful deepening of the poet’s perspective. . . . It’s a book of deep wisdom and urgent vulnerability, driven by language that feels not only beautiful but permanent and powerfully wrought, like a mountain. It leads you to the beautiful bright mountaintop of language, then guides you gently down into the rocky valleys of a conscious human heart.”—Tracy K. Smith, The Guardian

“Masterful . . . A piercing look into the nature of pain and impermanence . . . It is a paean to nature itself, to the peace in knowing it's both part of us and greater than us—especially when everything else in the world can seem like it's falling apart.”—BuzzFeed

“With each poem in her new collection, The Carrying, Limón counterbalances her most paralyzing fears with her ability to find small twinges of hope. . . . Each poem is a widening lens of the world, an unburdening of the things we carry deep within ourselves.”—Paris Review

“Merciful and beautiful . . . [Limón] never hides behind words but reveals herself through them—even when the risk is overexposure. . . . This is as-the-crow-flies poetry—it goes straight to the heart.”—Guardian

“The Carrying is about the contradictory joys and burdens we all carry. . . . The societal connection between womanhood, motherhood and power is at the core of her work. . . . For Limón, carrying both the joys and sorrows of a child-free life is a testament to the human ability to exist with many things piled on our shoulders at once.”—PBS NewsHour

“Tender, illuminating . . . The anxiety of all of life’s realities permeates Limón’s collection, which makes the work feel piercingly of the moment.”—San Francisco Chronicle

“Limón’s pitch-perfect fifth collection, The Carrying, is 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

“[Limón’s] new collection is her best yet, a much needed shot of if not hope, then perseverance amidst much uncertainty.”—NPR

“The Carrying is one of [Limón’s] best. Even in poems about racism, misogyny, violence, and the darkness that often accompanies life, Limón’s resiliency shines through.”—Bitch

“For a book metered by grief, there’s a lot of love here—that shouldn’t come as a surprise, considering Limón’s stylistic control and skill. . . . Limón is very good at pacing her poems to leave us satisfied but also curious. . . . One of the best books of the year.”—The Millions

“Lyrical, tender, and knowing . . . Limón’s poetry connects the personal and the universal.”—Garden & Gun

“With the knowing directness of a letter, Limón’s poems speak to the marrow of our everyday condition. . . . The Carrying is a vital collection for a noisy, brutal time. The power of Limón’s unflinching examination of grief and loss is only surpassed by her love of beauty and compassion.”—BOMB

“[Limón's] poems come closer than any poems have to Annie Dillard’s essays. . . . She’s that rarest of beasts, a poet who can take you by surprise.”—New Criterion

“Deeply intimate . . . A poetry collection to help you make sense of the world right now . . . It’s a spinning world that, increasingly, is turning to poetry like Limón’s to make sense of—or, at least, to assuage the grief of—it all.”—Bustle

“What drives her poems—what makes her new collection, The Carrying, so moving and masterful—is her dexterity with voice and diction and her giftedness with metaphor. It is her deep wellspring of surprising and evocative images and her syntactic superpowers. Most of all, it’s her intellect and intelligence. The poems are keen reflections of a mind constantly at work, seeing and wondering and moving toward meaning but not always the meaning to which the poem and its reader thought they were headed.”—Poets & Writers

“Limón’s new poems in The Carrying are like a winter garden—somber, full of grief and patience, suddenly visible lines from here to there. To watch a poet in full possession of her power tending the earth with this kind of care feels like an inspiration that comes with a chastened edge: time, they remind, is all we have.”—Literary Hub

“All of Limón’s books have found a home on my bookshelf, each volume a heartfelt reckoning of what it is be alive. In her collections, I find a grace that demonstrates her versatility and wisdom as well as a ‘surrendering.’ She explains that the central question of her work is, ‘How do we live in the world?’ Yet she’s a poet as comfortable with questions as with answers.”—Guernica

“[Limón] might be the mom of Latinx poetry, and I mean that in the best way possible. . . . Limón is talented in a way that’s both intimidating and inspiring, and is definitely a strong pillar of contemporary poetry.”—Book Riot

