Synopses & Reviews
After the loss of her stepmother to cancer, Ada Limón chose to quit her job with a major travel magazine in New York, move to the mountains of Kentucky, and disappear. Yet, in the wake of death and massive transition, she found unexpected love, both for a man and for a place, all the while uncovering the core unity between death and beauty that drives our world. I am beautiful. I am full of love. I am dying,” the author writes. Its this narrative of transformation and acceptance that suffuses these poems. Unflinching and unafraid, Limón takes her reader on a journey into the most complex and dynamic realms of existence and identity, all while tracing a clear narrative of renewal.
Throughout, the poet lulls us into the security of her lines, only to cut into us where we least expect it. This is not New York and I am not important,” she writes midway through a poem about her new home. A poem opens with the revelation that Six horses died in a tractor-trailer fire. / There, thats the hard part. I wanted / to tell you straight away so we could / grieve together.” Bright Dead Things examines the chaos that is life, the dangerous thrill of living in a world you know you have to leave one day, and the search to find something that is ultimately disorderly, and marvelous, and ours.”
Review
Praise for Bright Dead Things
In Ada Limons Bright Dead Things, theres a fierce jazz and sass (this life is a fist / of fast wishes caught by nothing, / but the fishhook of tomorrows tug.”) and theres sadnessa grappling with death and loss that forces the imagination to a deep response. The radio in her new, rural home warns stay safe and seek shelter” and yet the heart seeks love, risk, and strangenessand finds it everywhere.”Gregory Orr
"Ada Limón doesn't write as if she needs us. She writes as if she wants us. Her words reveal, coax, pull, see us. In Bright Dead Things we read desire, ache, what human beings rarely have the heart or audacity to speak of alonewithout the help of a poet with the most generous of eyes."Nikky Finney
"In the wonderful and wondering poems of her fourth collection, Ada Limón picks things up, puts them down, daydreams, sings, and casually, unpretentiously finds everything strange, all the while uttering truths that have a light, mysterious accuracy. This poetry is confident enough to let the world (Brooklyn, Kentucky, Montana, and elsewhere) and its words take center stage, again and again. And yet, Limón does far more than merely reflect the world: she continually transforms it, thereby revealing herself as an everyday symbolist and high level duende enabler. At the end of one poem she writes, What the heart wants? The heart wants/ her horses back,” and suddenly even this most urban reader feels wild and free."Matthew Zapruder
"The lyrical genius of these poems sing to us of the perennial theme of home and our primordial ache of belonging. Ada Limón captures all the nuances that these colossal words call to mind with the gorgeous voice of her diction, and the timbre of her images. Both soft and tender, enormous and resounding, her poetic gestures entrance and transfix."Richard Blanco
Review
Praise for Bright Dead ThingsIn Ada Limons Bright Dead Things, theres a fierce jazz and sass (this life is a fist / of fast wishes caught by nothing, / but the fishhook of tomorrows tug.”) and theres sadnessa grappling with death and loss that forces the imagination to a deep response. The radio in her new, rural home warns stay safe and seek shelter” and yet the heart seeks love, risk, and strangenessand finds it everywhere.”Gregory Orr
"Ada Limón doesn't write as if she needs us. She writes as if she wants us. Her words reveal, coax, pull, see us. In Bright Dead Things we read desire, ache, what human beings rarely have the heart or audacity to speak of alonewithout the help of a poet with the most generous of eyes."Nikky Finney
"Limón does far more than merely reflect the world: she continually transforms it, thereby revealing herself as an everyday symbolist and high level duende enabler. At the end of one poem she writes, What the heart wants? The heart wants/ her horses back,” and suddenly even this most urban reader feels wild and free."Matthew Zapruder
"Both soft and tender, enormous and resounding, her poetic gestures entrance and transfix."Richard Blanco
Starred Review "In her newest volume of poems, Limón (Sharks in the Rivers) delves into the divided selfself separated by geography, by loss, by change, by circumstance. VERDICT Generous of heart, intricate and accessible, the poems in this book are wondrous and deeply moving."Library Journal
"A poet whose verse exudes warmth and compassion, Limón is at the height of her creative powers, and Bright Dead Things is her most gorgeous book of poems."Los Angeles Review of Books
"Richly written and felt."Publishers Weekly
Synopsis
FINALIST FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD
A finalist for both the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award, Bright Dead Things examines the dangerous thrill of living in a world you must leave one day and the search to find something that is "disorderly, and marvelous, and ours."
A book of bravado and introspection, of feminist swagger and harrowing loss, this fourth collection considers how we build our identities out of place and human contact--tracing in intimate detail the ways the speaker's sense of self both shifts and perseveres as she moves from New York City to rural Kentucky, loses a dear parent, ages past the capriciousness of youth, and falls in love. Ada Lim n has often been a poet who wears her heart on her sleeve, but in these extraordinary poems that heart becomes a "huge beating genius machine" striving to embrace and understand the fullness of the present moment. "I am beautiful. I am full of love. I am dying," the poet writes. Building on the legacies of forebears such as Frank O'Hara, Sharon Olds, and Mark Doty, Lim n's work is consistently generous, accessible, and "effortlessly lyrical" (New York Times)--though every observed moment feels complexly thought, felt, and lived.
Synopsis
Bright Dead Things examines the chaos that is life, the dangerous thrill of living in a world you know you have to leave one day, and the search to find something that is ultimately disorderly, and marvelous, and ours.”
A book of bravado and introspection, of 21st century feminist swagger and harrowing terror and loss, this fourth collection considers how we build our identities out of place and human contacttracing in intimate detail the various ways the speakers sense of self both shifts and perseveres as she moves from New York City to rural Kentucky, loses a dear parent, ages past the capriciousness of youth, and falls in love. Limón has often been a poet who wears her heart on her sleeve, but in these extraordinary poems that heart becomes a huge beating genius machine” striving to embrace and understand the fullness of the present moment. I am beautiful. I am full of love. I am dying,” the poet writes. Building on the legacies of forebears such as Frank OHara, Sharon Olds, and Mark Doty, Limóns work is consistently generous and accessiblethough every observed moment feels complexly thought, felt, and lived.
About the Author
Ada Limón is the author of four poetry collections. Her work has appeared in
The New Yorker,
The New York Times,
American Poetry Review,
Oxford American, and
Guernica. She lives in Kentucky and California.