The Carrying Poems
The Carrying Poems by Ada Limón, published by Milkweed Editions in 2021, is a collection of 95 pages that delves into the complexities of life through the lens of poetry. Limón, a U.S. Poet Laureate, presents a series of vulnerable and tender poems that explore themes of love, family, and the human experience. The collection captures the nuanced moments between youth and acceptance, addressing personal struggles such as caring for aging parents and grappling with infertility, while also reflecting on broader societal issues.
Readers will find that Limón’s work navigates the intersection of joy and grief, illustrating the persistence of love amidst life’s challenges. The poems articulate a deep emotional landscape, revealing the intricate balance between pain and ecstasy. With a focus on the realities of living in an imperfect world, The Carrying invites contemplation on the fullness of existence, making it a significant addition to contemporary American poetry.
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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.
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