“Wisely observant . . . 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.”—PANK

“Limón’s work is a reminder that you can write poetry about big ideas.”—America

“Exquisite poems about love, fertility, desire, this natural world we move through, the political climate, so much more.”—Roxane Gay, Goodreads

“Superb. . . . Although the subject matter is often mournful, the endurance of nature also comes to light. 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.”—Chicago Review of Books

“This is the kind of poetry that strikes that rare balance: deftly crafted and profound but also completely accessible. The collection is about creation, death and everything in between, with so much attention to the thrumming world that just by reading it you become more aware, more in tune with the life around you.”—BookPage

“Limón is one of the country's finest poets. . . . Honest, lyrical observations on love, loneliness, life, death and all the mysteries in between . . . She performs a near-miraculous feat in balancing razor-sharp imagery with deep ambivalence. . . . The Carrying beautifully conveys the power of poetry in an age that needs it most.”—Shelf Awareness

“Limón teaches me that language can still surprise me. She shows me that the juxtaposition of words not previously joined can catch me off-guard, make me feel that shimmer of resonance, of curiosity.”—Signature

“Gorgeous, thought-provoking . . . This fearless collection shows a poet that can appreciate life's surprises.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“A stunning collection . . . Limón writes movingly about finding the spectacular in the everyday. . . . A reverent, extraordinary take on the world. Don’t miss this life-affirming collection.”—Library Journal (starred review)

“A master of examining themes from unexpected angles, Limón rotates her topics in kaleidoscopic turns. . . . Page after page, this proves to be a startling and tender, magnificent collection.”—Booklist

“Extraordinary . . . You realize that you witnessed something mesmerizing.”—Foreword Reviews

“In her dazzling, precise, transformative collection, The Carrying, Limón offers us meditations on mortality, womanhood, the body, and that which grows in the earth, all the while slyly positing: How we should treat each other in this precarious life? Like humans, is her answer. Like humans.”—Jami Attenberg, author of The Middlesteins

“In her powerful new collection, Limón asks: ‘What if, instead of carrying // a child, I am supposed to carry grief?’ And later: ‘isn’t there still something singing?’ To which I say: yes. In these poems, joy and longing and grief sing with a music that—regardless of what I am burdened or blessed to carry—makes me want to live passionately and fully in the difficult world. The Carrying is a gift."—Natasha Trethewey

“It is no wonder that Limón’s wonderful new book, The Carrying, is full of goldfinches and strawberries and dandelions and hostas and, as she writes, ‘all good things that come from the ground.’ It’s also no wonder that it’s full of the life that death makes. And the living that dying is. For this book is a garden. And like a garden, it will nourish you. It will feed you.”—Ross Gay

Library Journal

★ 07/01/2018
National Book Award finalist Limón (Bright Dead Things) here weaves nature, family, and grief into a stunning collection. Several poems recount the loss of the speaker's first husband from a drug overdose, but although pains are often described—whether caused by grief, infertility, or a crooked spine—Limón's poems sing with the joy of life: "I wish to be untethered and tethered all at once, my skin/ singes the sheets and there's a tremor in the marrow." The poet mourns not only for people lost but also for irreplaceable things such as languages: "In the time it takes to say I love you, or move in with someone,/ …all the intricate words/ of a language become extinct." Many poems begin or turn on the unexpected, as in "The Vulture & the Body": "What if, instead of carrying// a child, I am supposed to carry grief?" Occasionally, there are too many unessential details, and although most of Limón's similes are strikingly good, she sometimes settles for the easy: "I saw seven cardinals brash and bold/ as sin in a leafless tree." Nevertheless, in accessible language, Limón writes movingly about finding the spectacular in the everyday VERDICT 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.—Doris Lynch, Monroe Cty. P.L., Bloomington, IN

Product Details

BN ID:	2940178405611
Publisher:	Milkweed Editions
Publication date:	03/28/2023
Edition description:	Unabridged

Read an Excerpt

Trying

I’d forgotten how much
I like to grow things, I shout to him as he passes me to paint the basement. I’m trellising the tomatoes in what’s called a Florida weave. Later, we try to knock me up again. We do it in the guest room because that’s the extent of our adventurism in a week of violence in Florida and France. Afterwards,
the sun still strong though lowering inevitably to the horizon, I check on the plants in the back, my fingers smelling of sex and tomato vines. Even now, I don’t know much about happiness. I still worry and want an endless stream of more,
but some days I can see the point in growing something, even if it’s just to say I cared enough.

