‘The Carrying’ by Ada Limón
“The Carrying” (Milkweed) is Ada Limón’s fifth and best book yet. In these exquisite poems, Limón recalls some of the experiences and influences that have shaped her perceptions and recent writing. Among them are the natural world, lifelong physical challenges as well as the struggle to have a child and to understand her father, who has Alzheimer’s. As the poem “Dead Stars” explains, “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 feel/ so mute it’s almost in another year./ I am a hearth of spiders these days: a nest of trying.” A desire for connection runs throughout the work, as does the constant tension created by the gap between how life could be and how it really is. Limón, who was a finalist for the National Book award and the National Book Critics Circle award in 2015, is always a careful witness, accurately recording the moment, rather than trying to transcend it. That leads to achingly graceful lines at times, and to blunt insights at others, as when the speaker tackles social ills and inequities. 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.
‘If You Have to Go’ by Katie Ford
To convey her overwhelming sense of loss about the dissolution of her marriage, Katie Ford presents a strange, almost fairy tale realm in the collection “If You Have to Go” (Graywolf). At first, the grief feels profoundly physical — “I ask my body for another house” but “the body worsens under the extremity of the request.” Yet as the narrative unfolds, in 39 sonnets, readers are led through a kingdom that includes a cold, distant lord, beasts of burden and multiple rooms for those who are stuck there. This landscape allows the speaker to slowly work through her feelings — from despondency (“I’d rather starve than eat alone the bread of heaven”) to equanimity (“Yes, lighting candles — / it’s how I went on”). The journey also serves as a quest of sorts, as her shattered sense of self slowly begins to mend. A final section broadens these mediations and opens the door to “that which halts us/ to begin, once again, begin.”
Elizabeth Lund reviews poetry every month for The Washington Post.
