The #1 bestselling new collection from National Book Award finalist Ada Limón are 'Exquisite poems about love, fertility, desire, this natural world we move through, the political climate, so much more' Roxane Gay
'Exquisite poems' Roxane Gay
From National Book Award and National Book Critics Circle Award finalist Ada Limón comes The Carrying - her most powerful collection yet.
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 The Carrying, the poet's heart is on full display - even as she continues further and deeper into the bloodstream, following the hard-won truth of what it means to live in an imperfect world.
Her poems masterfully weave those quiet moments of grief and strength with expansive questions about life and womanhood. It's a privilege to witness her work