***

The Raincoat

When the doctor suggested surgery and a brace for all my youngest years,
my parents scrambled to take me to massage therapy, deep tissue work,
osteopathy, and soon my crooked spine unspooled a bit, I could breathe again,
and move more in a body unclouded by pain. My mom would tell me to sing songs to her the whole forty-five-minute drive to Middle Two Rock Road and forty-
five minutes back from physical therapy.
She’d say, even my voice sounded unfettered by my spine afterwards. So I sang and sang,
because I thought she liked it. I never asked her what she gave up to drive me,
or how her day was before this chore. Today,
  at her age, I was driving myself home from yet another spine appointment, singing along to some maudlin, but solid song on the radio,
and I saw a mom take her raincoat off and give it to her young daughter when the storm took over the afternoon. My god,
I thought, my whole life I’ve been under her raincoat thinking it was somehow a marvel that I never got wet.

***

Dead Stars

Out here, there’s a bowing even the trees are doing.
Winter’s icy hand at the back of all of us.
Black bark, slick yellow leaves, a kind of stillness that feels so mute it’s almost in another year.

I am a hearth of spiders these days: a nest of trying.

We point out the stars that make Orion as we take out the trash, the rolling containers a song of suburban thunder.

It’s almost romantic as we adjust the waxy blue recycling bin until you say, Man, we should really learn some new constellations.

And it’s true. We keep forgetting about Antila, Centarus,
Draco, Lacerta, Hydra, Lyra, Lynx.

But mostly we’re forgetting we’re dead stars too, my mouth is full of dust and I wish to reclaim the rising—

to lean in the spotlight of streetlight with you, toward what’s larger within us, toward how we were born.

Look, we are not unspectacular things.
We’ve come this far, survived this much. What

would happen if we decided to survive more? To love harder?

What if we stood up with our synapses and flesh and said, No.
No, to the rising tides.

Stood for the many mute mouths of the sea, of the land?

What would happen if we used our bodies to bargain

for the safety of others, for earth,
if we declared a clean night, if we stopped being terrified,

if we launched our demands into the sky, made ourselves so big people could point to us with the arrows they make in their minds,

rolling their trash bins out, after all of this is over?

***

Wonder Woman

Standing at the swell of the muddy Mississippi after the Urgent Care doctor had just said, Well,
sometimes shit happens, I fell fast and hard for New Orleans all over again. Pain pills swirled in the purse along with a spell for later. It’s taken a while for me to admit, I am in a raging battle
  with my body, a spinal column thirty-five degrees
  bent, vertigo that comes and goes like a DC Comics villain nobody can kill. Invisible pain is both a blessing and a curse. You always look so happy,
said a stranger once as I shifted to my good side grinning. But that day, alone on the riverbank,
brass blaring from the Steamboat Natchez,
out of the corner of my eye, I saw a girl, maybe half my age,
dressed, for no apparent reason, as Wonder Woman.
She strutted by in all her strength and glory, invincible,
eternal, and when I stood to clap (because who wouldn’t have),
she bowed and posed like she knew I needed a myth,
—a woman, by a river, indestructible.

***

The Year of the Goldfinches

There were two that hung and hovered by the mud puddle and the musk thistle.
Flitting from one splintered fence post to another, bathing in the rainwater’s glint like it was a mirror to some other universe where things were more acceptable, easier than the place I lived. I’d watch for them:
the bright peacocking male, the low-watt female on each morning walk, days spent digging for some sort of elusive answer to the question my curving figure made.
Later, I learned that they were a symbol of resurrection. Of course they were,
my two yellow-winged twins feasting on thorns and liking it.

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